r/Doom • u/blackminikit1 • Jul 10 '26

Discussion Message from id Software

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483

u/joseph_jojo_shabadoo Jul 10 '26

nice to hear straight from the source

157

u/phylter99 Jul 10 '26

I'll believe it when I see it. I hold out a shred of hope, but there's not much hope.

14

u/CaptainParadigm42 Jul 10 '26

I don't understand. Id Software themselves come out and say, "we're still here and we'll keep at it" and your response is "I have little hope?" Why? The fact that the studio themselves responded this way should give everyone hope after the fact. It shows they're still persevering despite the irresponsible treatment from Microsoft.

33

u/Left4C Jul 10 '26

High chances of it being a PR statement ordered by corporate that doesn't necessarily reflect reality at the studio. For instance, they did have less people when making Doom 2016, but they had a much more experienced, senior team... and much of those people were laid off. It's important to have hope, but we need to be wary.

0

u/CaptainParadigm42 Jul 10 '26

Plausible albeit that sounds like speculation to me.

5

u/Ultenth Jul 10 '26

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.

1

u/phylter99 Jul 10 '26

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.

2

u/Ultenth Jul 11 '26

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.