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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the romantic partner analogy is that when things ended with my ex, I didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent. Corporate culture spent the last fifty years convincing the working public that it was important to identify with your job, career, and most importantly, your employer. That's how you get the most out of a worker. If they identify themselv…

> didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent. But that is basically the minimum set of consequences for any homemaker or non-breadwinner when a marriage fails. Think about women through the centuries, who’ve been faced with basically homelessness and poverty, and the full responsibility to all their children, if they divorced or separated. And then it becomes crystal…

At least in today's world, there are things like alimony that are supposed to go to the prevention of that issue. It's not perfect, but it's at least something.

There's also an increase in the number of women who are able to independently support themselves.

People are also less likely to get married now for that exact reason.

If there were some sort of alimony for employment, even if just for a year, and a public health insurance option to fall back on, you probably don't see that much outrage from the people who have lost their jobs. But then, you'd also, at least in the minds of certain employers, see less willingness on the behalf of employees to throw their whole lives into the production of value for the business, and I think that's part of why you don't see guaranteed severance and public health insurance in the US.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#122
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…

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…

Try actually playing a modern Doom game and then a modern UE5 game or look at some benchmarks. UE games mostly run like shit, whereas Doom/idTech games are the smoothest in the entire industry.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#123
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…

There's truth in the fact that it's easier to hire and ramp up on standardized tools.

It's a fallacy to extrapolate that into calling a team structure completely fungible. Throwing away an effective team that was able to ship a game is an incredible waste.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#124

RIP to the end of an era. Was IdTech used outside of Id? Or was it just a Doom series thing as of recently?

Wolfenstein series and recent Indiana Jones game were made in IdTech.

This explains the connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MachineGames#History

I wonder what's happening to MachineGames...

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#125

It’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.

What is the recipe?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#126
post #67
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 This has been the objective of the tech industry for years

that's the objective for all employers everywhere all the time.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#127

They are moving most of their development to India, where it's pretty easy to find bottom-dollar UE5 dev shops.

Do they make good games though? Idk if game dev is like corporate software where it's already uncreative crap no one really is thrilled about.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#128
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…

Sounds great until Epic realises they can charge whatever they like in licensing fees.

Unity tried that and lost a lot of good will. Not sure it really mattered in the grand scheme though.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

they've been treated like shit for 30+ years (at least in america). I spent a few years early in my career in gaming and once I left I never looked back, it's a horror show. Crunch, constant 'there are 1000 people who want your job' pressure from management whenever you complain about crunch, low pay (even if you were working 40hours a week), terrible benefits (vacation, get real), ship a successful game probably get…

> ship a successful game probably get laid off anyways

That's what happened here: they just released the big DOOM DLC today. Chop!

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#130
Interestingly, Id was led by John Carmack, who was also a big fan of VR. And Microsoft killed the AR/VR/MR teams a year ago.

So, I'm guessing internally there were some leadership hopes that IdTech would help support IVAS and related professional AR systems and when those failed to be adopted at scale, IdTech lost a key sponsor. I'm guessing it's been a rough year of internal advocacy since.

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