Xbox Doesn't Understand Games, Says Doom Dev

Half. That's how much of id Software is gone, according to Chris Hays, a 16-year veteran and lead services programmer still working at the studio behind Doom. In an interview with the Well Played podcast on YouTube, Hays broke from the corporate line to criticise Xbox's handling of the layoffs that gutted the legendary developer.

"It is hard to make a game that is AAA that's like we've done before with half the people. And by hard I mean impossible. It's hard to make a game when there are entire departments that are gutted that you need. Entire disciplines that are gone."

Hays went further, directly challenging the reassurances Xbox and studio leadership have offered since the cuts landed. Doom: The Dark Ages director Hugo Martin previously said id is "the size we were when we made Doom 2016" and that id Tech is alive and well. Hays isn't buying it. "There is a reason they say close to, because it is less," he responded when pressed on the claim. He also alleged that id management has been given "talking points" by Xbox, told what they can and can't say publicly, and that the reassurances are designed to stop more people from jumping ship.

Game Pass and the Sales Problem

Hays didn't limit his criticism to headcount. He took aim at Game Pass itself, pointing out a contradiction that's been obvious to anyone paying attention: Xbox puts every Bethesda game on Game Pass day one, then apparently criticises the sales figures. "Whenever we see the financial reports that say that there were poor sales under Bethesda, like, what's a sale?" Hays said. "If you have Game Pass, are you saying poor sales means a poor number of games sold? Cause of course. They're not doing a 'games sold' business model."

I've been saying for a while that the Game Pass model creates a tension Xbox has never properly resolved. You can't cannibalise your own retail sales and then use those same retail numbers to justify cutting the studios that made the games. Hays is the first person inside one of these studios to say it out loud while still employed there, and that takes guts.

The practical fallout is just as damning. Hays listed specific capabilities the studio has lost: "Who will do that work now? We had like who's going to make our skyboxes when we get rid of our skybox artist? How are we going to maintain infrastructure when we get rid of our infrastructure team? How are we going to maintain our engine when so much of our engine team is let go?" These aren't abstract concerns. Losing an engine team at a studio famous for building its own technology is like stripping the foundation out of a house and asking why the walls look shaky.

Xbox's July restructure announced by new boss Asha Sharma cut 1,600 jobs immediately, with another 1,600 to follow before the end of the year. The total will represent around 20 percent of Xbox's headcount. Studios like Double Fine and Compulsion Games were divested entirely. Id Software, the studio that built the FPS genre with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, wasn't spun off. It was hollowed out instead.

Hays summed it up bluntly: "They don't understand art. They don't understand games. They don't understand that business model." He argued that a company organised around fiscal quarters isn't suited to making art that takes years to develop. "If you cut half of a studio and don't take into account how it's made, you don't understand the cohesion between our teams was a part of what made it successful."

A current developer publicly torching their parent company's strategy while still on payroll is extraordinarily rare. Whether Xbox responds with words or silence will say a lot about which version of the company we're dealing with going forward.