Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810496
Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
41–50 of 628 posts
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#42I don't really understand. Id Software is owned by Microsoft? Why Microsoft can laying off employees of Id Software?
ZeniMax, the parent holding company of Bethesda Softworks/Bethesda Games, bought iD in 2009.[1] Microsoft bought ZeniMax for $7.5B in 2020 and assigned it to the Xbox division.[2] ZeniMax's board was subsequently dissolved, so it's entirely Microsoft.[3]
1: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/bethesda-parent...
2: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/09/21/welcoming-bethesda-to...
3: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/zenimax-board-of-directors...
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#43why wouldn't they just sell it? I'm deeply opposed to game distribution companies (console makers) being allowed to acquire game studios. In the same way that theaters and streaming services shouldn't be allowed to do acquisitions. Disney owning whatever ridiculous proportion of media by buying everything serves nobody's best interest.
> why wouldn't they just sell it? Serious question, is there any kind of entities that can be owned, but not "dismantled", if you don't want it you need to try to sell or make it independant. Would there be any chance to make it a thing when a company is bought?
I get the impression European companies are like this. In general if a company can't be reorganized/dismantled that makes it worth so little (or negative) that no one will acquire it.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#44It’s painful to watch this because the recipe for success at Microsoft is so obvious. They’ve just been fumbling the ball for so many years that it’s catching up to them. And the thing is they’re not unprofitable. Gutting their studios and technology development isn’t going to help growth, it’s going to contract the business.
In my experience, once organizations have enough history and size, they can't just pivot. Whatever happens within MS the organization makes it impossible for them to become anything other than what they've always been.
Their MO will always be EEE and they'll always (attempt to) abuse their monopoly power, while giving corpos and consumers just a glimmer of hope to keep them strung along...
Also any company they acquire will be gutted until it looks like the rest of the org.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#45[flagged]
What's the development cycle of a major game? If someone worked on multiple games from start to finish for a studio, how many games would they have completed in a ten year span? Do game studios allow developers to talk about anything and eveyrthing they're working on in public or do they have them work under non-disclosure agreements?
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#46Microsoft EEE at its best: gobble up all game studios and then kill them.
Microsoft needs to be split, it should been split years ago, but now more than ever.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#47Next: Blizzard
Considering how bad Blizzard has gotten the last 10 or so years, I would expect a bloodbath there. I don't know how they avoid it.
Blizzard's golden goose is WoW, and WoW is an ideal IP for a software company: you have people who have been playing it for two decades who will continue to pay a subscription no matter what. The hard work was done decades ago. id, on the other hand, has to keep making better and better new games every couple of years, and each one is a risk.
There's a reason game companies want to move towards the digital-only subscription model, and Xbox has been going that way for some time. As "bad" as Blizzard is, it's got the right model. That's what they care about, not about workplace culture or innovation.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#48I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…
I firmly believe if software engineering unionization ever starts to take hold, it'll begin with game developers.
There's a lot of money in gaming but the workers are treated like shit, as you pointed out.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#49There's no real evidence in here that the IDTech team or the "coders" were specifically let go. I'm not saying it didn't happen but the article is just raging at the idea of it happening without presenting any evidence of it. I can't help but think the industry will be better off in a few years after this Xbox "restructure." That's a lot of knowledge and talent that's no longer stuck in 14 layers of middle management…
Not the OP, but Scott Miller said "most if not all" coders at ID were laid off. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/xbox-layoffs-july-2026
I hope the industry will be in a better place in a few years. There is this recurring theme of big companies rolling up little developers and destroying their development culture.
Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software
#50I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…
You're presenting this with ironic swipes like "bad things like ask for more money", but it's hard to read this description as anything but straightforwardly more efficient.
If there are few downsides to centralizing game engines, and the need for engine work is inherently cyclical, why should we want engine work to be internal and non-cyclical?
I really don't know much about game engines so maybe there are real downsides to that approach, but the way you've laid it out makes it seem as if Microsoft made the right decision here.