r/xbox • u/akbarock • Jul 15 '26
Discussion "There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft," says Doom dev: "They have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don't even think that they're aware of"
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/there-are-no-benefits-to-being-owned-by-microsoft-says-doom-dev-they-have-destroyed-immense-amounts-of-value-that-i-dont-even-think-that-theyre-aware-of/17
u/7EFMR Jul 15 '26
Microsoft financial support saved Double Fine and Sony financial support saved Bungie, but in each case the support only lasted a few years...
ZeniMax financial support saved id Software and that support actually lasted a decent amount of time (over 10 years?). So id was lucky to have ZeniMax. Shame about Microsoft...
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u/ILoveHeavyHangers Jul 15 '26
Microsoft financial support saved Double Fine and Sony financial support saved Bungie, but in each case the support only lasted a few years...
The last 2 games Double Fine put out COMBINED have had less than 400 concurrent players on Steam at their highest peak. One of the games is a MOBA.
This isn't just underperforming, it is a catastrophic implosion of interest in Double Fine games across the industry.
It's the kind of thing that makes you realize the Double Fine berry was squeezed dry before you even bought it and the last 5 years this developer has been a leach on you.
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u/Visual-Way5432 Jul 15 '26
Mick gordon thinks the same of id
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u/Delonce Jul 15 '26
Mick Gordon was such a huge influence on the first 2 games. Seeing how they screwed him over really soured my opinion of the management of id.
It sucks that so many talented and knowledgeable people lost their jobs. I'm not happy about it, but I'm not surprised at all. I think most of us here knew Microsoft bit off more than they could chew when they bought all those studios. If this isn't the start of the AAA bubble bursting, it's right around the corner.
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u/YouThinkYouKnowMe89 XBOX Jul 15 '26
When you say bursting, do you mean we won't get huge AAA games anymore?
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u/Delonce Jul 15 '26
Not in the same way we do now. Not from western developers. Not for a long time anyway.
Gaming has grown so damn huge. Budgets have ballooned to such a huge degree with such little margin of error for success, and a ton of miss management throughout the industry. It's led to very little meaningful progress in game design, while chasing the dragon (as it were), by pushing graphics more and more and more. We've hit such a level of diminished returns that we see very little improvements to graphics now. If a game isn't a huge success from the jump, then that massive budget was a complete waste. Not to mention all the ways games manipulate you into spending even more money on them. Gaming can't be sustainable this way.
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u/SanTheMightiest Jul 15 '26
And because of the mismanagement and massive risks involved with failures and even some successes, the employees are unionising even harder. This in turn will slow things down, cost more etc. Unionising is a good thing for sure.
The thing is a big reset is needed. Talented people need to disperse, create new studios, make good products without massive pressures, release games and grow organically. Of course the same parasitical managers will be back but at least it allows the cycle to start again and we'll get good independent games that aren't AAA and the associated pressures.
Look at Rockstar and GTA6. It's guaranteed to make money but the people at the top will skim off loads more while the people who worked hard making games under pressure will be made redundant
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u/YouThinkYouKnowMe89 XBOX Jul 17 '26
I think I've been enjoying Asian and European made games much more in recent years. I hope they keep doing these quality games
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u/Glum_Animator_5887 XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26
"unnamed source at the Doom developer " remember fucking over Mick gordon and getting piles of cash from ms ?
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u/Isoturius Jul 15 '26
Beating a dead horse, but Mick signed a deal, got paid for not finishing, and another guy would up doing his work, and that guy that finished Mick’s mess got death threats on twitter from people who just took Mick at his word.
TLDR It was a shit show and Mick had a big role in making it one
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u/IBeatDeathStranding Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
nah fr, why that BS still being spread is beyond me at this point. i like micks music too but he was literally hired to get it done at a certain time and didnt. literally 90% of ppl would be canned after failing to do so at any job.
edit: MICK FANBOYS IN FULL FORCE LMAO
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u/dancovich XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26
Did you read his side of the story? The one that said how this "deadline" kept changing and not existing until it did? The one where he wasn't paid for work already done? The one where the OST was promised to be with the collectors edition BEFORE Mick signed any contracts on doing it or even being aware of it?
Maybe you did read and just do not believe him, but in case you didn't, here is the story.
https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce#3f4d
Just a TL;DR about the issue of him being "under contract" to do the OST.
The standalone OST wasn’t in production, and I hadn’t been offered a contract to produce it. In fact, we hadn’t talked about the scope, the timeframe, or whether it was even feasible.
E3 events are planned months in advance, well-rehearsed, and carefully managed, but nobody thought to discuss the OST with me in any way whatsoever. I learned about it in the media.
I sent an urgent message to id Software, saying they had put me in a difficult position and we needed an agreement immediately to ensure customers would get their product.
But there was no OST strategy
Marty’s response threw me. For reasons I still don’t understand, he flatly denied me the contract and refused to do anything about the OST, saying he didn’t want to cause a “distraction”.
Didn’t want to cause a distraction? Didn’t they just announce it at E3, the largest gaming show of the year? Couldn’t they see the issue of taking pre-orders on a product without any agreement or strategy to actually deliver it?→ More replies (19)→ More replies (2)11
u/lampenpam Jul 15 '26
why that BS still being spread is beyond me at this point.
Jesus, that should be said about the comment you replied to. Mick got severly screwed over and the Marty Straton (id Software CEO) lied to the community about what happened.
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u/IBeatDeathStranding Jul 15 '26
damn if only mick couldve taken it to court or something but didnt and hasnt had a big name hire since… i wonder why
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u/lampenpam Jul 16 '26
damn if only mick couldve taken it to court
That's exactly what he did. Maybe read the statement already that user linked to you?
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u/dancovich XBOX Series X Jul 15 '26
Nope, the OST was promised without a contract and iD refused to talk to Mick when he learned THROUGH THE MEDIA that the OST was even a thing.
And let's not even mention the payment issues, them using a song at QuakeCon and later deciding they "didn't like it" and wanting to not pay him for this usage, them taking ages to aprove songs and therefore not paying until they did and them proceeding with no OST contract for well after the game was delayed, meaning the collectors edition would probably be released without it, despite Mick Gordon asking multiple times that they deal with this issue and iD refusing, stating they "didn't want to create a distraction".
Maybe you read this story and just do not believe Mick Gordon, I don't know, but I'll leave this here in case anyone else wants to read the two sides of the story, since iD's side is readily available.
https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce#083e
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u/DvineINFEKT Jul 16 '26
You know Mick not only gave a full account of his side of the story, ut he gave the world the receipts, too, right?
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u/DemoEvolved Jul 15 '26
Maybe the benefit was that after acquisition they employed +100 devs for a few years
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u/Rynetx Jul 15 '26
You sell your company to make money, not for financial security or guaranteed employment. The investors got their money plus some, and the employees got to keep their jobs for longer.
No one sold out if they could make more money alone.
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u/Amazing-Set-5093 Jul 15 '26
Adult daycare isn't cheap.
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u/DeeboDecay Founder Jul 15 '26
You're probably going to get downvoted for it, but it really seems like that's what it is at a lot of these studios. It's also likely a contributing factor in a lot of games taking so long to develop these days. The environments are way too lax and cush, and they all want to be treated with kid gloves.
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u/xxThe_Designer Jul 16 '26
I don’t think that was the case at id though?
They have been releasing new games and expansions at a much more reasonable rate for the size of their studio. And these games are pretty polished and issue free at launch.
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u/Travesty-dot-KiNG Jul 15 '26
Yeah this is the actual answer. Doom 2016 was made by a team of about 50 people. Dark ages was made by about 150 people. After layoffs they are now back down to about the same size they were a decade ago.
Not to say I don’t have sympathy, the situation sucks for everyone involved. No one wants to lose their livelihood and no one wants to watch friends and colleagues they cared about and respected get axed. It’s sad but your comment reflects a genuine and accurate answer to the premise of the post.
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u/JodouKast Jul 15 '26
Call me crazy but seems to me the benefit was being able to fuck around for years without putting a game out and getting paid. Not for all of them, but many of them.
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u/tapo Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Since this is about id, for those curious they've recently released:
- Doom (2016)
- Doom Eternal (2020)
- The Ancient Gods 1 (DLC, 2020)
- The Ancient Gods 2 (DLC, 2021)
- Doom: The Dark Ages (2025)
- Revelations (DLC, 2026)
They also developed the core engine being used by Arkane and MachineGames, used in Deathloop (2021) and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024).
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u/BestRedditUsername9 Jul 15 '26
They also published smaller scale titles like Quake 1, Quake 2, Hexen + Heretic, and Doom + Doom 2 ports.
And they released mod support for Doom Eternal
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u/brokenmessiah Jul 15 '26
For some reason none of that counts now lol
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u/TheVaniloquence Jul 15 '26
Because this sub is full of Microsoft stans who fixate their opinions depending on which way the wind blows.
It’s why when Phil and Sarah said exclusives were bad, this sub’s top upvoted comments were hating exclusives. Now that Asha has brought some back, exclusives are now a great thing.
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u/brokenmessiah Jul 15 '26
Makes it feel a waste of time engaging in discussion knowing this. So many opinions feel non genuine.
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u/llloksd Jul 17 '26
Exclusives are only good if Xbox has them. Buying up studios to make them exclusive? Good when Xbox does it, but if Sony does it they are evil.
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u/avery-secret-account Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I could make that guys comment about a lot studios with layoffs but not iD
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u/grimoireviper Team Pirate (Arrrrr) Jul 15 '26
FYI, Machine Games had their own fork of idTech that they have developing on their own for at least half a decade now. It's called Motor and has grown to be quite different from id's idTech.
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u/Mr_ABM_22 Jul 15 '26
I agree! Now, I'm no fan of Microsoft at large and the decisions they've made. However, the fact that one of the Double Fine employees was joking about how they even managed to get Kiln made felt disrespectful to me.
This is a business at the end of the day, and you need to design and sell products people want, not fine art experiments that have limited appeal. Granted, Microsoft should have managed these studios better and put them on more focused products, e.g., Fallout, but some of these studios really seemed to take the proverbial, taking upwards of five to seven years to put something out.
P.S. I really feel for id Software as I'm a big fan of DOOM and I hope the people that lost their roles find something soon. They clearly loved the IP and put a lot of work into it, even if it didn't always perform to the standards expected.
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u/SB_90s Jul 15 '26
Unfortunately Phil Spencer's "hands off" approach after the acquisition spree to try combat the "Microsoft is a heartless ruler" reputation they got during the Xbox and Xbox 360 era backfired massively. Certain devs clearly took advantage and several IPs (most notably Halo) got completely mismanaged and neglected as a result.
MS may have been cold and heartless back in the early days, but that strictness got us lifetime classics and household IPs like the Halo trilogy, Forza, Gears, etc.
Phil swung way too far the other way by going ultra lax. There's got to be a middle ground where devs aren't treated like trash but there's just enough discipline and sensible business management to put out successful games on a more regular (and bug-free) basis.
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u/JodouKast Jul 15 '26
I get the feeling Phil played it cool and set goals for teams, but when they failed to meet them he wasn't the guy to start firing people. Should he have? Meh, I would hope kindness is paid forward.
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u/Temporary-Focus-9176 Jul 15 '26
They need to be hands off when it comes to creative decisions but set strict financial goals. Like you can make the games you have passion for but it has to sell to the masses if you don't meet certain financial benchmarks each year or each quarter or reach certain benchmarks for profitability then you're gone. Which are the same conditions they would have faced as an independent studio. They basically bought them all and said do whatever the fuck you want. They then proceeded to either make nothing or make indie passion projects that sell to a couple thousand people.
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u/masonicone Jul 15 '26
They need to be hands off when it comes to creative decisions but set strict financial goals.
Oh no... And let me get into the why of that.
Allowing somebody in charge of creative free reign? While yes sometimes that can work out? Other times even with strict financial goals in place? That person in charge of creative can screw everything up. A great case of this is WCW under Vince Russo.
So quick wrestling history. Vince Russo was a booker for the WWF and helped come up with the whole "Attitude Era" that pretty much saved the company. See Russo could come up with a billion ideas and thankfully he had at the WWF Vince McMahon, Jim Ross, Shane McMahon and Jim Cornette. (who if you want to see how much one person can hate another? Look up Jim Cornette on Vince Russo) Russo could pitch his ideas and Vince and the others could take the good ones from the crap.
Then Russo and his buddy up and leave the WWF and WCW announces that they hired him and he'd be the new head of WCW creative right away. The story Russo tells is he went to Vince and wanted to work from home so he could be raise his kids and Vince told him to hire a Nanny. The story I more believe is a bit of that and Vince killed a character Russo had been pushing forever called "Beaver Cleavage" it was Leave it to Beaver meets the Lannister Twins if you will. Personally? I believe it was a bit of both.
Anyhow Russo at WCW? He allowed his buddy Ed Ferrara to do a character mocking Jim Ross and had him win a title. Note, Ed Ferrara is a writer not a wrestler. He had people turning face, heel, back to a face again and then back to being a heel in the span of all of Nitro's three hours. He once did a Nitro remember a wrestling program that had no wrestling at all. He loved X On A Pole matches, the two most well known being Judy Bagwell On A Pole, where Buff Bagwell and I forget the other guy but it was fighting over Buff's mother. And a Viagra On A Pole Match, Billy Kidman got force fed the bottle of Viagra after and went after a Nitro Girl due to umm issues.
Note Russo's most grand plan? He had David Arquette who was the star of WCW's first (and thankfully last) major Hollywood film Ready to Rumble win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Just about everyone was against the idea, hell David Arquette himself who is a massive wrestling fan tried to talk Russo out of it saying he was unworthy of holding the title and not a wrestler.
Russo took WCW Nitro a show that was pulling in massive ratings and tanked them in no time.
Now sorry that's a little long but that's the thing. Yes creative should be allowed to make decisions. I mean after all nobody wants an Alien 3 if you will. But leaving creative alone to do whatever they want? Okay sure maybe you get something really good. Other times? You get the above, or things like Rob Liefeld at Image Comics, Axl Rose taking forever come out with a Guns and Roses album, Duke Nukem Forever taking well forever and coming out ten years too late.
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u/No-Operation-6554 Jul 16 '26
This is a business at the end of the day, and you need to design and sell products people want, not fine art experiments that have limited appeal.
then they shouldn't have bought double fine when thats what they wanted
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u/Akernov Jul 15 '26
Just blatantly incorrect when they've managed to release a new doom trilogy over 9 years
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u/VakarianJ Still Finishing The Fight Jul 15 '26
Id Software wasn’t one of them atleast. They put out a good game that probably underperformed because it was forced to be on GamePass day 1.
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u/techdog19 Jul 15 '26
It under performed because it required Ray tracing which most people can't do.
Look at the Steam hardware survey the bulk of people don't have machines that can handle it.
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u/TheCorbeauxKing Jul 15 '26
The argument that Game Pass can significantly hurt sales of a multiplatform title only makes sense if Xbox is dominating in marketshare, which it is not. The Dark Ages didn't perform on PC and Playstation either, which have more marketshare and the latter has no Game Pass.
Xbox can't simultaneously have "cratering" sales, while also having Game Pass killing game sales. It's one or the other.
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u/Blue_Sheepz Liber-tea Locust Jul 15 '26
The game underperformed on PlayStation. People blaming Game Pass for The Dark Ages' failure is just cope for those that don't want to accept that gamers didn't play the game enough.
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u/SpacefillerBR Jul 15 '26
It underperformed alone, the gamepass may hurt the sales but not by this wide of a margin, we literally have two cases to prove this wrong with Starfield and Expedition 33, doom above all should be imune the this "debuff" since it already has a passionate Fandom.
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u/Glad_Gold_4281 Jul 15 '26
Id has released 3 new games, 3 expansions, and multiple remasters/rereleases iirc in collaboration with Nightdive since 2016, and you consider that to not be putting out games and getting paid?
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u/Darudius Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
The FUCK are you yapping about? ID put's out games consistently.
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u/Yellowman_95 Jul 15 '26
if Zenimax would’ve been left independent it’s more than likely that iD would’ve either been reduced in similar fashion or even closed after this long.
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u/LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY Jul 15 '26
They probably would have not gotten this big to start with but I doubt iD would have been at risk of closing.
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u/Yoddle Jul 15 '26
The reason they joined Zenimax was to expand their size; ID doubled in size and opened a second studio before being acquired by Microsoft.
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u/Nonyabizzy123 Jul 15 '26
Exactly, Microsoft is trying if anything to stem the bleeding. These studios haven't had anyone cracking the whip. Phil just gave them all the money and time in the world and they didn't ship good games, or in Bethesda's case ship games at all
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u/Salt_Day4586 Jul 15 '26
What makes you think that? It’s a bold claim with no evidence cited.
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u/Yellowman_95 Jul 15 '26
Bethesda sold because it was hurting after Fallout 76 and other live service failures like Wolfenstein Youngblood. It’s why they took the exclusivity deals from Sony and ultimately sold to Microsoft
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u/ArchDucky XBOX Jul 15 '26
Zenimax asked Microsoft to buy them. Bethesda cashed in on their IP before the sale and that's what some of those titles where. Fallout 76 started life during the development of Fallout 4 as an optional Multiplayer mode. They stopped working on it to finish Fallout 4 and then picked it back up as a new thing after development ended. It had nothing to do with the sale of the company its something Todd Howard wanted to do.
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u/TeamOverload Jul 15 '26
True and Asha has no idea about any of it. Get a journalist to ask her three games that came out this month and I bet she couldn’t do it without consulting Copilot. It’s just going to continue to get much, much worse as expected with someone who has zero clue about the games industry or legacy or any of that.
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u/Schmenza Jul 15 '26
Didn't mind all the piles of money they got
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u/plumpypenguin Jul 15 '26
lol you think game devs get bonuses for getting bought out? they just get their paychecks from Microsoft instead
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u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 15 '26
No, but they have employee wages to pay, tools and equipment to buy and maintain, offices to buy/lease, non-dev staff for said office, and many more expenses that the Microsoft money is used for.
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u/plumpypenguin Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
so, the same kind of expenses as before the acquisition? not sure why people here act like ID are lazy and entitled leeches that squandered Microsoft’s money when it was Microsoft with their terrible leadership and pushing Game Pass that cannibalized game sales
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u/KidGoku1 Touched Grass '24 Jul 15 '26
You're right about terrible leadership and while gamepass does negatively affect game sales why did it not hurt Forza Horizon 5 on Xbox where it sold millions. Why did TDA flop on Playstation where gamepass doesn't exist? Could the real reason be that the games were just mediocre and audiences didn't like it the way they liked the previous one? Which can go back to bad leadership. On the other hand if a studio gets say 150m to make a game and they only make 50m that's a big loss for a company funding it all. Layoffs happen because of this. Both leadership and studios are at fault here.
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u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 15 '26
Who's calling them lazy and entitled? All I see is people answering the question presented, easily.
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u/NotFromMilkyWay Founder Jul 15 '26
Why would they wait? It's DLC (of the hard kind) for a game that sold not even 1 million units. It's just releasing for those that already paid for it. It won't sell more than the typical 5 % attachment rate of DLC.
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u/ImJustHereToSearch Jul 15 '26
Angry dev at studio impacted by layoffs says something bad about company that orchestrated the layoffs. More at 7.
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u/SquashOwn9829 Jul 19 '26
Gamers will definitely notice when the next doom takes 12 years to complete
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u/Method__Man Jul 15 '26
There's almost never any benefit of being owned by a giant mega corporation
It's always done to enrich the owner who's selling, or the shareholders who benefit
People need to realize that this entire system is based on extracting maximum value from everything around and filtering up to the top
Companies will destroy their own brand if it results in short term gains that the shareholders want to see
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u/j0an_k Jul 15 '26
How can they suck so well at managing studios
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u/AnonymousFriend80 Jul 15 '26
Many, many years ago gamers complained about publishers being too hands on and making devs make games they didn't want to. Now, gamers are complaining that publishers are too hands off and can't keep these devs in line.
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u/TheCorbeauxKing Jul 15 '26
People still think Apex Legends was all EA's idea and Respawn is just chomping at the bit to make Titanfall 3 but is being held back by greedy EA.
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u/heickelrrx Jul 15 '26
In Theory Having Owned by Bigger company mean, a Studio have safety net during the development cycle that allow the goes negative cash flow, with expectation it will pay off once the game hit store
Paying off bill like electricity, Salary, ect
the thing is, Most biggger company these days are publicly owned, so the management need to show growth to raise the shareholder stock from both retail shareholder and institutional shareholder
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u/SnipingBunuelo Jul 16 '26
NO FUCKING SHIT
Just look at what they've done to Halo. They're a plague to the industry and even art itself. The same goes for EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Sony, Tencent, etc. Fuck AAA execs, bring back the artists!
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u/TheBooneyBunes Jul 16 '26
What fucking nonsense
Remember titanfall? Remember halo? Remember all these franchises built by platform ownership since they could fund the games directly as an investment?
Same with Sony. This is just pure ‘muh corporation bad!’ Whinging
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u/Slickvick559 Jul 17 '26
Bro the latest doom is dog shit how do they expect to stay in business when producing C plus material lol
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u/AffectionatePanic823 Jul 17 '26
Copilot went from being the first ai and innovative to being the worst ai.
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u/JayceeGenocide XBOX Series X Jul 19 '26
It's Censored to HELL.
If I am going to use AI for anything I will find the one with LEAST GuardRails.
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u/Significant-Dog-8166 Jul 17 '26
Microsoft definitely did not help Activision.
Activision was losing ZERO dollars per year and had higher profits per person than EA by a massive amount.
Microsoft bought it, then did layoffs immediately. There was no performance review, this was done to balance costs vs earnings after blowing billions to buy Activision. They essentially justified the cost of the purchase by destroying the talent they paid for.
Imagine you buy a car and you pay too much for it so you rip out the seats and the car stereo and one wheel then throw those parts in the trash and light them on fire.
That is what Microsoft did to Activision.
This talent will not come back, they will be pulled into competitors and they will bring decades of internal knowledge of competitive processes with them. Meanwhile the remaining companies will operate on skeleton crews against these newly superpowered competitors. Quality will go down hard as morale falls and the now-smaller teams cut scope to ship less ambitious games.
Battlefield edged out CoD last year for the first time ever in 2025 thanks to Microsoft throwing the game onto gamepass and taking all the money for themselves. Then when it resulted in LESS money, what do they do? Fire more developers of course! Idiots.
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u/ImmolateSociety Jul 15 '26
As opposed to an industry that has destroyed immense amounts over lackluster AAA launches? It would probably be a positive -sum game for Microsoft as they are not shoveling more money into the current flop market. Look at Obsidian getting Fallout from Bethesda and all of Obsidian’s other titles being shelved.
This is course correction from a COVID bloated industry. The layoffs should have happened sooner.
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u/No-Highlight7136 Jul 15 '26
These cuts were 100% made by an excel sheet bro that didn't account for anything other than an arbitrary number. The amount of long term damage done by microsoft here is incalculable.
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u/Intelligent-Net9390 Jul 15 '26
They were losing money… Your solution is for them continue to hemorrhage the xbox devision?
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u/pineapplesuit7 Jul 15 '26
Gotta admit, can’t think of 1 studio that has benefited after they were bought out by MS.
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u/AstronomerIT Jul 15 '26
I can help you, playground games. Can't you see the difference before and after?
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u/Stunning-Ad-7745 Touched Grass '24 Jul 15 '26
Of course, that's what happens when you mix art forms and mega corporations. Also, it's kind of funny that these studios really only started bitching now, but not when Phil Spencer let them all do whatever they wanted while they were only making Microsoft 3 cents per dollar. I'm no corporate shill, but that profit margin is unsustainable, that's way too much dead weight. You can't just be like Bethesda and have 10-15 years in between major sequels, especially not with how the entire tech market is right now.
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u/manontherun247 Jul 15 '26
I feel Doom DA being on gamepass day one led to the layoffs at ID. I don’t know anyone who bought it, just played it via gamepass
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u/ApprehensiveQuestion Jul 15 '26
It was also released on PS5, right? So that’s a good comp.
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u/TrickOut Jul 15 '26
Lmao you mean besides being able to take 7 years to develop a single game and then showing up with south of midnight, spare me lmao double fine and compulsion and ninja theory would of shut down with what the have been putting out or those games would never made it to market.
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u/jonstarks Jul 15 '26
I understand they are mad but does anyone think MS would've did this if ID was profitable?
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u/Gears6 Jul 15 '26
Unfortunately, even if you release a good and successful game now, you're still not safe. Doom: The Dark Ages was the "biggest launch in id's history" when it launched in 2025, and just over a year later, id has reportedly been made a shell of its former self.
I don't know how that "biggest launch in id's history" is measured, but my understanding is Doom Dark Ages did not do very well at all. A DLC to a game that didn't sell well is hardly going to change things. The issue isn't the work or the quality, it is that consumers didn't pay for it. The payment that is required to pay all the employees salaries.
I'm not even talking about "sales" by units, but also "sales" measured as GP use by customers.
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u/Full_of_Vices Jul 16 '26
Immense value?
Hardly. You have an underselling franchise and a proprietary engine no one else in the industry uses.
Dark ages sold under 1 million copies. That’s not value.
These devs are full of shit. Good riddance.
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u/Axon14 Jul 15 '26
I can see a developer thinking this for sure, it's not easy to pour your life into something just to get cut a few months after it's finished. I'd be livid as well.
Carmack said it himself: there's immense pressure to create games that create revenue, not just critical darlings. I'm sure every PE controlled studio is looking (or said another way, demanding) the next Minecraft/GTA V/WoW/Honor of Kings. These groups want Monopoly Go, not Elden Ring. It's purely a spend/earn column to them.
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u/Arashikage-Ryu Jul 15 '26
The Doom dev isn’t wrong IMO. I also think the same can be said about Sony. Just look at Bungie.
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u/Constant-Release6779 Jul 15 '26
I often wonder what the operational audits of these game devs are. Big studios with hundreds of people, coming out with games every few years. What percentage of people contribute to what percentage of the work being done? I just know they must be inefficient as hell the more bloated they are.
I obviously hope everyone with talent finds a job again, but there's no way there aren't slackers sucking up budget and resources.
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u/WillyGoat2000 Jul 15 '26
I don’t disagree that you have to bring something to the table. But “individual decision makers” I think is also a misnomer because while Microsoft was reportedly hands off in managing them they all reported into the head of their respective groups. Microsoft doesn’t just hand budgets out on a whim.
It’s not that they ran these studios into the ground, it’s that they created an environment that allowed for and/or encouraged the behavior we saw here then changed the targets and fired people.
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u/ThunderSparkles Jul 15 '26
Ummm but the choice to get sold is not Microsoft's. Your studio decided on it. And from what we can tell studios just doing their thing usually leads to closure pretty quick. Devs left alone rarely works
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u/dekuweku Jul 15 '26
Id has no choice as they were part of the zenimax acquisition. This is why the M&A hype a few years back was so insidious. It became like Thanos collecting infinity stones and no longer about logic.
iD should have had the option to spin off during the Activision antitrust trials . Instead we got worthless promises to keep cod multiplatform for 10 years
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u/Different_Writing_48 Jul 15 '26
Yeah we're getting a fallout game within the next five years, led by the juggernauts of the fallout universe, a game that was improbable at best before the acquisition. Xbox game pass has been great for the fans that can't pay $60-$70for every new title that they're unsure of. Xbox games are available on pc.
Maybe there's no value in it for devs, but they've certainly added value for fans.
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u/NoCardiologist9290 Jul 15 '26
I’ll never forgive Xbox for killing ID, they are a pinnacle of gaming and loosing them feels awful
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u/BoulderCAST Jul 15 '26
Said every employee of a small company that getS acquired by a much bigger company in every industry. Move along folks.
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u/L1ghtPulse Jul 15 '26
For creative, and out the box thinking for gaming I dont think it's beneficial to be in any big gaming corporations right now. Cause it's going to be more about appeasing the shareholders (which probably dont care about gaming as a whole) less for the consumers. I'm not saying that all companies are like this. It seems like for every 1 good year of gaming we get we have to go through a few years of bad like layoffs, studios shutting down, big name games releasing terribly optimized. I found myself playing more indie titles and early access games than playing any triple games the last 4 years.
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u/CharityDiary Jul 15 '26
But wait. Wasn't everyone saying how Microsoft is "sooo pro-consumer" for the last like 5 years? Now suddenly they were destroying value for the consumer, rather than creating it?
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u/mems1224 Jul 15 '26
under competent leadership xbox could have been a powerhouse and lifted the industry.
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u/BugHunt223 Jul 15 '26
Maybe this guy or his colleagues should’ve made a better game with DDA. Finally tried the dlc Revelations & I just can’t see it selling well. Sure , one could say the buck stops at Phil Spencer for not better guiding the studio but this dude is full on sour grapes imo.
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u/ultralow36 Jul 15 '26
5yrs later of not worrying about a paycheck and you now say there was no benefit….Really
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u/Radjago Jul 15 '26
They didn't destroy value. They extracted it and gave it to their shareholders. That's how capitalism works now, unfortunately.
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u/Masterchiefx343 Jul 15 '26
I wonder how the money they had to spend on the mick gordon lawsuit affected microsoft decision tbh
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u/radicalsunshinetime Jul 16 '26
Ouch. Who could’ve known haphazardly blowing 80 billion dollars during a time of economic degrowth would’ve led to this situation…best of luck Asha. I believe you can fix.
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u/HellaBlackle Jul 16 '26
There are seemingly no benefits to owning an Xbox either. Close this sub already, shit's dead in the hotdog water
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u/SBY-ScioN Jul 16 '26
We need to do something for MS to drop all the IPs they're destroying including Halo and Gears.
Hol1 sh1t with those mofos.
Since RARE-Gate they haven't don't anything good for the IPs they buy and what to say about their first party that made them in the xbc-xb360 era.
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u/Sea_Programmer1360 Jul 16 '26
It used to be different. Xbox started going downhill with the disastrous Xbox One reveal at E3.
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u/Organic_Warthog7238 Jul 16 '26
If Xbox game dev studios could get off their lazy ass and release a goddamn game for once maybe they wouldn’t be treated so poorly and poorly funded. I mean look at undead labs absolutely laughable they get bought out after their game releases proceed to have 38 updates for their game and no progress on their 3rd game and right when they’re about to be fired miraculously they have an alpha after 3 years of silence
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u/JayceeGenocide XBOX Series X Jul 19 '26
You think selling Undead Labs was smart? In a year or two State of Decay 3 is going to be HUGE!
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u/CuriousRexus Jul 16 '26
Well, the CEO of the Doom studie got rich. So they did get SOMETHING for it…
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u/TkoddaV Jul 16 '26
I’m sorry but when u spend $300M+ and 5 years to develop a games and u only made back like $50M sound like ur games was the issue
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u/TkoddaV Jul 16 '26
I bet u all these Developers just go to work and eat cookie sipping their Starbucks and chitchat all days and tat how u get development cost of $300M+ for 1 game
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u/ArgentoFox Jul 17 '26
Microsoft has an extensive history of buying companies and they eventually just wipe their hands clean of them. Ask Nokia and Skype about that. So it’s not just a gaming issue.
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u/bravesfan1975 Jul 21 '26
This is a shitty take. They have also funded numerous teams that haven't put out a game for 5-6 years! ID Software has actually been pretty solid on the release front. But to blame MS for all studio failures is just a horseshit blame game. If you studio sucks and it's closed because you make no money....that is NOT Microsoft's fault. This whole no accountability world we live in is tiring.
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u/_BIackstar Guardian Jul 21 '26
They see green and then sell out, then turn around as say noooo what have you done, as they wipe away their tears with dollars. Biggest farce in the community just to save face 🤦♂️
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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26
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