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

id Software lost about half its studio in the Xbox restructuring, and its co-studio director says the developer is “doing great.” Marty Stratton made the remarks to journalists at a recent event, saying everyone knows roughly half the team left. ¹

The figure behind that statement is around 136 employees, reportedly, making id one of the hardest-hit Microsoft-owned studios in the reset led by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. ¹ The company-wide plan calls for about 3,200 jobs cut across the 2027 fiscal year, with roughly 1,600 gone on day one and four studios leaving Xbox. ² Many of the cuts are still to come. ¹

Stratton said the studio made a “very deliberate effort” to stay viable across game development and its technology department. ¹ That second department is where the cuts landed in a way that matters for what ships next. Developers working on id Tech, the engine behind all of the studio’s games, were among those let go in the July wave. ¹

Inside the studio, the assessment differs. Longtime programmer Chris Hays, who was not laid off, said at the time that making a triple-A game “with half the people” is “impossible,” and that entire departments and disciplines are gone. ¹ Co-studio head Hugo Martin has said the remaining team is the size it was when it made Doom 2016, and that id Tech is “alive and well.” ¹ Those are three accounts of the same headcount, and they do not fully agree.

Stratton did not address Hays directly. He did say id is now working more closely than ever with MachineGames, the Swedish studio behind the modern Wolfenstein games and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. He described the shared technology work as having started before the layoffs, earlier this year. ¹ See also our earlier coverage of the id and MachineGames partnership.

That fits the direction set above them. Sharma has said she wants teams to concentrate on their biggest franchises, a view Bethesda boss Jill Braff echoes, and getting games out faster is one of her goals. ³ A smaller id sharing engine work with a sister studio is one way to meet that target on a reduced payroll.

What id will ship is unsettled. The studio’s next project has not been named. MachineGames recently said it is not done with Wolfenstein, so a sequel to 2017’s The New Colossus is possible. ¹

Our read: Stratton’s account and Hays’s account can both be accurate. A studio can be financially viable at half size and still find large projects harder to staff. The test is not the quote but the next release date. If id announces a game on a schedule close to its past ones, the viability claim holds. If the schedule slips or the scope shrinks, Hays’s warning gains weight. We do not yet have the facts to say which.

The outlook is unchanged: more cuts are still scheduled, and id has not said what it is making.

Footnotes

1. Eurogamer, ““We’re doing great,” says id Software boss, despite losing “about half of our studio” amid devastating Xbox cuts”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. The Pressed Pixel, “Earlier report: Xbox’s reset needs to show up in the numbers, not the memos (2026-10-28), citing Xbox Wire”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩

3. The Pressed Pixel, “Earlier report: id Software and MachineGames deepen ties after Xbox layoffs (2026-10-31), citing IGN”. Retrieved November 2, 2026. ↩