In July 2025, ZeniMax Online Studios’ principal gameplay designer, Quentin Cobb, was one of the thousands laid off as part of Microsoft’s brutal cuts across its gaming division. He subsequently, like so many game developers, found himself unable to find another role in a tough job market.

So he made the obvious choice. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I make my own game?'” Cobb recalls. Hence in December 2025, Ironroot Games was revealed to the world, a new independent studio composed entirely of veteran, laid-off AAA game developers, with Cobb as CEO and creative director.

Ironroot isn’t the only new studio to be born from the ashes of Project Blackbird, the ZeniMax Online MMORPG that had reportedly been in development since 2018, and that was cancelled as part of Microsoft’s July cuts. In October 2025, the cannily named Sackbird Studios was announced, an employee-owned indie studio composed of former Elder Scrolls Online and Project Blackbird developers. “I am good friends with [Sackbird co-founder] Doug Carroll, and we’ve spoken a few times,” Cobb says. “We’re both trying to help each other a bit and give each other advice.” ZeniMax Online founder Matt Firor, who left the studio following Project Blackbird’s cancellation, has also been informally guiding the new studios. “He’s given some great advice, given some great pointers,” Cobb says. “He’s been very encouraging and super helpful.”

But we’ve been here before, of course. As a result of the seemingly endless games industry layoffs over the past four years – which have particularly impacted the US, and particularly the AAA sector – even experienced developers have struggled to find work, and the natural response (aside from leaving the industry entirely) is to go it alone. The past few years have seen the launch of numerous outfits helmed by AAA veterans, like Airlock Games, Last Arrow, Second Star Games, Giant Skull, Twisted Works, Fuse Games, Muddy Robot, and Maverick Games, to name a few.

Yet this is a hostile environment in which to launch a new studio, with the industry gripped by not only an ongoing funding crisis, but also a discoverability one, as it becomes increasingly difficult for a new game to stand out among the ever more released each year – all set against a background of faltering growth.

But on the flip side, it’s clear that the industry is transitioning. As the wheels come off the AAA model amid spiralling budgets and ever-expanding team sizes, we’re seeing mid-priced or indie games break through to sell millions, like Clair Obscur or Peak. There’s a buzz of optimism and enthusiasm at the realisation that original ideas have a chance to succeed, and a rejection of the rigid hierarchy and increasingly safe thinking of the AAA world.

“These folks that have come from ZeniMax Online Studios [are] exploring things that perhaps they would never be able to explore in AAA, because things are a little bit more tight, prim, and proper,” explains Elaine Gómez, Ironroot Games’ principal gameplay designer and studio culture lead.

And Cobb, for his part, is revelling in the freedom afforded by his new studio, which was born “out of wanting to do our own thing, to creatively spread our wings, and really explore a kind of game that we would want to make together in a really collaborative environment.”

“You’re not just a cog in a machine,” Gómez adds.

A different way of doing things

“Working in corporate AAA studios for so long, as someone that wasn’t a lead or a director, you really get put into a box of ‘do this one thing, right, and just do that’,” says Cobb, who worked at Naughty Dog, Daybreak, and Sony before joining ZeniMax Online. “I think working on a small indie team, what’s incredibly valuable is everyone’s voice, everyone’s experience. We really encourage this. I want to hear from anybody on the team about design and the story. Everyone has valuable opinions.”

“At the end of the day, that’s what we are striving to do: it’s people first,” Gómez says. “Because we are people who are making games. The project is not being made without us. So if we’re not in a healthy environment, and we don’t feel seen, if we don’t feel respected, we’re not going to make good stuff.

“And we have all felt that in some capacity in other studios. If you don’t feel good, you don’t feel energized, you don’t feel inspired.”

Part of ensuring the environment stays healthy, Cobb says, is ensuring the project’s scope is realistic.

“I think sometimes in big AAA studios it starts to get away from them a bit,” he explains. “And so I think a big lesson that I have learned is sit down with the team and think about what the game is that we can make, that we can ship with the people we have in a reasonable time, without stressing out, without crunching, without going crazy, and stay friends and ship a game.

“And I think that is definitely a big lesson we can take away from some of these AAA productions, is that [the project] just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And sometimes that’s not always better.”

As for what, exactly, Ironroot’s first project is, that’s currently under wraps. “I’m dying to talk about it,” Cobb says. “But it’s just so early now that I don’t want to put too many details out there and then have to backtrack or change things.” All we know at this point is that it will be a “personal” indie game with a necessarily small budget. “We’re aware of the budgetary challenges,” says Cobb. “It’s very apparent how tough it is right now.”

Part-time studio

The days of investors throwing money at video games are long gone, and hence Ironroot Games is being careful about its employee count. Currently, the studio consists of a mix of contributors who are being paid based on the nature and scope of their work and those who are contributing on a “deferred basis” as the studio gets off the ground. While Cobb and Gómez won’t specify the number of contributors, they confirm it is “in double digits.”

“We consciously know that some folks may get new jobs next week, in two months, and the time that they can give to Ironroot will be different,” Gómez explains. “I think that’s why that number is in the air, and that’s totally okay. Nobody is obligated to be a part of something voluntarily.”

Gómez, who is also the founder and creative director of Midnight Hour Games, dedicates 10–15 hours a week to Ironroot, and acknowledges that, until the studio finds its feet, they expect the workforce to “ebb and flow.”

“It’s working with folks’ schedules and their priorities in life, but still trying to make this game together, this prototype, put these ideas in-engine,” Gómez explains. “[We’re] conscious of people’s lives and the fact that it’s important for folks to make sure that they’re paying their bills. As much as we would love Ironroot to do that, we are getting there, but we’re setting ourselves up for success in order to be able to do that.”

Once sufficiently funded, Cobb has big plans for the Ironroot’s payment structure, hoping to reflect the studio’s open philosophy by being “as fully transparent as possible with the team” about finances.

“I really feel very strongly that the people who make the game should earn the money that the game makes, period”

Quentin Cobb

“My plan is to share a completely open book as to all the money coming in and going out, who’s getting paid what, and be completely transparent,” Cobb explains. “We’re a small team. I don’t have any reason to hide anything, so I want to share that with the team as we start to get funded and we start to earn money.”

Cobb also plans to offer a revenue share to all Ironroot Games employees, in addition to their base salary. “I haven’t ironed everything out quite yet, but my plan is to have a very fair and equitable pay structure for revenue share, so that the people making the game actually get paid,” Cobb explains. “The CEO or the top few people in the team taking a gigantic portion of the revenue, and the team getting scraps, is common practice in corporate America and it’s disheartening. I really feel very strongly that the people who make the game should earn the money that the game makes, period.”

While pay transparency is beneficial to an open work environment, Gómez, who is also the president of nonprofit support organisation Latinx in Gaming, also believes salary is an often forgotten aspect in the conversation around equality – and something Ironroot Games wants to ensure is placed at the forefront.

“We value not just your work, but you as a person, your expertise, and we want to make sure that you have enough to do what you want to do, so that you can succeed in your career, whether you stay here or not,” Gómez says.

Again, it’s about putting people first. “We want to build a community where people feel like they can be part of something that’s bigger than themselves, that they have some folks here that they can trust if something goes wrong, that you have an ally, that you don’t need to walk on eggshells. All of these things that we have experienced, we want to undo them. We want to create a space where folks feel valued, where they feel heard.”

Before all that can happen, however, Ironroot Games needs to get funded. “Trying to fundraise in this environment is super challenging,” Cobb says. “And trying to position the game in a way that will be attractive to money-minded people is tough. Games are really interesting because they’re an art form, and we as artists are trying to create something that we believe in and feel is valuable. But we also need to package that and sell it. It’s weird. You have to create art, but then you need to sell the art to make money to make more art.”

Survivors of the meat grinder

That balance between the need to make money and the need to stay true to an artistic vision is never going to go away, but it’s admirable that Ironroot wants to change things up and move away from old practices – even if the financials remain somewhat precarious in these early days. Like pretty much every developer in the industry, the Ironroot team has plenty of horror stories about being summarily dismissed by previous employers.

Gómez, who is one of the few members of the studio not to come from ZeniMax, recalls her “traumatising” experience at the NetEase-backed Worlds Untold, where she worked as a principal gameplay designer on an unannounced action-adventure until the studio was shuttered in November 2024.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Gómez says. “We were told we were fully funded for the entirety of the number of years that this project was going to be on.

“We were doing great. We passed our prototype flags with flying colours. Everybody was happy with our work. And then all of a sudden it was like, right before Thanksgiving, 2024, ‘Hey, everybody, we’re just gonna rip the band-aid off.'”

“You wrap your identity up into your work. It’s tough for that to get flushed down the toilet”

Quentin Cobb

Cobb, meanwhile, is still processing the abrupt cancellation of Project Blackbird. “I thought it was going well, personally, and it was shaping up,” he says. The feelings are still raw. “A thing that I struggle with is you wrap your identity up into your work. It’s tough for that to get flushed down the toilet. I was there for almost five years. It’s gone. All gone.”

“It was a shock, and, to be honest, extremely traumatic,” Cobb continues, visibly emotional. “There are a lot of people still struggling with the ramifications of what happened that day. Blindsided is an understatement, that’s for sure. It was a tough day, something that I’ll never forget.”

Employment will always be somewhat precarious in the hit-driven world of games, and it’s undeniable that starting a new studio is tremendously difficult in the current environment. But by going it alone, at least Cobb and the rest of Ironroot Games will be controlling their own destiny this time around.