id Software co-director says studio is 'doing great' after cutting half its staff

Marty Stratton, co-director of id Software, told media this week that the Doom studio is “doing great” about four months after losing roughly half its staff. He also said id is working more closely with MachineGames than at any point before.¹²

Stratton spoke at a press event for the Doom: The Dark Ages Revelations expansion. He acknowledged the cuts directly: “everybody knows we had about half of our studio exit.” He said there was a deliberate effort to keep the studio viable across game development and its technology department.¹²

The numbers behind that claim are on file. A WARN notice filed in Texas covers 136 id Software employees, 96 in the Texas office and 40 remote. Against the 185 people reportedly on staff in December 2025, that leaves 49.³ The layoffs landed the same week the Revelations expansion launched, as part of the broader Xbox restructuring under CEO Asha Sharma.⁴³ Microsoft has said about 1,600 Xbox employees were cut on the day, with about 1,600 more to follow through June 2027.⁴

Stratton described the MachineGames arrangement as a technology partnership that began earlier this year, before the layoffs. He called the engineers at both studios “incredibly talented” and said both teams are “really bullish” on what is ahead.² MachineGames builds its games on a fork of id Tech, and one suggestion is that the two studios could pool remaining engineers to cover future releases.¹

That matters because the engine was the main worry after the cuts. Chris Hays, an id programmer, said in August that making a AAA game with half the people is “impossible.”¹ Early reports said most, if not all, of the studio’s coders were let go. Microsoft disputed that, saying dozens of people work on id Tech across multiple locations.⁵³ id itself said in July that the team is about the same size it was when it made Doom (2016), and that the cuts were spread across teams.⁵

Neither Stratton’s remarks nor id’s earlier statement name a next project. Reports in July described several unapproved pitches that were reportedly in the works before the layoffs, and said no one appeared to be working on Quake. Those were insider claims, not confirmed by id.³ IGN speculates that the closer MachineGames tie could be co-development of the rumored Wolfenstein 3, which MachineGames has not announced. That is speculation, not a statement from either studio.²

The layoffs are not finished. Further Xbox rounds are reportedly scheduled for November and January.¹

Our read: A studio director saying “we’re doing great” and the 49-versus-185 arithmetic from the filing are both on the record. Microsoft and id dispute the coder count. Both can be true if viability means keeping the engine alive and a partner studio close. What id ships next, and with how many people, will settle the question. The forecast for that is a Wolfenstein release date, if one is ever announced.

Footnotes

1. Kotaku, “Doom Director Says ‘We’re Doing Great’ After Half Of id Software Was Laid Off”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. IGN, “Xbox’s Doom, Wolfenstein Developers Working ‘More Closely Than Ever’ Following Xbox ‘Reset’ Layoffs”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Eurogamer, “Doom and Quake studio id Software reportedly gutted, leaving standalone capabilities in doubt and newly revealed game ideas dead”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. The Verge, “Doom developer id reportedly cut in half as part of Xbox layoffs”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩²

5. Polygon, “Doom studio id Software responds to Xbox layoffs reports”. Retrieved October 31, 2026. ↩ ↩²