After id Software Layoffs Cut About Half the Studio, Co-Director Says “We’re Doing Great”

The id Software layoffs were among the harshest cuts in Xbox’s sweeping summer restructuring, and the Doom studio’s leadership is now insisting it came out the other side in good shape. Co-director Marty Stratton says the team is “doing great” and collaborating more tightly than before with sister studio MachineGames, even as questions linger about how a studio roughly half its former size can sustain big-budget shooters.

What Stratton said about the cuts

Stratton made the remarks at a press event earlier this week, according to reporting from IGN that was picked up by Kotaku. Asked about the fallout, he did not dispute the scale of the reductions. “Everybody knows we had about half of our studio exit as part of that,” he reportedly said, while arguing there was “a very deliberate effort” to keep id “incredibly viable” across game development and its technology department.

The timing made the cuts especially stark. Kotaku reports that roughly half the studio was let go just 24 hours before the big expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages launched. The studio’s future has been a point of speculation ever since, particularly because the cuts reportedly hit departments holding decades of combined institutional knowledge.

The engine question hanging over id

The biggest concern has been id Tech, the in-house engine behind the studio’s shooters. In August, veteran programmer Chris Hays said making a AAA game “like we’ve done before with half the people” was “impossible.” Id has pushed back on that view, arguing that the studio is roughly where it was when it shipped Doom (2016) nearly a decade ago.

Stratton’s latest comments lean on a different argument: that id is not facing the challenge alone. MachineGames, which is working on the unannounced Wolfenstein 3, runs its projects on a separate fork of id Tech. Observers have floated the idea that the two studios could pool their remaining engineering resources to cover gaps on future releases.

A closer partnership with MachineGames

Stratton appeared to embrace that idea. “We’re working more closely with MachineGames than ever,” he reportedly said. He described the relationship as long-standing but said both teams now have “incredibly talented engineers” and are on “an amazing path” for technology development. He also said the effort started earlier this year, before the layoffs, rather than being a reaction to them. Both studios, he said, are “really bullish” about what lies ahead.

That framing is notable. If the shared engine work predates the cuts, it suggests the studios were already heading toward tighter integration, though the sources do not say how much of that work survived the reduction in headcount.

What the id Software layoffs leave unresolved

Stratton’s confidence is one side of a debate that has played out publicly for months. Around the time of the cuts, he had said that “what matters the most is that the games are good.” Meanwhile, at least one current developer has been openly skeptical about what a halved team can deliver. These accounts sit uneasily together, and only future releases will settle the argument.

Broader uncertainty also remains. Kotaku notes that Xbox has about a quarter of its “reset” left, with further rounds of layoffs reportedly scheduled for November and January. What Microsoft ultimately plans for franchises like Doom is still unclear, and no amount of upbeat messaging from the studio can answer that. For now, id’s message is that it is stable, focused and leaning harder on its Wolfenstein-making colleagues, while fans and industry watchers wait to see what that adds up to.

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