Roughly half of id Software, the legendary studio behind Doom and Wolfenstein, has been laid off as part of Xbox's latest round of mass job cuts, according to multiple sources. The layoffs have eliminated nearly all of the studio's coders, leaving the developer unable to maintain its proprietary engine or function as a support studio.
Scale of the Cuts
Xbox's recent layoffs affected approximately 3,200 employees, bringing the total number of staff let go by the company in the last few years to over 9,000. While no studios were shut down, the impact on id Software has been particularly severe. Scott Miller, co-founder of Apogee Software/3D Realms, posted on X that he had heard the majority of id Software had been let go, including 'most (if not all) coders.'
George Broussard, also a co-founder of Apogee, later posted that 50% of the studio—about 95 employees—had been laid off. He stated that the studio is effectively dead, saying, 'Tools, programming (except a couple), Quake Champions team, testing team. All gone.' Game Developer corroborated these claims, reporting that over 90 people were let go and that the quality assurance department was severely impacted.
Historical Significance
id Software was founded in 1991 and is widely credited with creating the first-person shooter genre with games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Its proprietary engine has been used not only for Doom titles but also for other Bethesda and Microsoft games, including MachineGames' Wolfenstein series and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. With the loss of nearly all coders, the studio's institutional knowledge of this technology is gone, making it impossible to continue development or support.
Impact on Future Projects
The layoffs are expected to affect future plans for Doom: The Dark Ages, which received its first DLC expansion on the same day the cuts were reported. With reduced manpower, further DLC may be scaled back or cancelled. Microsoft and Xbox have expressed interest in more Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake games, but these may now be moved to a different engine, such as Unreal.
Reactions from Industry Figures
id Software co-founder John Romero expressed condolences to affected employees and emphasized the importance of preserving the studio's legacy. In a Bluesky thread, he wrote, 'id's history is critically important to the history of games. 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. I hope someone is doing the same for the company's ongoing legacy (the work, code, assets, stories and the people behind them).'
Romero currently runs Romero Games with his wife Brenda Romero. Their next game was meant to be funded by Microsoft, but the company pulled out last year, leading to the game's cancellation and layoffs at Romero Games. The studio refuted claims it had shut down entirely, stating, 'Romero Games is not closed, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not come to that. Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect.'
