The effects of Microsoft’s layoffs at ZeniMax Online are already reaching The Elder Scrolls Online. The studio will remove the game’s Web Crown Store from the official website on July 22, 2026, requiring players to log into the game to view and purchase the latest Crown Store items.
The change was announced by community manager Kevin Gbolie in an update on the ESO forums. Players will still be able to buy Crowns through the website, and the in-game Crown Store will continue offering its usual items.
Gbolie explained that the website shop is being removed “to help manage workload.” The move comes only weeks after Microsoft’s latest round of cuts affected 379 employees across ZeniMax, with ZeniMax Online among the studios hit. The layoffs were also the second major reduction at the developer in two years.
ESO’s monthly Crown Store Showcase blog is changing for the same reason. Gbolie said the posts will become “more list-like than anything else” because the team has less bandwidth available.
That reduction also affects the screenshots included in those showcases. The images have been useful to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki, which uses high-resolution shots to document Crown Store items and other game content.
“The goal is to provide what we can. Especially because we know folks like UESP do use those shots,” Gbolie wrote. “But to be blunt, the team responsible for the blog and those screenshots doesn’t have the capacity to provide those at the scale we could before. But we will provide what we can for now and adjust from there.”
The changes arrive as ESO continues under its new seasonal content structure. ZeniMax Online recently brought the Thieves Guild back into focus with Season One: Return of the Thieves Guild, but the studio now has to maintain that schedule with fewer staff and less capacity for supporting community-facing features.
Removing the web shop and scaling back its showcase may seem like small changes compared with the layoffs themselves, yet they show how staffing cuts can affect the daily systems surrounding a live-service game. For ESO players, the Crown Store is still available, but checking its offerings now requires opening the game.
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The Elder Scrolls Online
Developed by ZeniMax Online Studios
Every legend starts somewhere and in The Elder Scrolls Online, it starts with you. Write your story into a vibrant chapter of Tamriel’s distant past that takes place nearly 1,000 years before the iconic TES V: Skyrim, and discover a world steeped in adventure and possibility.
- Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
- Platforms: Google Stadia, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Mac, Xbox One
- Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
- Release: 2014-04-04
- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
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Age Rating:
ACB M / USK 16 / CLASS_IND 14 / GRAC 19+ / PEGI 18 / ESRB M / CERO D
- IGDB Rating: 71.8/100
