It’s news that is spreading faster than wildfire across all of gaming media, Microsoft is laying people off yet again. The layoffs are sadly expected to hit a majority of their studios, and several studios seem to be on the chopping block. Is id possibly on the list?
Rumors circulating all seem to be focused on other studios. Compulsion games are all but confirmed to be a major target, while Hellblade developer Ninja Theory has been pretty public with their fight to stay open. Hopefully someone could save these studios with Microsoft apparently giving them the opportunity to buy their freedom. Ninja Theory could potentially see if Sony can find some room as they could go back to Heavenly Sword, and had a great partnership before heading to Xbox, along with Sony being absolutely desperate for some story driven single player games they are known for.
Other rumors are circulating, and so far unconfirmed, for Arkane and Double Fine. Double Fine has been in a similar boat as Ninja Theory with reports of them attempting to buy themselves free of the grasp, while Arkane has been mostly silent. Arkane recently saw several of their branches closed by Microsoft, with the founder from the developer openly claiming it was a ” dumb move.”
However another discovery could be a potentially shocking one for the whole industry.
If you head over to the Zenimax jobs board you will find plenty of jobs available for Bethesda, Machine Games, and even a couple for Arkane. What you won’t find is any jobs listed for id Software, at all. The jobs page from the id Software website goes to a blank page, but was initially erroring out when I first started writing this. It now directs Zenimax jobs but picking their studio in the drop down leads to zero jobs. However, unlike recently closed studios under Zenimax, they are still at least visible in the drop down menu.
Zenimax’s own website still lists id Software as one of their own studios and even boasts about them creating Doom and Wolfenstein.
On one hand Microsoft just showed off Doom DLC during their major summer showcase. But the bad news is that the last Doom title didn’t sell all too well. Along with this, Microsoft appears to admit that they even let Ninja Theory showcase their new Hellblade title in an attempt to entice investors to save the developer, perhaps they did the same thing with id Software?
Microsoft bought Zenimax in 2020 for 7.5 Billion dollars. At the time Zenimax ran 8 studios, along with a publishing arm with Bethesda. Since this time Microsoft has closed 3 of those studios, including Tango Gameworks which found success with HiFi Rush. The Bethesda publishing name could be useful for cross platform publishing, but apparently Microsoft is attempting to reverse course on this decision too.
Another studio on that list that is also not currently showing job openings is Zenimax Online, which runs Elder Scrolls Online. If both these studios get hit with closures that means Zenimax will be down to 3 studios, Arkane, Machine Games, and Bethesda. If the Arkane rumors are true as well, that means the acquisition almost boiled down to basically Bethesda, and Microsoft is banking the 7.5 billion dollar purchase off mostly Fallout and Elder Scrolls which has yet to see a current generation release (besides an external made remaster of Oblivion). But by comparison, still seems more fair than Sony’s 3 billion dollar purchase of Bungie.
If we need a little hope, this could be nothing of too much importance. Id Software is currently in between games, and perhaps doesn’t need to hire at this specific moment. Most corporations also have hiring freezes during layoffs, and perhaps id Software is part of a sweeping layoff, but not closure (still not great).
Losing id Software would be a massive blow to the entire industry. They’ve been pioneers in gaming with making the first FPS (Wolfenstein) and dominating the 90’s with Doom. They build their own engines, which could be a huge advantage to Xbox Studios if utilized properly. They’ve always innovated in areas nobody thought they could.
Overall the game industry is not a fun place to be at the moment with sweeping layoffs hitting beyond Microsoft. Sony also appears to be planning to announce more layoffs in the next few months due to poor leadership backing them into a failed live service corner. As studios pivot to go back to more story driven games, they’ve struggled to get games greenlit and budgets have bloomed. Rumors speculate Bungie can be hit with substantial layoffs after Marathon failed to hit projections, with no plans to revitalize Destiny. Other studios such as Sony Bend and Media Molecule have been walking on a tight wire for some time with no currently announced games.
Other areas of the industry are being heavily impacted by the AI movement. Either by losing positions due to corporation greed, or tech becoming unaffordable due to shortages.
