As an MMO The Elder Scrolls Online was quite hyped up. It was a multiplayer experience set in the world of the Elder Scrolls, a chance to finally go questing with your friends, gather supplies and do what many of us had dreamt of since we played our first game in the franchise. However since the game has had a somewhat lukewarm performance. Now the publisher Zenimax Online are trimming down their number of staff.

Bethesda’s Pete Hines has said though that the layoffs are not down to how ESO has performed though, and are rather the type of layoffs that happen around this time of the game’s life. Simply: they hired more staff to help with the launch and first few months of its life, and now they were parring down the team to only what was truly needed.

“As is the norm for games of this type, we had ramped up a large workforce to develop a game of vast scale, and ramped up our customer service to handle the expected questions and community needs of The Elder Scrolls Online at launch. Now that we are nearly 6 months post launch, we have a thriving online community in a game that runs smoothly.”

There have been steps since launch to improve the quest-freezing bugs that plagued the open beta of ESO’s life and recently a new area for long-time high-level players was introduced called Craglorn; an area that’s set to expand again as Upper Craglorn gets added to the map.