The collateral damage from the recent “Xbox reset” continues. Recent reports confirm layoffs at both id Software, the studio behind Doom: The Dark Ages, and Obsidian Entertainment, the studio responsible for The Outer Worlds, resulting in staff losses of approximately 50% and 25% at the ZeniMax-run studios, respectively. According to a Kotaku report, Obsidian will be laying off around 60 to 70 employees, although the layoffs are not limited to a specific department. The publication’s inside source says there has been no communication about how the studio will redistribute the workload of a “huge list of projects” among remaining employees. Additionally, most affected employees have already been informed, as many of the layoffs occurred on July 6th. Other employees were informed that they would be laid off later this year as part of Xbox’s 1,600 layoffs planned for fiscal year 2027.
Id Software was hit much harder, losing around half of its workforce, over 90 employees, across multiple disciplines and departments. Certain departments, such as quality assurance, were reportedly “decimated” by the layoffs. According to an internal email obtained by IGN, Jill Braff, CEO of Bethesda Softworks, a sister company of Id Software, says that “by collaborating more closely across the company, sharing expertise and skills, and focusing our investments on the opportunities with the greatest potential, we believe we can better support our franchises and intellectual properties with significant long-term potential,” suggesting that smaller studios like Id Software could become support studios after the mass layoffs, and both Both Xbox and Bethesda have indicated that studios will be reorganized to ensure the success of their biggest franchises.
Update July 9th: Derek Best, former lead VFX artist at id Software, commented in a post on LinkedIn that “the VFX team has been eliminated to a single artist with no lead or producer,” resulting in a massive loss of institutional knowledge and an uncertain future for the studio’s proprietary id Tech 8 engine. His full statement follows.
Derek BestJust over 12 years came to an unceremonious end, the day before the DLC was released we all headed outside. Looking back, it was a wild ride to be a part of such a successful reincarnation of a franchise. I played such a big role in so many of these three games and all of the DLC that came with them. I got to work with some of the most talented people I’ve ever met. I was able to experience engine innovation at a level that sets the bar for hardware benchmarking and industry standard setting. With an engine that was well on its way to blowing up Unreal; Especially on the VFX side. The improvements made to the VFX pipeline for Doom: The Dark Ages were orders of magnitude better than the previous two games and even got better.
I’m still shocked at how brutal the layoff cuts were. Overall, decades of knowledge from the studio were wiped out. The VFX team was eliminated except for a single artist with no lead actors or producers. The engine programmer who was responsible for the massive advances in the VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was also fired. Any developers who had Houdini procedural modeling or cached animation skills were wiped out, so all of the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program was wasted and no one continued it.
Great job, Microsoft. Nothing says business success like driving a team into the dirt and relegating them to studio size while simultaneously discarding massive technological advances.
If you see someone facing layoffs, turn Microsoft’s loss into your gain by taking on some of the industry’s best and brightest developers.
https://www.techpowerup.com/350587/xbox-layoffs-decimate-id-software-and-obsidian
