The scale of Microsoft’s brutal Xbox layoffs become clearer by the day. Among the studios that Xbox hasn’t decided to dump from its portfolio entirely, we now know one of the outfits hit hardest by CEO Asha Sharma’s “Xbox reset” was id Software.
The Doom studio, which just released a massive expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages this week, will lose 136 roles, according to WARN notices. It’s a substantial downsizing that, according to laid-off VFX artist Derek Best (as spotted by VGC), has diminished the PC gaming institution to a “support studio size” overnight.
“I’m still in shock at how brutal the layoff cuts were,” Best wrote on LinkedIn. “Collectively decades of knowledge was wiped out of the studio. The VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer. The engine programmer responsible for the massive gains in VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was let go as well.
“Great job Microsoft. Nothing says business success like nuking a team into the dirt and relegating them to support studio size while also throwing out massive technological achievements.”