Report: Roughly half of the id Software team have been laid off
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-around-half-of-the-id-software-team-have-been-laid-off
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/report-around-half-of-the-id-software-team-have-been-laid-off
62 Comments
mereo@piefed.ca · 177 pts · 39d
It's worse than that:
Article: https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/07/legendary-dev-id-software-allegedly-hit-extremely-hard-by-xbox-layoffs
Man. This is heartbreaking. The Idtech engine is dead, the engine that is extremely optimized and much better that that UT engine junk is dead.
87Six@lemmy.zip · 115 pts · 39d
it's fucking unbelievable how these morons can gut dev studios when the product that came out of them is to the scale of Doom 2016, Eternal and Dark Ages. Ridiculous.
I hope they band together and start their own company.
Speaking of which, if you know a way for me to find games made by devs that were once part of larger studios that were gutted, I'm interested.
Apparently these devs are treated the same way as Mick Gordon
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 39d
Not like they havent mismanaged the music projects...
Have the Eternal pre-orders received their OST yet?
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 39d
Nope. IIRC they basically told us to fuck off
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 39d
Not knowing if you did order it, users were trading casette releases on discogs not too long ago
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 39d
Yeah I pre-ordered the collector's edition, expecting to get a vinyl box set IIRC ? Oh well, I mostly got it for the other stuff anyway. The cassette I got isn't actually functional IIRC (never tried it but I recall the edition's booklet saying so) and was just a fancy download code (that wasn't even functional at the time. I should check if it at least works now).
87Six@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 39d
I have no idea about that
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 39d
So according to discogs (market place for all sorts physical music), users are selling doom eternal casettes on it.
Phantaloons@piefed.zip · 17 pts · 39d
Lighting a bowl and playing Quake and Doom wads and mods only this weekend. Let's see 'em off right, lads.
https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/quake-brutalist-jam-iii.549/
chunes@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 39d
I swear to god if the next Doom game uses Unreal I'm gonna lose it
absquatulate@lemmy.world · 77 pts · 39d
This is so infuriating.
I get gutting and selling studios that don't hold their own but seriously, id has been delivering banger after banger for 20 years now. Good luck trying to rely solely on fallout to stay afloat you asshats
rozodru@piefed.world · 48 pts · 39d
I'd argue since the beginning not just 20 years.
without id, gaming as we know it wouldn't exist today. FPS games, competitive shooters, hell even Valve itself likely wouldn't exist without id software. goes even beyond that. you could even go as deep as the modding community and all the games that have come from that. the majority of modders got their start with id games. Many rockstar game devs got their start at id or via an id product.
absquatulate@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 39d
I agree. I was thinking of the "new" id of the zenimax era, but they are truly one of the GOAT studios.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 38d
That's my career. I started with Doom levels in the late 20th century and still make 3D models for a living.
Mantzy81@aussie.zone · 28 pts · 39d
They released Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 - 34 years ago. And pretty much everything they've released since has been great.
I'm going to go sit down now because my bones hurt thinking about that fact.
87Six@lemmy.zip · 22 pts · 39d
It never was like that. Studios that do badly are never gutted, not as far as I've seen from online reports.
I think the reason why studios are gutted after success is that it's almost guaranteed that the money will keep flowing even after they are fired, BECAUSE of the success.
If you make a game and it sucks the company can't afford to fire you because they don't have guaranteed cash flow regardless if you're there or not.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 55 pts · 39d
Deconceptualist@leminal.space · 46 pts · 39d
Well the one potential silver lining to firing an entire team at once like this is that hopefully they can turn around and start their own new gaming studio free from the corporate overlords. In which case we all win.
At least, until the leaders of that studio get greedy and sell out and repeat the shit cycle all over.
nightlily@leminal.space · 35 pts · 39d
There isn’t any money out there, and a production team trying to run their own studio typically doesn’t work out. „Just go indie“ is not a realistic option. More than likely a handful of these people might be picked up (though likely will have to uproot their lives to do it) but the rest will leave the industry. It’s an incredibly destructive thing MS has done, because id folks often did a lot of knowledge sharing at conferences.
Deconceptualist@leminal.space · 5 pts · 39d
There's plenty of money out there in the economy, we just keep letting private equity buy up everything and funnel it to billionaires while enshittifying the entire world of commerce.
But aside from that you make a good point, if no one will invest in a new studio then that's a pipe dream. And yeah IIRC the ID folks were regular leaders at conferences like SIGGRAPH so yes this looks bad for the industry 😞
PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk · 45 pts · 39d
In fairness - and I'm a massive id fanboy - the company that gave us quality games and trailblazing tech disappeared when they went to Zenimax.
The publishers admittedly treated them well at the start (Mick Gordon... less so), but this soulless bottom-line thinking was always going to hit them eventually.
Shame.
makyo@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 39d
The arrogance with which Gordon was treated soured me on the whole franchise which is a shame because Doom 2016 is one of my all time favorites. No small part due to his soundtrack.
CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 39d
amen, Loved Doom/doom eternal, but completly skipping the dark age due to that.
TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.club · 0 pts · 39d
I applaud your sense of honor, but Dark Ages is still an excellent game.
Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 19 pts · 39d
Standing on principle requires us to skip games that are good sometimes.
scutiger@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 39d
Boycotting serves no purpose if it's a product you weren't goimg to buy anyway.
CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 39d
oh, i was gonna buy it, got the first two on steam.
corbindallas@fedinsfw.app · 9 pts · 39d
This. Right there with you. Dead company walking.
Herr_S_aus_H@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 39d
Weren't they bought back in the early 2010s? Doom 2016 was great and Doom Eternal has also a great reputation (I own it but haven't played it). So they made good games even after being bought by ZeniMax.
TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.club · 27 pts · 39d
Fucking Bethesda. If Starfield wasnt such a failure (amongst others) this might not have happened. Yet rather than cut where the issues are they decimate the studio that actually produces the great games.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 39d
It sold like 4.5M copies so I'm not sure it was a failure per se
Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 39d
I think it still lost money though it was like hundreds of millions of dollars in costs
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 38d
Just once I'd like a game to spend tens of millions on writers.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.wtf · 25 pts · 39d
It feels like enshittification has come for the games industry in a big way lately.
CaptDust@sh.itjust.works · 29 pts · 39d
It's come for everything. Everything from components used in factory lines to the ingredients bought by restaurants, it's all going to shit. The games industry just happens to be both heavily consolidated and highly public in nature.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 4 pts · 39d
I have been mentioning this and sometimes I get a response like oh your bought a worse thing and I can't convey how this is something I have been seeing especially in the last year. It cracks me up because it reminds me of the big bad communists. We are a society that is still advanced and limping along but everything is just getting crappier and crappier.
dunestorm@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 39d
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. Never ever trust MicroSlop; they are a malicious company.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 39d
Bringing that zombie out makes zero sense.
3E was about replacing market-preferred products with those of their own. There's nothing to replace these products. This just god-honest mismanagement. Don't make it more complicated (or malicious) than it is.
Freefall@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 39d
Commander Keen sales down?
FinalRemix@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
Chex Quest sales are through the roof though.
vane@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 39d
They released DOOM The Dark Ages DLC to celebrate that.
nullspace@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 39d
Appropriate game title.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 39d
If I were GOG or Gabe, I would snap those folks up and ask them to make something awesome.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 39d
GOG has no money, and Gabe has no incentive.
Alkali@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 38d
Who knew the quote:
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Could work in reverse.
Tieas@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 38d
I didn't even like the most recent doom games and even i could see they were fantastic. Didn't they sell well to? Of all the studios to cut this one seems fucking stupid.
Kaligalis@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 39d
Why does Microsoft keep buying game studios if they don't actually want to have a game studio?!
Gutting game studios doesn't actually yield any returns - making and selling successful games does.
So what's the point? If they don't like having functioning game studios, they can just stop buying them.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 39d
They're not interested in sales from the product. They want the IP, the patents, and a few of the talent, perhaps if they're particularly good.
You spend years making a large game, all negative profit. Then you launch, make most of the money you'll ever see off that title and go back to hibernate.
They buy the studio, own the ip, flip the crunch switch to on and wait for attrition. If anyone survives that, they put them somewhere else to make them money.
LostWon@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 39d
I don't know what the landscape is like in the gaming industry these days so I can't say if it's the case here, but often that kind of pattern is about eliminating competition (i.e. market manipulation rather than innovation).
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 39d
Companies that have more than 4% of market share are financially incentived to buy out the competition rather than innovate - it's cheaper. The first study on that is from iirc 60s, still holds true.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 39d
Why do we tolerate this as fans?
zewm@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 39d
Do you have the money to buy out id software and pay all the payroll for its coders?
87Six@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 39d
no, but I do have the money to not buy the dark ages and pirate it instead because of what they did to mick gordon, and now this.
and with that money, I will buy the game that mick gordon is currently working on. Or 50 of them. https://mick-gordon.com/
pressedhams@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 39d
Oh shit, He did the music for Absolum! Great game. Banger soundtrack and now I know why.
87Six@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 39d
It's always either this mf or Andrew Hulshult
Jhex@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 39d
you can simply choose not to buy their games…
CybranM@feddit.nu · 6 pts · 39d
Alright, I'm already doing that. What else?
Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works · -5 pts · 39d
Nothing like you think you're gonna save the world complaining on the internet? People get laid off all the time, businesses make stupid decisions all the time, all we can do is mind our business as well as we can.
CybranM@feddit.nu · 2 pts · 39d
I think you need a comma but besides that what's your point with that comment? That nothing we do matters so why try?
Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 38d
That youre already doing everything you can by not buying.
You can't keep all the billions of idiots on the planet from buying it, right? So what else could you possibly do? Start a campaign make signs on highway overpasses (Dont buy AAA games they dont let you own the copy!)
Email your congressperson?? About video games being too expensive??
That's a joke isn't it? So yes dont buy and move on with your life, what else is there in this case??
forkDestroyer@infosec.pub · -3 pts · 39d
Can someone give me a breakdown on what id has been up to since Doom?
I've been out of the scene for a while. Heard they have an engine now? What are their latest games?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 38d
Nobody tell them anything! No spoilers!
You're very lucky, my friend. Doom II is one of the greatest games ever made. Don't stay up too late playing it tonight. You're welcome.