Project Blackbird Leaks

I won't be linking the content, however earlier today some video of "Blackbird" leaked, it was syndicated on some news outlets, such as the Metro.

I have to say I have no idea from where the files came and it really quite annoyed me.  On a personal level, no-one I know of has nor ever tried to leak anything about that brilliant project; and as one of the first engineers on the task of bringing it to life it really irks me.

I've blogged about my feelings on the brutal cancellation before.

This video leak however is more annoying, not least because that was very old footage, it might even have been from a very early prototype build, and it clearly wasn't using the fantastic all ray traced renderer nor were the assets all the final ones we had (yes, live ray traced engine on an XBox Series X! Or a 2080 RTX min spec!).

People liked what they saw, but it wasn't mind blowing, Blackbird actually was.  Sure we had a ways to go, but the play loop was ace, the scope of the world was massive, the movement systems were top notch, I'm not saying anything others have not already said and I look at the predicted releases for XBox in 2026/2027 (our release window) and honestly I don't see much coming from their own mews.

Indeed, with the RAM shortage & it's costs it's pushing hardware options out into the future too, so it's likely Blackbird might have had 6-8 months added content creation before the next XBox hardware was even announced.

And remember this is Zenimax Online, their track record for live service games and regular content creation is right up there, we knew what we were doing (for the most part), we were realistic in dealing with things, we were moving into a massive tech debt and the tooling was all in place to start churning out the worlds and the stories we had to set in that living world.

Honestly, a gem has been buried, never to see the light, but unlike the Arkenstone the theif didn't come to steal from the dragon, instead the thieves stole our sweat & tears, I believe an unrivalled team.

So this leak, take it all with a pinch of salt, the game, the real game, looked so much better, fast paced and beautifully sultry. 

Project Blackbird Cancellation

This is a very hard post for me to write, not only am I personally and quite emotionally involved, but I am also still under a strict NDA and as such I can only point you to search the internet for many of the other leaks on the topic.

But finally I can perhaps explain why the number of blog posts I have been making has dried up; I often said it was because I was busy.

On January 2nd 2019 I walked into my first day of development on Project Blackbird as part of the core engine tech team with my employer The Multiplayer Group and as a founding member of the project with Zenimax Online.

The project as it stood the day it was cancelled was, is, stunning to look at.  Alex Tardiff lead the standing up of a brand new renderer from the ground up, a brand new engine was also stood up along side this and the two interoperated superbly.

Early in the development we did a lot of research, selecting technology, containers and performance considerations; we stood up a project with a handful of people and scaled it sucessfully to hundreds.  Standing up a new engine, a new renderer and the complete tooling stack for it is no mean feat.   Think an almost skunkworks kind of deal, with just a dozen members standing up something like Unreal 4; then scaling it out to something which in my opinion visually looked better than Unreal 5, with all the tooling, all the content creation to roll out experience after experience coming together nicely... Within just over six and a half years!

The experience of playing was incredible, the mechanics in the game unique, the world in which the player experienced the game mezmerising.

The team was amazing, sure we had ups and downs, but we were one under the Blackbird banner and until 4:03pm Wednesday 2nd July 2025 we believed there would be a cornerstone gameplay experience delivered on PC, XBox and Playstation 5.... Alas, no more.

As you may understand I am extremely upset by these events, finding constant moments of almost grief, automated message reminders still appearing from headless accounts, sprint goals all planned out but no actions to make, I am bereft of purpose, I am emotional, I was a BLACKBIRD.

https://www.trueachievements.com/news/canceled-xbox-mmo-project-blackbird

https://insider-gaming.com/phil-spencer-loved-zenimaxs-new-mmorpg-but-it-was-canceled-anyway/


https://www.eurogamer.net/zenimax-online-studios-head-matt-firor-announces-departure-following-widespread-layoffs-and-the-cancellation-of-in-development-mmo

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/a-new-mmo-in-development-at-elder-scrolls-online-studio-zenimax-has-been-cancelled-as-microsoft-puts-thousands-more-people-out-of-work/