Half of id Software Is Gone - and That Should Worry Anyone Who Loves Doom

There's grim, and then there's laying off more than half the studio that basically invented the first-person shooter. That's what happened to id Software this month - 136 people gone, part of a wider Microsoft bloodbath that saw around 1,600 cut, with another 1,600 Xbox jobs reportedly still on the chopping block.

Let me say the quiet part out loud - Microsoft is swimming in money. This isn't a company fighting to survive. These are choices, made by people looking at a spreadsheet, and id Software - the house of Doom and Quake, one of the most storied names in the whole medium - got treated like a rounding error.

The scary part isn't the number, it's the direction

The layoffs are brutal on their own, but the reports swirling around them are what actually made me wince. According to coverage from Eurogamer and others, there are fears that id's own id-tech engine - a genuine piece of technical art that makes Doom feel like Doom - could be shelved. That a future Doom might get built in Unreal instead. That a slimmed-down id could get folded into the giant Call of Duty machine as just another support studio.

None of that is confirmed. But you don't need a leak to see the shape of it. When you gut a studio to half its size, you're not planning its next ambitious solo project. You're turning it into spare parts.

What it means for players here

For players here, a lot of this lands through Game Pass. That's the whole pitch Microsoft sold us - pay your monthly euros, get day-one games, don't worry about buying. But the value of that deal depends on the studios actually making great, distinct games. Every time Microsoft grinds another beloved team into the Call of Duty content mill, the library gets a little more samey, a little more focus-grouped.

And here's the uncomfortable regional angle - we don't have the leverage. A player in Zagreb or Split can't vote with their wallet against a trillion-dollar company the way a laid-off developer wishes we could. What we can do is remember that these games come from people, not logos, and that the physical Doom on your shelf doesn't get worse because a boardroom had a bad quarter.

I still love Doom. I just don't love what's happening to the people who make it, and I'm done pretending endless 'restructuring' is normal. It isn't. It's the same story on repeat, and the punchline is always the same folks losing their jobs.

Image: Asim18 / CC BY 3.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xbox_360_wired_controller_1.jpg