‘Why didn’t anyone think of this before?’: Former Elder Scrolls Online boss loves Crimson Desert, but making ‘a singleplayer MMO is almost like cheating’ to him

Matt Firor has been in the MMO business since 2001, the days of Dark Age of Camelot, and ran The Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios until 2025. Firor resigned in response to the cancellation of in-development MMO Blackbird and the mass layoffs that followed.

Firor still plays The Elder Scrolls Online in secret, he told MinnMax in a wide-ranging interview, but his current obsession appears to be Crimson Desert—not an MMO, but certainly designed like one.

“It’s fantastic,” Firor told MinnMax’s Ben Hanson. “For those game developers listening, or people who want to be game developers, the online tech side of MMOs is never discussed and it should be because it’s usually the hardest part of the project.” And that’s the part Pearl Abyss was able to skip.

“Being able to make a singleplayer MMO is almost like cheating to me,” Firor joked. “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?”

For Pearl Abyss, though, it was almost accidental. Crimson Desert was originally conceived of as a prequel to MMO Black Desert Online, and it was going to be another MMO. It then underwent a slew of changes during development—contributing to a pretty haphazard feel—which included a pivot to pure singleplayer. The ghost of the MMO it was going to be is still very much present, though.

Firor, whose game design credits go all the way back to the ’90s, said it reminds him of “the old days of gaming, where there’s not a lot of hand-holding and not a lot of written material and nobody knows what’s going on”. He’s been trying to play it blind, without looking anything up online.

“I still don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, “but I’m having so much fun. I’ve trained like 15 horses, but they all seem to be the same.” The true Crimson Desert experience.