John Carmack responds to Microsoft’s firing of id Software employees, and his comments hit hard for fans who watched him build DOOM from the ground up

id Software, the studio responsible for many popular Xbox franchises such as DOOM, Wolfenstein, Quake and more, has laid off a large portion of its employees as part of Microsoft’s restructuring of the Xbox brand, resulting in over 3,200 people losing their jobs.

Following this announcement, John Carmack, one of the founders of id Software (along with John Romero, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack), who also helped develop the DOOM, Wolfenstein and Quake franchises, responded on social media with his thoughts on the situation.

I tried to say something meaningful about the layoffs at Id Software. My statement “Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand” is not getting old, and that will certainly dampen the mood of the founders’ meeting at QuakeCon next month. I am…July 9, 2026

As before, most reactions to the mass layoffs at Xbox were full of anger and frustration id Software animator Skai Chow’s scathing message “I hope our pain was worth it” or fear of the future, like Bethesda, which fears it will negatively impact the development of The Elder Scrolls 6 or even mean the end of Fallout 76 without the help of an outside studio.

However, John Carmack’s answer seems more neutral in comparison. While he was definitely sad (although he admitted that his comment about Microsoft being a good steward of the brand was outdated), he couldn’t bring himself to be angry or disappointed about these layoffs, saying: “I’m sad, but I can’t muster any anger or outrage about this. I don’t have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft’s perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenue went to several other studios.”

John Carmack then explained that at the end of the day, the gaming industry is a brutal business with tons of competitors vying for your time and money, and if you’re not financially successful, you’ll lose out, no matter how popular your creation is.

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John Carmack was one of the main programmers behind the original 1993 DOOM. (Image credit: Bethesda Softworks)

Additionally, while it’s easy to blame Microsoft’s higher-ups, John Carmack says, “You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief. I don’t think there’s an obvious path that would have doubled Id game revenue.”

He wonders what strategies id Software could have used to prevent this, such as using a different pricing strategy, creating more things for fans to buy, or using a low-cost marketing scheme to reach more players.

He ultimately doesn’t have an answer to this mystery, but John Carmack knows it’s not over yet, and he hopes id Software recovers from this devastating blow.

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DOOM Eternal – Official E3 Story Trailer – YouTube

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While I personally don’t know the answer to this question, I do know that my colleague Jez Corden says that the rumors of id Software’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

While the job cuts were so brutal that they scuttled Id Software’s offers of a Perfect Dark reboot and a John Wick-style game, Microsoft has announced no plans to shut down id Software any time soon.

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In fact, Microsoft even released a statement to us regarding the rumors of job cuts that are shelving id Software’s vaunted id Tech (an engine that has significantly optimized the performance of games like the modern DOOM games and Indiana Jones & The Great Circle), saying: “Dozens of people work at id Tech in multiple locations. Reports that there is only one person left in Texas are inaccurate.”

Either way, I hope id Software survives this turbulent time in gaming. They’ve produced some of the greatest first-person shooters I’ve ever played, like DOOM (2016) and DOOM: Eternal, and it would be an absolute tragedy if the studio closed permanently.

Stay tuned for more news as we monitor further developments regarding the damage caused by Xbox’s corporate-wide “reset.”

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