Doom Studio id Software Cuts Half Its Staff in Xbox Layoffs

id Software, the Texas studio behind the Doom series, has lost roughly half its staff in a single day, multiple sources told Game Developer on Tuesday. The cuts hit the studio’s QA department especially hard and are part of a 3,200-person layoff wave sweeping Microsoft-owned Xbox. Around 1,600 of those jobs were eliminated on Monday, July 6, with the rest to follow through the fiscal year.

The reported cuts come the same week that Doom: The Dark Ages, id’s most recent release, picked up a narrative expansion. They also come after id Software’s 100-plus union members voted to form a bargaining unit, in a vote that was, at the time, the largest single unionization at a major US game studio. As of Tuesday, the size of the union that survived the layoff was still unknown.

The Layoffs at id Software

Multiple anonymous sources told Game Developer that around 50 percent of id’s roughly 200-person roster has been laid off, with one source putting the figure above 90 redundancies. The studio, headquartered in Richardson, Texas, developed 2025’s Doom: The Dark Ages and continues to support the game with new content. Tuesday’s report was the first to put a specific number on the scope of id’s cuts inside Microsoft’s broader Xbox layoff round.

A second source said the studio’s QA department had been “decimated” by the cuts, and a senior employee confirmed the layoff scope publicly on LinkedIn. The id cuts follow reported losses at sibling ZeniMax studio ZeniMax Online Studios, where as much as half the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online has been let go, per Kotaku via Ars Technica. Microsoft did not respond to Game Developer’s request for comment before publication, and the company has not confirmed id’s specific headcount reduction. The cuts come as Doom: The Dark Ages received a narrative expansion called Revelations on Tuesday.

By the numbers:

• 50% of id Software staff reportedly laid off (Game Developer sources)
• 90+ redundancies at the Texas studio (Game Developer source)
• 1,600 Xbox jobs eliminated on Monday, July 6, 2026
• 3,200 total cuts planned across Xbox’s fiscal year 2027
• 100+ union members at id, with no public tally of how many were cut

The Hit Lands on QA and the Union

Most of the cuts at id landed on QA, the testers who check the studio’s games for bugs, stability, and certification, according to one of Game Developer’s sources. A second source said the QA function had been hit harder than the development staff.

One laid-off senior employee, who had worked on Doom: The Dark Ages, posted on LinkedIn to call the cuts a reduction of id to just another asset on a reorganization chart. The post drew attention because id is the studio whose name still sits on the box of every modern Doom and Quake release. By Tuesday evening, the post was circulating across social media and games-industry press.

Just really sad that this is how id Software, the pioneer/innovator of FPS action games is relegated to just another ‘reorganization’ of assets.

The senior employee, Michael Maynard, a games industry veteran who had been with id since 2005, identified himself in the LinkedIn post. The same post was covered by Ars Technica, which also reported that another id employee, concept artist Colin Geller, posted on LinkedIn to say he had been at id for more than 12 years. Game Developer also reported that it’s still unclear how many of id’s 100-plus union members were cut. The vote to form a union at id passed last year, before Monday’s Xbox layoff announcement, and was, at the time, the largest unionization at a major US game studio. The size of the union that survived the cuts is part of what Game Developer is still confirming.

Microsoft did not respond to Game Developer’s request for comment before publication, and the company has not said whether the cuts at id require bargaining with the union. The id layoffs are not the only Bethesda-family losses: as much as half the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online at ZeniMax Online Studios has also been let go, per Kotaku via Ars Technica.

The Restructuring Xbox Calls Its Most Significant Ever

The id cuts arrived inside what Xbox boss Asha Sharma called, in a staff memo posted on Xbox Wire on Monday, the “most significant restructure in XBOX history.” Microsoft is cutting 3,200 roles across its gaming division over fiscal 2027, with 1,600 of those roles eliminated on July 6. Roughly one-fifth of Microsoft’s gaming staff will be gone by the time the cuts finish, per IGN’s reading of the same memo. Sharma framed the move as a response to a business that is “not healthy,” pointing to margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.

The memo also pointed at the studio-buying spree that began in 2018. “Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio,” Sharma wrote, “while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined.” The result, she said, is that Xbox lost 64 cents for every dollar it invested in some of those studios in a typical year. id Software sits inside that portfolio, the rare studio whose value to Microsoft’s game catalog was not in dispute.

Monday’s memo also reorganized who reports to whom. Mojang, the Swedish studio behind Minecraft, and King, the maker of Candy Crush, will now report directly to Sharma. Helen Chiang, who led Mojang for years, was promoted to a newly created chief operating officer role with end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services. Dave McCarthy, the long-time Xbox platform leader, is retiring after 17 years. For a longer read on the arc behind the cuts, see a 25-year arc of gaming subsidies that led here.

Bethesda Narrows to Five Franchises

Inside Bethesda, the parent label for id Software, the layoff memo came from a different hand. Bethesda president Jill Braff, whose email to staff was obtained by IGN, told employees that Bethesda was being restructured around its biggest franchises. “To best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what’s next for each independent studio,” Braff wrote, “to one that focuses on our strongest franchises.”

A source familiar with the situation told Game Developer that the franchises Bethesda will now be “laser focused” on are:

• Fallout
• The Elder Scrolls
• Wolfenstein
• Doom
• Quake

The five-name list is the closest thing to a public map of what survives the cuts at id. The studio that built Doom and Quake is, on paper, still core to Bethesda’s future, though whether the same team that just lost half its staff is the team that carries those franchises forward is the question Braff’s memo did not address. “I know that doesn’t make a day like today any easier,” Braff wrote to staff, according to Ars Technica, and Microsoft added that no existing studios would be closed as part of the cuts.

The Studios Walking Out the Door

Alongside the layoffs, four Xbox studios are being moved out of the company. Sharma’s memo lays out the destinations, which range from a return to independence to a sale to outside ownership. One more studio, Arkane in France, is in early talks over its future.

Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will both return to independence, taking their IP, catalogs, and what Sharma described as “runway for their next games.” Neither studio has announced its next project. Double Fine retains the Psychonauts IP, among others, and Compulsion’s next move is, for now, an unannounced game.

Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are following a different path. Both have “entered terms to join new ownership” with funding to finish and grow their current projects, per Sharma’s memo. Microsoft did not name the buyers, IGN reported. Ninja Theory will continue its work on the next entry in the Senua series, and Undead Labs will continue State of Decay 3.

Arkane’s Lyon studio is in a separate and more open-ended process. French Works Council rules require the company to consult with employee representatives before any sale, spin-off, or shutdown, a step Arkane’s management has just begun. A decision on Marvel’s Blade, the studio’s only publicly announced project, has not been announced. Microsoft has not said which Arkane teams outside France are affected by Monday’s cuts, or whether Marvel’s Blade is among the projects that will be transferred or wound down.

A Co-Founder Reacts

By Tuesday afternoon, id co-founder John Romero had taken to Bluesky with a five-post thread on the layoffs. Romero, who left the company in the 1990s, well before any of its modern owners acquired it, drew on that distance to address those still inside the studio.

I know what it feels like to leave id while id goes on. It’s a strange and painful thing to step away from a place that holds so much of your work, friendships and history. The people at id have done a great job moving that legacy forward. DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today’s industry. The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people.

The thread also touched on digital preservation. Romero said he has kept id’s complete early history “from our start at Softdisk through to August 6, 1996,” including materials he says id itself no longer holds, and called on someone to do the same for the company’s ongoing work, code, assets, stories, and the people behind them. The fourth post referenced Romero Games, his own studio, which he said was in a similar position a year ago. “I know how devastating it is,” he wrote, “and my heart’s with all of you.”

id Software is still a few weeks from any public answer to what comes next for the studio. Bethesda has named five franchises it will be “laser focused” on, three of them built by id, and Microsoft has said no first-party announced game is being canceled. The list of who is left to ship them is, as of Tuesday, roughly half what it was on Friday.