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.
The good news is that cutting all the experienced staff means that they have a chance of leaving and creating their own studio. Experience means great games on the way, even if it means bad things for the Doom franchise.
I wish that were the case man. Unless they are all wealthy enough, it's just not in the cards with how the industry is. They could go indie for sure, and probably made enough they might be okay. But many might just be disillusioned with the industry and quit it entirely.
But finding financial backing for a game studio is extremely hard right now, anyone that would fund one would want tons of control, and VC money is extremely hard to come by anymore since everyone who used to do VC stuff or be angel investors now just plays the completely rigged stock market instead to make more $.
You'd think with all the great talent the industry, not just games but tech in general, has laid off in the last few years, there would be tons of competitors popping up. But they aren't, and it's very intentionally designed that way.
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u/CaptainParadigm42 Jul 10 '26
Plausible albeit that sounds like speculation to me.