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One of the biggest tragedies of Xbox’s wide-reaching reset is id Software, which was cut by a whopping 136 roles. And while official statements from Microsoft and the studio have tried to reassure players that it’s not been gutted, whether that’s just a panicking Xbox trying to calm anxieties is up for debate.
Especially given the words of Chris Hays, lead services programmer at id Software, in an interview with YouTube channel Auf ein Bier at the end of last month. To say that Hays doesn’t mince his words is an understatement—and I’m finding it hard to blame him, given Microsoft announced the layoffs one day before Doom: The Dark Ages released its DLC.
“Everyone had just gotten off of a worse-than-usual crunch to get the DLC out the door, finally get a breather, and we were excited for our launch on the Tuesday … Instead of watching in anticipation for people, streamers, and seeing all the hard work they put in finally pay off? Now they don’t know what they’re doing.”
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Hays adds that “it was so inhumane, it was demoralising, and morale has never been lower,” though it also doesn’t help that Microsoft isn’t communicating much of a plan at all to folks on the studio-level: “There’s been plenty of things said internally that mimics the same things that we’ve all seen as public statements by the company. But how that actually results in making games? That’s not clear. I don’t know. I don’t know where this goes.
“It is hard to make a game that is AAA, that is 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 gutted that you need, entire disciplines that are gone. So if they’ve got some kind of new plan for how this is going to work, that hasn’t been told [to us]. We don’t know what that is.”
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As for the statements that “we’re still the same id”, Hays says that “First of all, we’re not the same id. We’re half the same id. It was the people—what made us special was the people and the relationships that we have. It’s not the IP, our name doesn’t matter. It was the relationships we built and the experience that we had together.” From his perspective, most of Microsoft’s damage control is to avoid people jumping ship.
But Hays believes that Microsoft’s permanently damaged its reputation in the industry, making it harder to either get those same people back if it needs to, but also denting id Software’s ability to recruit again:
“They have burned a lot of bridges—it’s not just us … originally, we were told, ‘we hire to retire’. We were ready to be there until we retired, and no-one believes that anymore. Even the best management at the studio level won’t matter if they just decide one year they would get a 0.1% stock increase if they shut down the studio.
“I think as long as we’re under Microsoft, no-one will believe anything. No-one is going to believe studio management giving assurances on things, because they know they’re not making the shots. They’re not gonna trust Microsoft ever, so by proxy, they can’t trust studio management.”
Hays also says that “a lot of the cuts are hard to understand—to be clear, you can’t cut 50% of a AAA studio in ANY way, and have it make sense … I don’t know how that works. There are certain pieces where it’s like, ‘who will do that work now?’
“Who’s going to make our skyboxes when we get rid of our skybox artist? How are we going to maintain our infrastructure when we get rid of an infrastructure team? How will we maintain an engine when so much of the engine team was let go?”
Ultimately, Hays says that “these decisions were not made with foresight. They were not made with the idea of a healthy games studio continuing forward … They fundamentally don’t understand art. They don’t understand art, they don’t understand games, they don’t understand that business model.”
It’s hard not to feel the same way, especially given this isn’t Microsoft’s first head-scratcher in recent years. For example, canning Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks, or shutting down Project Blackbird despite then-Xbox president Phil Spencer having to be peeled away from it, or kneecapping Zenimax just as The Elder Scrolls Online finds its feet again, or laying off one of your most senior concept artists at Bethesda.
None of these choices speak of a desire—or even an interest—in long-term longevity, which is something that Hays reflects on: “Part of me thinks that they’re looking at fiscal year 2027, and they see that we don’t make money in 2027 because we released a game already.
“It’s hard to know, since they don’t tell us anything, but it’s clear that the way they do accounting—the way they align their spreadsheets for their financial reports—is not the way we used to do it.”
