Microsoft-owned Xbox is reportedly laying off around half the staff at id Software, the legendary studio behind Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, with the cuts said to fall particularly hard on its renowned technology team. Although Microsoft has not formally confirmed the numbers, the reports have prompted an outpouring of anger from departing staff and messages of support from industry figures, most notably Doom co-creator John Romero, who urged everyone involved to preserve id's "code, assets, stories" and other historical materials at risk of being lost during the restructure.

Several sources point to heavy losses: 3D Realms and Apogee founder Scott Miller claimed "most, if not all" of id's coders had been dismissed, while former Bethesda project lead Jeff Gardiner said he had heard 95 staff were let go, with anonymous Game Developer sources corroborating the accounts. The cuts land during release week for the Doom: The Dark Ages expansion Revelations, and 20-year veteran systems programmer Michael Maynard publicly criticised Microsoft before later softening his remarks. The piece speculates that shedding so many engine coders — alongside Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's talk of a "cleaner code base" and fewer vendor contracts — could signal a move away from id Tech towards Epic's Unreal Engine. Romero, whose own Romero Games faced funding-related layoffs a year earlier, said he had preserved id's early history and hoped someone was doing the same for its ongoing legacy.