We knew this would be a very painful week for the video games industry and for thousands of workers in the sector, and this has now been confirmed. With the 'Reset Xbox' announcement published yesterday by Asha Sharma, we have seen 1,600 staff leave the company, with a further 1,600 set to leave over the next 12 months. And that's as far as we know at the moment - things could always get worse.
But these redundancies are not limited solely to the four studios that Xbox is divesting through sales or allowing to become independent: teams remaining within the company have also been scaled back, and one of the hardest hit appears to have been id Software. Although it has not been officially confirmed, several sources suggest that 95 of the 200 staff members have been made redundant - almost half the workforce. This reduction effectively encompasses virtually the entire programming department at id Software. This seems to make it clear that the studio's upcoming titles will be developed using an engine such as Unreal Engine 6, moving away from the proprietary id Engine. The entire testing team has also been made redundant, which does not bode well for the quality of future projects.
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One of the figures who has lamented these redundancies is none other than the founder of id Software, John Romero, who already experienced first-hand the loss of Xbox support during last year's redundancies and the withdrawal of funding for his project at Romero Games. John has posted a message on social media expressing his solidarity with the studio's staff and reminding everyone that id Software was, is, and will continue to be a key player in the history of video games.
"I'm so sorry for everyone at id Software affected by these layoffs.
"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. 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.
"A note on digital preservation: 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).
"I'm thinking of everyone at id today, and everyone else affected by yesterday's layoffs. Romero Games was there a year ago. I know how devastating it is, and my heart's with all of you."
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What do you think of the cutbacks at id Software? How do you think this will affect the studio's future work and the future of Xbox as a publisher?