During the layoffs at XBOX this week, id Software was hit hard, and reports say they had ideas for Perfect Dark and a game inspired by John Wick before the staff was cut.
id Software was reportedly “toying with different game ideas” when Microsoft laid off over half of the studio. New reports from GamesBeat and Game Developer say that 136 full-time employees (40 were said to be remote) were laid off at id Software, and this has put some of the studio’s projects in question. A WARN Notice filed in Texas has confirmed that XBOX subsidiary ZeniMax Media has laid off 158 people in the U.S. state, which, according to the reports, has reduced the team to “support size”.
id Software notably just finished its work on the new Doom: The Dark Ages DLC (called Revelations) just before the layoff announcement, and was toying with ideas on what the next project-in-development at id Software would look like. One of those ideas was a John Wick-styled original game called Fury; another was a new game in the Perfect Dark franchise (which was ironically also killed by XBOX layoffs); and another idea was a potential multiplayer/co-op version of Doom that would have returned weaponry from the previous titles to the bloody stages of Doom.
The reports suggest the outlook is grim for the studio, and one laid-off worker told GamesBeat, “I’m not convinced there is a viable way forward,” adding, “It feels like a bunch of knee-jerk responses.” Another worker lamented id Software’s loss of talent and said, “I have no regrets in the technology that we made, and the games that we released. We kicked ass for a small studio of people pumping out a triple-A title. We did genre-defining titles that we rebooted after it was effectively considered dead. I’m proud of what we did. I’m proud of the studio.”
After the dust settles, it’s not clear which game, if any, the remaining team can do after staff cuts have reduced the number of workers at id Software by over half following XBOX’s reset.
