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In the immediate aftermath of Xbox’s enormous layoffs last week, stories emerged that DOOM developer id Software had been gutted.
The Texas-based studio has been really eager to repel those reports, stating its team is currently around the same size as when it released 2016’s DOOM, which by all accounts was about 200 people.
While we don’t have a current headcount for the studio, we know via government documents that it cut 96 workers at its office in Richardson last week, and a further 40 remote employees.
There have also been layoffs at its satellite studio in Frankfurt, Germany, according to reports.
But creative director Hugh Martin has pushed back against reports that it’s been “nerfed to the ground”.
Speaking as part of a livestream, first spotted by Kotaku, he said:
“There’s been reports that we’ve been ‘nerfed into the ground’ and ‘gutted’ and we have 50 people, and that’s not true. We’re the size we were when we made Doom 2016, and id Tech is very much alive and well. You have to understand, we have id Tech engineers both in Frankfurt and at MachineGames. We collaborate quite a bit. The id Tech is there, the Doom team is here, and we’re excited to share with you guys more of what we’re working on in the future when it is appropriate and approved.”
This matches a statement released by id Software in the aftermath of the layoffs, and seems to imply the studio will forge forward like normal, despite the drastic cuts.
To be honest, this all strikes me as PR. The job losses have been drastic, and if nothing else, the team has lost a lot of institutional knowledge.
Whether it’ll be able to rebuild remains to be seen, and obviously Martin will know best about what’s going on internally. But I can’t help feeling there’s a degree of gaslighting going on with all these denials.