Discussion summary
Microsoft reportedly laid off half of the id Software team, including some members associated with John Carmack, amid broader VR/AR project cancellations. Reactions highlight concerns over management decisions and company culture.
What the discussion says
- Some see the layoffs as mismanagement and resource misallocation.
- Others compare the layoffs to personal loss, criticizing the corporate culture.
- There are calls for unionization among affected workers.
“This is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people.”
“Microsoft failed at planning and managing company resources, leading to layoffs.”
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- Hacker News
- I have a friend who works at Ubisoft. Even 10+ years ago, she clearly saw the writing on the wall - the massive developer/publisher consolidation was going terribly:
- Every studio uses their own custom set of tools and development practices. The economies of scale of merging studios together just doesn't really exist.
- The functional difference between most engines for consumers at this point is largely meaningless. There are no order of magnitude gains like there used to be. Most of the engineering is on the cloud services architecture or anti-cheat.
- The median "developer" at a game studio is not actually a very technical person. They mostly just spend their days inputting content and assets with the available tools.
- The value of a AAA game is not how innovative the gameplay is but how much content they were able to stuff into the game.
- Nobody cares about "exclusives" anymore when 90% of AAAs have interchangeable gameplay with other AAAs.
- The cost to start a new studio is negligible compared to the cost of acquiring existing IP.
by legitster - IMO, people should stop chasing making AAA games or whatever nVidia pushed out. They should just build games instead of graphics demos that sometimes sold well.
They can stick to desktops 10 years ago, make smaller teams, and either build their own engine or use something that is not UE5.
by markus_zhang - 15 years here of game development. Hoping to add some nuance to your viewpoint.
1. Yes. Every studio is optimizing for a different set of problems.
2. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel. There is a lot of value to the consumer in good engineering, and value to the designers. Adding content isn’t free.
3. The median “developer” is good at what they do and will meet the technical proficiency needed. If you’re a writer, or a 3D artist, I’m not going to expect you to be coding - but they all use Version Control, are in Engine, and are familiar with tooling.
4. AAA relies on content to reduce risk, but it is an active conversation on gameplay innovation. It’s hard to take a risk when you are on the hook for repaying millions of dollars to investors.
5. Nintendo sell hardware based on their “exclusives”. Sony know this and invest heavily, they are no longer supporting PC releases (see: GoW).
6. If this was true, every team would be a startup flipping assets. This isn’t the case, not just because new studios don’t have pipelines or internal/external infrastructure.
The business of games is in part the game product. But it’s much more than this- it’s relationships with vendors, platforms, other studios too.
by ntSean - I'm generally laissez-faire about corporate layoffs. Corporation should have the freedom to organize how they want.
Still, this sticks in my craw. Microsoft didn't just buy a game studio. They bought a fleet of studios, a non trivial segment of the entire video game market. And they did almost nothing with them, and then they just light the goodwill on fire. It isn't just the IP. It is the brand, the organizational work, the history. Just vaporized.
The least they could have done is sell the studios mostly intact.
by jnwatson - Looks like Microsoft is desperate for more cash to burn on AI and making drastic decisions like this.
Sure the Xbox division wasn't doing amazing but still had $24B of revenue in 2025. For reference PlayStation made $30B that same year.
by pier25 - Within an order of magnitude. I would call this awashby pyrolistical
- Asha Sharma is managing the Xbox team like a hotel. Cut costs and boost profits. It works in the short run, but this is surely no way to run innovative game studios. Hopefully spinning these talented folks out will result in gaming innovation outside of Microsoft, because the vision inside Microsoft sure looks bleak.by sinoue
- Microsoft EEE at its best: gobble up all game studios and then kill them.
Microsoft needs to be split, it should been split years ago, but now more than ever.
by SurgeArrest - EEE requires them to have succeeded to extinguish, not just be incompetent as to close them down.by satvikpendem
- I don’t think that applies here. They don’t have a monopoly on gaming, there are major competitors in the space, from Sony and Nintendo, as well as Steam/Indie devs. Buying some studios might be anticompetitive in some minor ways, for instance if you’re a huge elder scrolls or fallout fan, but there’s just too many games out there for that to possibly be a viable strategy at a macroscopic level.by LadyCailin
- Microsoft EEE at its best: gobble up all game studios and then kill them.
"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" isn't applicable at all in this context though?
by Goronmon - > at its best
This looks more like simple corporate incompetence. They never should have made those very expensive acquisitions.
by pfdietz - I'm probably not alone but I didn't buy any of the doom or quake games for the storytelling or IP, I bought it for the engine. They were foremost a game engine company. Switching to UE5 now makes it compete on the same level as other UE5 games, and there's a lot of those already. Kiss of death for the company if you ask me.by redml
- Remember when Satya Nadella and Bobby Kotick got up in court and told everyone how all these giant Xbox mergers would be good for the consumer and went after Lina Khan for suggesting that maybe that wasn't the case?
Who woulda thunk they were full of crap...? (besides everyone who didn't have a financial stake in the deal)
by georgemcbay - There's no real evidence in here that the IDTech team or the "coders" were specifically let go. I'm not saying it didn't happen but the article is just raging at the idea of it happening without presenting any evidence of it.
I can't help but think the industry will be better off in a few years after this Xbox "restructure." That's a lot of knowledge and talent that's no longer stuck in 14 layers of middle management hell.
- What's the tweet it references then?by Hikikomori
- Thanks for reminding me to be more critical in my reception of news.by Toluhis
- > There's no real evidence in here that the IDTech team or the "coders" were specifically let go
Scott Miller said it himself:
> Big day today at Id Software [...] today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go [...] With literally the best of the best coders in the industry.
by pizza234 - What we know so far is just that id is "cutting a "significant number of staff":
https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3mpy...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/1up5pta/95_reportedly...
And I'm not sure I share your optimism that the industry will be better. It might not be worse, because it's possible that Microsoft is just so dysfunctional that id would never be allowed to produce another good game anyway. But the people losing their jobs here might be financially better off just leaving the game industry entirely. In particular, if the engine devs were totally cut, it's not clear to me that there's room for a studio to differentiate itself with a custom engine in the modern day.
by kibwen - We might not hear much on that until tomorrow, since most iDTech development was out of the Frankfurt studio. If they're shutting down Frankfurt, it'd be worth getting antennae out.
Looking at LinkedIn, I see mostly people from tech (design tooling, game AI, QA), art (modeling, mats, UI, character), design (levels, gameplay), and production roles in DFW being cut, but haven't seen engine roles or Frankfurt-based employees.
ZeniMax's QA team was notably unionized in 2023: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/quality-assurance-worker...
by starkparker - Not the OP, but Scott Miller said "most if not all" coders at ID were laid off. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/xbox-layoffs-july-2026
I hope the industry will be in a better place in a few years. There is this recurring theme of big companies rolling up little developers and destroying their development culture.
- It's sad to watch corporate leadership try to fix problems with tactics that will only make them worse. MS bought successful studios who were successful precisely because their of unique technical and design culture. Now they plan to homogenise them into a content-creation blob that will churn out entries for existing franchises, using the same tools and approaches as the rest of the industry. Anything that was special or unique about those studios and their games will be lost, and the result will be a downward spiral of mediocrity that will cause players to lose interest even further.by chilmers
- This is the thing that annoys me. They have the Fallout series hostage and moves like this sadden me because I can't expect the next game to particularly great when stuff like this happens.
- It’s painful to watch this because the recipe for success at Microsoft is so obvious. They’ve just been fumbling the ball for so many years that it’s catching up to them.
And the thing is they’re not unprofitable. Gutting their studios and technology development isn’t going to help growth, it’s going to contract the business.
by Grombobulous - They are unprofitable though. Profit margins of the entire Xbox division are less than just sticking the money in the bond market.by TylerE
- Microsoft’s Modus Operandi.by reactordev
- Have you ever watched Shaq fall?by bigbuppo
- What is the recipe?by satvikpendem
- Growth over a long period of time involves two things: consistency in vision, and willingness to take risks.
We do not have a market designed to reward these things, at least not for the likes of Microsoft. For them, it's far easier to simply cut people while collecting on their previous labor. Once the product of that previous labor is no longer as valuable, it can then simply be spun off or shut down permanently.
by lenerdenator - In my experience, once organizations have enough history and size, they can't just pivot. Whatever happens within MS the organization makes it impossible for them to become anything other than what they've always been.
Their MO will always be EEE and they'll always (attempt to) abuse their monopoly power, while giving corpos and consumers just a glimmer of hope to keep them strung along...
Also any company they acquire will be gutted until it looks like the rest of the org.
by dismalaf