An Id Software developer affected by this week’s sweeping Xbox layoffs has claimed that the Doom and Quake studio has been ‘nuked into the dirt’ and ‘relegated to support studio size’.
On Wednesday, a WARN notice filed in Texas indicated that 96 workers have been laid off at Id Software’s Richardson, Texas HQ, and a further 40 remote roles have been cut, for a total of 136 job losses.
According to an announcement published by the Communication Workers of America last December, Id had 185 employees in total, which would mean that, if that figure is accurate, the majority of the studio’s workers have been laid off in this week’s huge Xbox cuts.
Derek Best, a former VFX Artist at Id who has worked on all three modern Doom games, published a lengthy post on LinkedIn saying he was “in shock at how brutal the layoff cuts” were.
“Collectively decades of knowledge was wiped out of the studio,” he claimed. “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.
“All devs that had Houdini knowledge for procedural modeling or cached animations were wiped out so all the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program has gone to waste with no one to carry it on.”
He concluded: “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”.
‘Relegated to support studio size and moving to Unreal’
Id Software is one of the most historic developers in the games industry, known for its cutting-edge technology used to power shooters like Doom and Quake. However, Best speculated that the cuts could lead to the developer no longer building its own games or using its own engine technology.
“Writing on the wall is getting relegated to support studio size and moving to Unreal,” he wrote. “Based on internal email and the roles, you can see clearly got impacted. Engine team was decimated. Supremely short sighted and brain-dead moves from Asha et all.”
In another LinkedIn post, Id VFX artist Todd Boyce criticized the timing of the layoffs, which took place the day before the release of a major expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages, which he claimed developers crunched to complete.
“This is what insanity and despicable corporate greed looks like,” they wrote. “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.)”
id Software also has a Frankfurt, Germany studio focused on its idTech engine. It’s not yet clear if it has been affected by this week’s cuts.
