Former id Software VFX artist Derek Best has revealed in a post on LinkedIn that the DOOM creator has suffered heavily as a result of the mass layoffs at Xbox this week, claiming the developer has been “nuked into the dirt” and is now effectively reduced to “support studio size.”
Asha Sharma, CEO of Xbox and Phil Spencer’s successor, announced earlier this week that the company was laying off 3,200 staff as part of plans to ‘reset’ the hardware manufacturer, which also included selling and spinning off a number of studios. Yesterday, a WARN notice indicated that 96 workers were laid off in Richardson, Texas, which is where id Software is based, with 40 remote roles also cut, making for 136 job losses.
Best has now shared more insight into how hard id Software has been hit by the cuts, which have also affected other major studios including Obsidian Entertainment, which has lost 25% of staff.
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. All devs that had Houdini knowledge for procedural modeling or cached animations were wiped out so all the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program has gone to waste with no one to carry it on.
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.
Elsewhere, Todd Boyce, who serves as a VFX artist at id Software, took to LinkedIn to criticise the timing of the layoffs, which happened just ahead of the launch of a major expansion for DOOM: The Dark Ages
This is what insanity and despicable corporate greed looks like. What a complete disregard for people who spent months working unpaid overtime to make the DLC, and for an engine that has consistently been the industry standard for performance. It is pretty insulting how it was done, when it was done, and what it will do to the id brand and those who are still employed (for now.)
[Source – Game Developer, Derek Best on LinkedIn via VGC]