id Software Lost Half Its Staff. It Says That's Fine.

"We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for. The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom (2016). We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward."

That's id Software's official statement, posted two days ago, after Microsoft's mass layoffs carved 136 jobs from the studio. Over half the workforce, gone. Key positions eliminated. Entire teams gutted. And the response from the studio that invented the first-person shooter is: we're about the same size we were ten years ago, so everything's fine.

Except Doom 2016 was made ten years ago. The games id ships now are bigger, more complex, and more expensive to produce. The studio had grown past 200 people for Doom: The Dark Ages precisely because you can't build games at that scale and fidelity with a 2016-sized team anymore. Framing the cuts as a return to some golden-era headcount is corporate spin doing a lot of heavy work to make a devastating reduction sound like a reset.

The layoffs, part of Microsoft's broader 3,200-job cut across Xbox, hit id Software the day before the studio's Doom: The Dark Ages expansion launched. According to a WARN notice filed in Texas, 96 of the cuts came from id's Richardson office, with an additional 40 remote staff also let go. Sources told Kotaku that key positions were eliminated and entire teams were decimated. Among the cuts was Billy Khan, id Software's Director of Engine Technology, who had been at the studio since 2010. Former staff raised serious concerns about the future of id Tech, the proprietary engine that has powered every id game and served as one of the studio's most valuable technical assets.

Microsoft pushed back on reports that only one person remained on the core id Tech engine team in Texas. "There are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," an Xbox spokesperson said. But the company declined to comment on any future projects. Sources indicated nothing was currently greenlit, though pitches for multiplayer DLC for The Dark Ages and a non-Doom game were floating around internally.

Carmack Weighs In

Id co-founder John Carmack added his own perspective on X, and it was a strange read. "I'm saddened, but I can't muster anger or outrage over it," he wrote, before arguing that id Software was likely "a marginal business from Microsoft's perspective" and that Minecraft revenues had been carrying several other studios. "To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved."

He's not wrong about the economics, but the framing stings when 136 people just lost their jobs. Carmack floated ideas like raising prices, cutting development costs, or making "more things for fans to buy" as potential paths Microsoft could have taken. What he didn't mention is that id's games spent years being funnelled into Game Pass as a subscription driver, a strategy that Microsoft's own leadership has since walked back. It's hard to judge a studio's commercial performance when its parent company spent years deliberately sacrificing its traditional sales potential to prop up a different business model.

I keep coming back to that statement. "About the same size we were when making Doom (2016)." It's supposed to be reassuring. But Doom 2016 was built in a different era, with different expectations, different budgets, and different scope. If id is expected to deliver games at the level of The Dark Ages with a team that size, Microsoft isn't setting the studio up for a comeback. It's setting it up to either crunch itself into the ground or ship something smaller than what fans expect.

Id Software says it's looking forward to seeing fans at QuakeCon in August. No future projects have been confirmed.