Hugo Martin, creative director of DOOM: The Dark Ages, says reports that Xbox’s latest layoffs left id Software “dismantled” or reduced to roughly 50 people are inaccurate. He also insists id Tech still has a future—but accounts from current and former employees paint a much darker picture.

Microsoft’s latest wave of Xbox layoffs did not close any studios, but it hit several Bethesda teams hard. ZeniMax Online Studios lost its executive leadership, while reports about id Software claimed that more than half of the DOOM studio’s workforce had been cut. The scale of those reports quickly raised fears that id might be turned into a support team or lose the ability to keep developing its proprietary id Tech engine.

Hugo Martin addressed those concerns during an official Bethesda livestream focused on the Revelations DLC. The creative director said claims that id Software had been reduced to around 50 people or “dismantled” were not accurate. He did not reveal a current headcount, but argued that the studio still has a workforce comparable in size to the team that developed DOOM in 2016.

id Tech is not confined to one studio

Martin also pushed back against suggestions that id Tech no longer has a future inside Microsoft. He acknowledged the importance of engineers who were affected by the cuts, but stressed that development of the technology is not limited to id Software’s American offices. MachineGames has id Tech engineers working in Frankfurt, while the core DOOM team remains at id.

That explanation offers some reassurance, but it does not settle the dispute. Martin did not clarify whether his comparison with the 2016 team includes external or internal support groups. Reports cited by 3DJuegos claimed that 73.5 percent of id Software’s staff had been dismissed, although Microsoft has not publicly provided a detailed breakdown.

Current and former employees have also challenged the official message. They argue that id no longer has the same depth of resources or accumulated experience it possessed a decade ago. Former workers protested outside the studio’s offices, while the Communications Workers of America filed labor complaints alleging that Microsoft failed to negotiate the layoffs in advance.

For now, the clearest conclusion is that id Software is still operating, the DOOM team has not vanished, and id Tech continues to receive support across Microsoft’s studio network. Whether the company can preserve the expertise and production capacity that made the modern DOOM games possible remains the much harder question.

Source: 3DJuegos