Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

gamefromscratch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 628 posts

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#161

Post by tapoxi »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #122
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…

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.

Fortnite is UE5 and runs well on phones. There's a lot of studios who can use UE5 poorly, and not a lot using idtech poorly to compare against.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#162

Post by TylerE »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #63

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

What monopoly did they gift? IdTech hasn't been licensed to external companies in over 15 years, and several major versions ago.

The last non-Id release on IdTech was Brink in 2011.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#163

Post by thewebguyd »

pfdietz wrote: post #60
SurgeArrest wrote: post #46

Microsoft 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.

> at its best This looks more like simple corporate incompetence. They never should have made those very expensive acquisitions.

They should never have been allowed to make those acquisitions. Especially after they misled the FTC about Activision/Blizzard remaining independent and easily spun off again, and then immediately fired 1900 people afterwards forcing them to integrate more tightly into Microsoft gaming.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#164

Post by scruple »

thewebguyd wrote: post #112
SteveNuts wrote: post #48

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.

Its already started, within Blizzard. Communications Workers of America Union across the WoW and Overwatch teams. Also, no union employees at Blizzard were impact by Microsoft's Xbox layoffs/restructuring. Goes to show, Unions are important and work. The best time to unionize was several years ago. The next best time is now.

Diablo also unionized and there's some representation in non-game teams like Battle.net. But I also know (I'm in games and in OC myself, loads of friends at local studios from SD, to OC, and LA counties) that they had a demonstration last Thursday, at 2PM Pacific Time they walked out. They claim that leadership is not negotiating in good faith.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#165

Post by bcjdjsndon »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #91
LarsDu88 wrote: post #63

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

The industry is skewing heavily indie now, and there's no money in the indie game engine segment. Maybe a few AAA titles will be unhappy that Epic can negotiate more aggressively, but mostly this is a nothingburger, particularly given idTech's rep for batteries not included.

Among us made $105 million. I'd say there's plenty of money in indie, so long as your not rehashing other people's games yet again.... (Though the FPS industry, a long running doom clone saga, does just fine on this premise)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#166

Post by jasonlotito »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #120

Game devs have been heavily unionizing lately, including Blizzard and WotC. I wonder how long long it takes before we have a union game dev studio basically mutiny and completely disregard the instructions of the corporate suits, and force the choice of either shuttering the studio completely or caving to the workers.

Yesterday.

"In France, Arkane's management is beginning required consultation with its Works Council to review potential strategic options."

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#168

Post by pier25 »

Looks like Microsoft is desperate for more cash to burn on AI and making drastic decisions like this.

Sure the Xbox division wasn't doing amazing but still had $24B of revenue in 2025. For reference PlayStation made $30B that same year.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#170

Post by nerevarthelame »

londons_explore wrote: post #87
SteveNuts wrote: post #48

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.

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

I could see this being the flawed perspective of management, and that it could genuinely make union negotiations more difficult as a result. But it's short and narrow-sighted.
Post reply on HN