John Carmack Breaks Silence on id Software’s “Bloodbath” Xbox Layoffs
John Carmack, the co-founder of id Software and the programmer behind the original Doom and Quake engines, has publicly responded to the mass layoffs that tore through his former studio this week, conceding that his own past optimism about Microsoft’s ownership of id “isn’t aging well.”
Carmack: “I Can’t Muster Anger or Outrage Over It”
Posting on X, Carmack wrote “I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs,” adding “My ‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month.” He followed up by acknowledging his own limits in judging the situation, noting he was struggling to feel anger without knowing the full details, writing that he was saddened but “can’t muster anger or outrage over it.”
Rather than blaming Microsoft executives outright, Carmack argued that “to continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved,” pointing out that “games are competing with every other option for spending your leisure time and money, and the competition is brutal.” He added, “you can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief,” while conceding “I don’t think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from id games.” Former id studio head Tim Willits replied to the post agreeing with Carmack’s take, according to Video Games Chronicle.
Up to Three-Quarters of id Software’s Staff Cut
The scale of the cuts at id’s Richardson, Texas headquarters has been confirmed through a state WARN filing. A WARN Notice filed in Texas, first reported by Game Developer, confirmed 158 layoffs at Xbox subsidiary ZeniMax Media from across the state, with 96 of those happening at the id Software office in Richardson, plus an additional 40 remote staff who report there. Other outlets, citing internal sources, have put the toll even higher: it’s being reported that 136 workers at id Software are being laid off, which would account for almost 75 percent of the entire workforce.
Accounts of how the news landed inside the studio paint a chaotic picture. id Software had come away relatively unscathed in Xbox’s previous mass layoffs, but on the morning of July 6, studio head Marty Stratton wrote in the office Slack for people not to come into work that day. An hour later, meeting invites arrived, and some staff were still commuting through Dallas traffic when they logged in to hear Stratton say their roles had been eliminated in a call that lasted less than a few minutes. One laid-off employee described the mood bluntly, telling GamesBeat, “It’s a bloodbath,” adding “I was blindsided by it. The scale of it.”
Romero Adds His Own Message Ahead of QuakeCon
Carmack isn’t the only original id Software co-founder to speak out. John Romero, who left the studio in 1996, posted his own tribute on X, writing “I’m so sorry for everyone at id Software affected by these layoffs,” and “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.” Romero went further by stressing the importance of preserving the studio’s history, saying “id’s history is critically important to the history of games,” and that he had “preserved id’s complete early history from our start at Softdisk through to August 6, 1996, including materials and assets that, as far as I know, id itself no longer has,” hoping someone was doing the same for the studio’s ongoing legacy.
The timing stings because Carmack, Romero, and the other two id co-founders, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack, are due to appear together as special guests at this year’s QuakeCon, running from August 6 to 9 in Grapevine, Texas — a 30th-anniversary reunion that now arrives in the shadow of the layoffs rather than as a pure celebration.
id Software Caught in Xbox’s 3,200-Job “Reset”
id Software’s cuts are part of a far larger restructuring under new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Sharma announced an Xbox “reset” that will see roughly 3,200 of her employees lose their jobs by the end of the 2027 fiscal year, with studios including Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs being spun off or sold outside Microsoft. id Software was left especially exposed because it had just shipped its Revelations DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages and, according to Kotaku’s reporting, currently has no new project greenlit — with pitches for a John Wick-style action game and a new Perfect Dark entry among the ideas reportedly shelved.
Adding an awkward footnote to the week, just three days after announcing the mass layoffs, Sharma was named co-lead of the Federal Reserve’s new task force on Productivity and Jobs, tasked with helping shape how the central bank thinks about artificial intelligence and employment. Commentators have already flagged the optics of an executive who just oversaw thousands of cuts being handed a seat advising U.S. monetary policy on jobs.
Read also: id Software: Studio Still Has “Crew We Need” Despite Xbox Layoffs
What It Means for Doom and Quake Fans Down Under
For Australian and New Zealand players who have followed Doom and Quake since their earliest shareware days, the uncertainty hanging over id Software’s future carries a particular weight given how central those franchises have been to local PC gaming culture. With QuakeCon set to double as both a reunion and a wake for the studio’s founders, fans in the region will be watching closely for any word on whether id can keep shipping at the pace and quality that made it one of the industry’s most storied names, even after losing so much of its workforce.
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