"I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you": Doom's John Romero responds to id Software reportedly losing half their team

Fury and sorrow from current and former staff

Xbox aren't closing or selling off Doom developers id Software as part of their latest business teardown, but they are reportedly laying off around half the studio, with swinging cuts aimed at id's legendary technology team in particular. Even as out-going staff fulminate about the situation, studio co-founder John Romero has urged all concerned to preserve "code, assets, stories" and other historical artefacts that risk being wiped away during the restructure.

While Microsoft have yet to formally confirm how many people they're letting go from id Software, there's plenty of smoke in the air. 3D Realms and Apogee founder Scott Miller took to Xitter earlier to declare that “most, if not all,” of id's coders have been dismissed, citing contacts at the studio. Jeff Gardiner, a former project lead at Bethesda Game Studios, also claims to have heard that 95 id staffers have lost their jobs. These reports have been corroborated by anonymous Game Developer sources. All this during the release week for Doom: The Dark Ages expansion Revelations.

A number of id Software developers have already announced their departures on LinkedIn. They include 21 year veteran systems programmer Michael Maynard, who doesn't mince his words in his appraisal of id's past accomplishments and Microsoft's handling of the business. "We created arguably THE BEST first person engine technology in the industry," Maynard writes. "Arguably the best tech on any system! With literally the best of the best coders in the industry. THREE GAMES (14 years) in a row. Without question!! Google is your friend. We dominated the FPS industry in many ways!!

"Yet today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go," Maynard continues, "despite all the amazing work and effort from every designer, programmer, artist, audio specialist, level designer, fx, tech design, and on and on and on. Just, let them go.... Such a waste for an entire team dedicated to excellence for many years."

Being a bear of little brain, I can't speak to distinctions between this coder and that, but id Software are undoubtedly famous for their technology. The original Doom engine remains the heart of an incredible scene of total conversions and fan games. The subsequent Quake engine spawned a long line of id Tech iterations, endowed with such silicon-based sorcery as Rage's MegaTextures and the copious raytracing of Doom Dark Ages. Like their ancient rivals, Unreal Engine developers Epic, id once licensed their engine for commercial use, but ceased this practice after id Tech 4.

It's speculation, but Microsoft getting rid of so many id Software coders could indicate that they're planning to abandon the engine entirely. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's Xitter post announcing the layoffs mentions the need to "streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base". Sharma also talks about having fewer vendor contracts, but I would not be surprised if Microsoft had struck a deal with Epic to use the AI-addled Unreal Engine 6 for future id games. Still, as Julian observed to me just now in the RPS Den of Iniquity (company Gchat group), why get rid of such talented techheads at a time of hardware price hikes, when fancy-looking games really need to be optimised to run on existing machines?

Among those reacting to this week's id Software reports is John Romero, former id Software co-founder and one of the creators of the original Doom. Romero himself recently fell afoul of Microsoft's reductions: his and Brenda Romero's company Romero Games had to lay off staff last year, after losing funding for a new shooter project.

"I’m so sorry for everyone at id Software affected by these layoffs," Romero wrote on Bluesky today. "I know what it feels like to leave id while id goes on. It’s a strange and painful thing to step away from a place that holds so much of your work, friendships and history.

"The people at id have done a great job moving that legacy forward," he went on. "DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today’s industry. The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people."

Romero also took the opportunity to stress the importance of digital preservation (some additional context: PlayStation manufacturers Sony recently announced that they're dropping discs). "I’ve preserved id’s complete early history from our start at Softdisk through to August 6, 1996, including materials and assets that, as far as I know, id itself no longer has," Romero wrote. "I hope someone is doing the same for the company’s ongoing legacy (the work, code, assets, stories and the people behind them).

"I’m thinking of everyone at id today, and everyone else affected by yesterday’s layoffs," he concluded. "Romero Games was there a year ago. I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you."

Best of luck to everybody affected.