id Software Says 50 Staff Can Sustain Doom After 136 Layoffs

Q: Management claims its game engine is thriving, so why do laid-off staff say the technology is 'dead forever'?

They are talking about different things: management says id Tech still exists and still has teams supporting it, while laid-off staff say the layoffs destroyed the expertise needed to meaningfully maintain and evolve it. Hugo Martin and Microsoft argue the engine is “alive and well” because dozens of engineers remain across id Software, Frankfurt, and MachineGames, and because the studio still has enough staff to ship games and support the technology. From that view, id Tech is not abandoned. Former employees dispute that definition. They say the cuts removed much of the core engine team, including senior technical leaders and long-serving programmers, and wiped out years of institutional knowledge. Several laid-off staff said the people who knew how to fix, extend, and modernize id Tech were the ones let go. That is why one source said the technology is “probably dead forever”: not because the code vanishes, but because the specialist knowledge behind it may be gone. The disagreement is also about the future, not just the present. Management is describing current operational capacity. Critics are warning that a proprietary engine can survive short term yet still be strategically crippled if its veteran maintainers are gone, morale is damaged, and no new projects are greenlit. In that sense, staff fears reflect “brain drain” and a possible shift away from heavy in-house engine development, even if Microsoft publicly insists id Tech remains part of its AAA plans.

3 articles · Updated · Windows Central · Jul 17

Hugo Martin told fans on a livestream that id Software still has about 50 people and has not been “gutted,” despite Microsoft’s latest cuts.
The studio head said id is roughly the size it was when it made Doom 2016, and that idTech remains active through engineers in Frankfurt and at MachineGames.
The reassurance followed Microsoft’s broader Xbox reset, which reportedly cut 3,200 game-development jobs this month, including 136 at id Software.
Fan backlash has been sharp, with criticism aimed at Microsoft and skepticism over whether future Doom projects can keep their quality after the downsizing.