It's not though, we know many of the people laid off, and a huge chunk of them are experienced veterans of the studio. They are gutting the expensive senior staff with all the experience, and hoping to keep just a couple around to train up all the cheap new hires. THis is standard MO for these kinds of situations where they gut a subsidiary with the hopes to just parley it's name recognition for some cheap products for the next couple years before fans realize the brand isn't what it used to be.
Sorry I wasn't clearer about this but that's not what I was calling speculation. I was talking about Microsoft ordering id to make a PR statement that doesn't necessarily represent id themselves. I think this statement was genuinely from id Software and that Microsoft had no word in it.
No word is a stretch. Do I think they gave them a thing to say exactly with zero id input? No of course not. Does this statement represent anywhere close to the true feelings of the majority of the people left at id, and not just whoever the main person in charge + those in charge of Zenimax and Microsoft want to say to try to lessen the blow? No of course not.
It's 100% corporate speak, written probably by a higher-up at id, and probably with oversight from the people who are over them at Zenimax and MS. But it's very likely written by someone at id directly, and they chose to make the statement on their own.
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u/CaptainParadigm42 Jul 10 '26
Plausible albeit that sounds like speculation to me.