Laid-off id Software artist says Microsoft is ‘nuking the team into the dirt’ and is now the size of a ‘support studio’
The scale of Microsoft’s brutal Xbox layoffs become clearer by the day. Among the studios that Xbox hasn’t decided to dump from its portfolio entirely, we now know one of the outfits hit hardest by CEO Asha Sharma’s “Xbox reset” was id Software.
The Doom studio, which just released a massive expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages this week, will lose 136 roles, according to WARN notices. It’s a substantial downsizing that, according to laid-off VFX artist Derek Best (as spotted by VGC), has diminished the PC gaming institution to a “support studio size” overnight.
“I’m still in shock at how brutal the layoff cuts were,” Best wrote on LinkedIn. “Collectively decades of knowledge was wiped out of the studio. The VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer. The engine programmer responsible for the massive gains in VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was let go as well.
“Great job Microsoft. Nothing says business success like nuking a team into the dirt and relegating them to support studio size while also throwing out massive technological achievements.”
It’s a particularly painful pill to swallow around these parts, not just because the modern Doom series is the greatest singleplayer FPS effort happening at a large scale, but because the story of id Software is integral to PC gaming itself.
In a follow-up comment, Best says the “engine team was decimated,” which could indicate Microsoft will no longer invest in idTech, the studio’s in-house engine with roots in just about every FPS worth talking about.
“Writing on the wall is getting relegated to support studio size and moving to Unreal, based on internal email and the roles you can see clearly got impacted,” Best wrote.
Todd Boyce, a lead VFX artist at id, also chimed in on the same thread.
“This is what insanity and despicable corporate greed looks like. What a complete disregard for people who spent months working unpaid overtime to make the DLC, and for an engine that has consistently been the industry standard for performance. It is pretty insulting how it was done, when it was done, and what it will do to the id brand and those who are still employed (for now.)”
PC Gamer has reached out to Bethesda for comment on id’s future and will update if a reply comes in.
