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New reporting from Game Developer reveals that approximately two-thirds of the id Software employees who built Doom (2016) and were still at the studio when Microsoft's Xbox restructuring hit on July 6 were among those laid off — a figure that directly contradicts the reassurance studio co-director Hugo Martin offered to fans one week later, and that employees say misrepresents what the studio actually lost.
Martin told viewers of a Slayers Club Live stream on July 17 that "there's been reports that we've been nerfed into the ground and gutted and we have 50 people, and that's not true," adding that id Software was "the size we were when we made Doom (2016) and id Tech is very much alive and well." Multiple anonymous sources speaking to Game Developer — including a current id Software employee — say that framing is technically accurate in the narrowest possible sense while obscuring a far more consequential loss.
"I don't agree with Hugo's statement and many who were laid off were upset by those comments and saw it as viewing their contributions as insignificant to the success of our games," that employee told Game Developer. "I've been a gamer my whole life. If you cut a stat in half everyone would call that nerfed. In truth the Doom team is half here, half thrown away."
Doom (2016) Came From Seven Years of Crunch. Its Makers Were First Out the Door.
The moral dimension of the cuts is sharpened by the specific people affected. According to Game Developer sources, the developers removed were not drawn equally from across id Software's workforce — they were disproportionately veterans of the Doom (2016) production cycle, which ran from around 2009 through the game's May 2016 release. Including the earlier "Doom 4" reboot that was scrapped before the 2016 restart, the total development effort consumed roughly seven years.
"It's also of note that Doom (2016) development was brutal," one current id Software employee told Game Developer. "With the infamous Doom 4 reboot included, it took about seven years and an absurd amount of crunch to finish. The icing on the cake is that there were several key individuals who worked an unsafe number of hours to make that happen who were also part of the layoffs."
Among those reportedly cut were many "multiple hat" developers — people who simultaneously carried several roles and were described by sources as integral to how the team functioned. In game development, the loss of that kind of employee is nonlinear: when a single person carried the functional knowledge of multiple roles, their departure removes more than one capability at once, and the institutional knowledge embedded in their cross-functional relationships cannot be easily documented or transferred.
Why "Same Size as 2016" Is a Misleading Benchmark
A second Game Developer source who was directly affected by the cuts offered important historical context for why the 2016 headcount comparison does not mean what Martin implies. According to this person, id Software experienced a "massive turnover and exodus" between 2010 and 2011 — roughly two years into the troubled Doom 4 development period — that left the studio "in an awful spot."
The studio's recovery required an aggressive hiring campaign beginning around 2013, including the recruitment of much of Crytek's engine team, the purchase of Escalation Studios (later rebranded as Bethesda Dallas), and significant external support from Certain Affinity, which contributed approximately 140 developers to the final push, according to Game Developer. In other words, the 2016-era headcount that id Software now matches was itself assembled from the wreckage of a previous near-collapse — and was never a benchmark chosen for its strength.
The crunch culture implications are significant: research on game industry labor conditions documents that compulsory overtime during development — often reaching 65 to 80 hours per week for extended periods, frequently without additional compensation — is a persistent feature of the industry, and is particularly associated with high-profile AAA productions under publisher deadline pressure. The people who absorbed that burden for Doom (2016) and emerged with the institutional knowledge needed to ship the game are now, according to multiple sources, the ones who are gone.
Biggest Xbox Restructuring in 25 Years Hits id Software a Day Before DLC Launch
The cuts that swept through id Software were announced on July 6, 2026, when Xbox CEO Asha Sharma disclosed in a memo to staff that approximately 3,200 roles would be eliminated across Xbox's fiscal year 2027, with 1,600 taking effect immediately — representing what she described as the most significant restructuring in Xbox's 25-year history. Sharma acknowledged directly that the Xbox business "is not healthy," disclosing that the division had been losing approximately 64 cents on every dollar invested across its game studios.
The announcement accompanied the divestment of four studios — Double Fine Productions, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games, and Undead Labs — and fell hardest on ZeniMax and Bethesda properties. A Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice obtained by Game Developer from the Texas Workforce Commission confirmed that 136 people had been let go from id Software: 96 on-site workers at the studio's office in Richardson, Texas, and 40 remote employees. Of those 158 total Texas ZeniMax layoffs covered by the document, 146 were represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) labor union.
The timing compounded the blow. The layoffs landed the day before the release of Revelations, the expansion to Doom: The Dark Ages, which shipped on July 7 and received strong reviews from critics. Developers at id Software told Kotaku they had spent months crunching on the expansion before being called to a conference on the morning of July 6 and informed that their jobs were eliminated.
Does it Mean Xbox Can't Make Another Doom Game?
Whether the remaining team can sustain development of a future Doom title — or of the proprietary id Tech engine that powers it — is a specific question that Martin's headcount argument does not address. Current and former id Software employees have told GamesRadar that they "cannot imagine a path forward where they make another game in id Tech" given the scale of the cuts. The id Tech engine — whose current iteration, id Tech 8, powered Doom: The Dark Ages (2025) — was developed specifically by the core Richardson team, and its ongoing maintenance and advancement is not guaranteed by headcount alone.
Martin addressed this specifically on the July 17 stream, noting that id Tech engineers based in Frankfurt and at MachineGames continue to collaborate with the core team, and that more details about the studio's next project would be shared "when it is appropriate and approved." Former principal VFX artist Derek Best, now outside the studio, was blunter in a public statement: "Nothing says business success like nuking a team into the dirt and relegating them to support studio size."
Union Filed a Federal Complaint — But the Contract Wasn't Ready
One dimension of the id Software story absent from most coverage: the studio's workers had unionized just seven months before the layoffs. id Software's 165 workers achieved certification with the CWA in December 2025. But because the studio had not yet ratified a first contract by July 2026, it lacked the contractually enforceable advance-notice requirements and recall rights that studios with completed agreements — including ZeniMax Workers United QA, Raven Software QA, and Blizzard Quality Assurance — were able to invoke when the cuts arrived, as previously reported.
The CWA filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge on July 15, 2026, naming Microsoft, Xbox, ZeniMax Media, id Software, and Bethesda Game Studios as respondents. The union alleged that Xbox management was required to bargain with the union over the decision to lay off workers prior to implementation during the status quo period of first-contract negotiations — and that Microsoft failed to do so. CWA District 6 Vice President Derrick Osobase said in a statement that "the layoffs that occurred this week will lower the quality of these iconic games and make them less fun to play with longer delays in releases."
Microsoft was continuing to negotiate with the CWA at the time of publication, and Game Developer confirmed it had not received a response to its requests for comment.
Damage Across Xbox Goes Beyond id Software
Id Software's situation, while striking for its cultural weight, fits a broader pattern. ZeniMax Online Studios — the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online — lost hundreds of roles, and Obsidian Entertainment was also significantly reduced, according to reporting on the restructuring. The Xbox cuts sit within a still-larger Microsoft restructuring: the company also cut approximately 4,800 employees across its broader workforce in a concurrent round, separate from the Xbox division's 3,200, as reported by Windows Central.
Sources across the Xbox layoffs told Game Developer the cuts were "needlessly brutal and self-defeating," with many doubting that key studios like id Software and ZeniMax Online could deliver results after losing so much institutional knowledge at once. Sharma has framed the restructuring as a necessary reset, with a stated goal of returning Xbox to growth by fiscal year 2027.
As of July 2026, id Software's reduced team is expected to appear at QuakeCon, Bethesda's annual gaming convention scheduled for August 2026, per the studio's July 10 public statement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will id Software still make new Doom games after the Xbox layoffs?
That question is unresolved, and it is specifically what developers are disputing. Hugo Martin said on a July 17 stream that the studio retains the crew needed to build future games and that id Tech remains viable. Former and current employees speaking anonymously to Game Developer and GamesRadar said they cannot envision how id Software ships a next title given that two-thirds of the developers who built Doom (2016) — particularly the "multiple hat" veterans who carried multiple roles — were among those cut. Martin noted collaboration continues with Frankfurt-based id Tech engineers and MachineGames, but the specific institutional knowledge embedded in the Richardson team's long-serving staff is what sources say cannot be easily replaced.
How many people does id Software have now, and is that really the same as in 2016?
The studio's official statement says it is "about the same size" as when it made Doom (2016), confirmed by Martin in his July 17 stream. What the headcount comparison omits, according to multiple Game Developer sources, is that the 2016-era workforce was itself rebuilt from the ground up after a major talent exodus in 2010-11. The studio brought in Crytek engine veterans, acquired Escalation Studios, and contracted approximately 140 developers from Certain Affinity to reach the headcount needed to ship that game. Matching that number now means repeating the starting point of a recovery — not the strength of an established team.
Was the id Software union able to protect workers from these layoffs?
Only partially, and the gap was structural. Id Software's 165 workers unionized under the CWA in December 2025 but had not ratified a first contract by the time the July 6 cuts arrived. That meant they lacked the contractually enforceable advance-notice requirements and recall rights that studios with completed agreements — including ZeniMax QA and Raven Software QA — were able to invoke. The CWA filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge on July 15, 2026 alleging Microsoft was obligated to bargain over the layoff decision before implementing it. That legal proceeding is ongoing.
What happened to developers who worked unsustainable hours to ship Doom (2016) and then were laid off?
According to a current id Software employee who spoke to Game Developer, several of the people who worked what they called an "unsafe number of hours" to complete Doom (2016) were among those cut in July 2026. The article captures a broader dynamic well-documented in game industry labor research: crunch culture requires employees to absorb extraordinary personal costs during development, often without commensurate compensation or career protection. For those developers, the implicit bargain — that shipping a successful game earns long-term job security — did not hold.
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