id Software, one of the most iconic names in the first person shooter genre with groundbreaking titles such as Doom and Quake, has received some of the heaviest losses in the ongoing ‘Reset’ process from Xbox, resulting in a total of 136 out of 185 employees being let go from the studio which has also amounted to the loss of over 70% of id Software’s overall workforce. But even after the drastic reduction in employee numbers, the studio had released an official statement in July which confirmed that they are still well staffed for creating new games.
However, according to lead services programmer Chris Hays, who has been a part of id Software since 2010, the recent layoffs have indeed deeply impacted the studio in more ways than one. Speaking to the Youtube channel Auf ein Bier, he said:
“It’s hard to make a game that is AAA, that’s like we’ve done before, with half the people. And by hard, I mean impossible,” Hays said. “It’s hard to make a game when there are entire departments that are gutted that you need, entire disciplines that are gone.
“So, if they’ve got some kind of new plan for how this is going to work, that hasn’t been told; we don’t know what that is. The reassurances that we’re still the same id and we’re still going to do things, well, first of all, we’re not the same id. We’re half the same id. id was the people. What made us special was the people and the relationships we have.”
He also said that the ‘reassurance’ from the studio was essentially a way to help cushion the “unrest”:
“Studio management is given talking points on things that are allowed to be said and what is not allowed to be said,” he added. “It feels like it is, instead, more reassurances. They don’t want more people to jump ship and say, ‘Oh, there’s no more future in id, so we’re all going to leave,’ and then there’s no one left. They don’t want unrest. At the end of the day, most of it was just trying to tell us that, ‘Oh, no, everything is fine. Things will be OK.'”
Hays also said that id Software currently houses “less” than the number of staff that was involved during the making of Doom 2016.
“There is a lot more that went into each of the [Doom] games that went along. We made bigger and better games, but that’s with twice as many people as we had. So, we have fewer than we had before. So, are we going to make something equivalent to a single-player Xbox 360 game? Because that’s the size of the studio we have.”
It has been known that prior to the layoffs, id software was reportedly toying with ideas for several projects which included a John Wick-inspired title, a new Perfect Dark game and more.
