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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#71

Post by strgrd »

ndiddy wrote: post #19

I 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…

This is ARC Raiders/Embark Studios. Games made by hoards of anonymous contractors and maintained by a skeleton crew incapable of iterating meaningfully on their product.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#72

Post by gruez »

ndiddy wrote: post #19

I 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…

>It lets you treat your employees as a replaceable commodity that can be scaled up and down as it makes monetary sense rather than a cohesive team of skilled artisans.

Can we extend this elsewhere? Are tech companies' decision to use popular programming languages (eg. python) or software (eg. postgres) part of some dastardly ploy to make programmers "a replaceable commodity ... rather than a cohesive team of skilled artisans"? Should all programmers push for having bespoke tech stacks at their companies so they can be "skilled artisans"?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#73

Post by redsocksfan45 »

ndiddy wrote: post #19

I 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…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#74

Post by CuriouslyC »

eightysixfour wrote: post #65
georgeecollins wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it was mentioned in the article. I just don't count a tweet from an "insider" as particularly strong evidence anymore.

Miller has a history with id, and has probably gotten numerous reports directly from boots on the ground in the company.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#76

Post by pfdietz »

jacksnipe wrote: post #64
paytonjjones wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 down…

There are downsides, it’s just that it’s the best move from a business perspective. That doesn’t make it the best move from any other angle.

It delivers more value to customers while consuming less resources. Why isn't that a better move than something that costs more and delivers less?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#77

Post by branon »

ndiddy wrote: post #19

I 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…

For me this falls apart on the consumer side of things.

UE5 games are manifestly lower quality than games built on custom engines. Optimization is especially worse. UE5's performance baseline _requires_ the use of upscalers (DLSS/FSR, fake/AI frames) in order to hit basic targets like 1080p@30fps.

I won't buy games built on Unreal Engine. Homogeneity of this type is horrible for customers of the gaming sector.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#78

Post by FeepingCreature »

dymk wrote: post #57
paytonjjones wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 down…

Efficient for who? The people who lost their jobs?

Game making.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#79

Post by bigbuppo »

moralestapia wrote: post #53
bigbuppo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Who cares about any of that? He was being paid. It was not a charity, it was work. Companies don't owe you anything. (And you don't owe them anything, either.) Work is a temporary agreement to provide services in exchange for money. That's it. Understand how the world works.

Well I hope you get exactly what you want.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#80

Post by lenerdenator »

eightysixfour wrote: post #56
lenerdenator wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth over a long period of time involves two things: consistency in vision, and willingness to take risks. We do not have a market designed to reward these things, at least not for the likes of Microsoft. For them, it's far easier to simply cut people while collecting on their previous labor. Once the product of that previous labor is no longer as valuable, it can then simply be spun off or shut down permanently.

I actually think this is the wrong diagnosis of this situation. The studios in Microsoft gaming appear to have been given a lot of room to take risks under previous leadership, build passion projects, etc. while letting big franchises sit on the side. Those things ended up being anywhere from abject failures to small successes - where some players and critics loved them - but most don't seem to be commercial successe…

The thing is, every time you take a swing on one of those big IPs, you take a risk.

Sure, you can do well: Skyrim was a big step up from Oblivion, for example. But you can also screw things up (see: Halo), or fall into the trap that Valve has fallen into with Half-Life 3 where the expectations of the public can never be truly met.

I think what they want to do is make the next WoW. Low-risk, customer lock-in, people identifying themselves with their consumption of the IP to an almost ludicrous degree. You see that already in some ways with Fallout 76.

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