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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#221

Post by stego-tech »

This hurts, in a very specific way. Those coders are legendary wizards of the craft, understanding engine design and systems architecture in a way nobody else in the industry does. This is a team that could get 200fps+ in their games with RT on and no dynamic reconstruction or upscaling to be had, at a time when everyone else mandated such shortcuts to have even 30-45fps at a similar resolution. They did all this while also working closely with the actual game designers, to make sure the tech was usable instead of obfuscatory or hindering to production.

The fact Microsoft just fired them all, at a time when their remaining studios desperately need help with their aging, shitty engines? I can’t think of a better indicator that they haven’t a fucking clue about what they’re doing, here.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#223

Post by cwsx »

SteveNuts wrote: post #48
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…

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.

It needed to happen 10+ years ago - unfortunately we've missed the window to unionize

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#224

Post by munificent »

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…

All of this is true and has been true for decades in the game industry.

The other side of this seesaw is: Games are fundamentally in the novelty business. Players like some amount of familiarity, but they want new experiences. Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. The flat-ish shading and floaty physics of Unity is a particularly visible example of this. So using a widely used game engine can put you at a disadvantage if you're trying to make a game that doesn't go with that grain and offers players something different.

As more studios consolidate on the same engine, more players will get tired of that sameness and reward other studios more. As more studios do their own thing, players will become saturated with novelty and the benefits of not using an engine will go down. There is no stable equilibrium.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#225

Post by lain98 »

I was fired by microsoft last year, Satya said the layoff was not due to performance reasons and he refused to elaborate what it was. In the job market I had to explain at every interview why I was laid off. People still ask me why I left MS to work at my current less prestigious company when the learn I used to work there and I have to sheepishly repeat the lie I have memorised to make them go away.

Even when I was at MS I saw a culture of always being in firing and hiring mode. They fired people who were perfectly good at their jobs and hired people who needed to be trained and needed higher salaries.

Sorry Satya. I just can't trust MS with my career anymore and I dissuade more people from going there everyday. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#226

Post by azornathogron »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #156
0xWTF wrote: post #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.

Carmack had left id by the time he got into vr/at, iirc they snagged him from a rocket company?

Armadillo Aerospace was Carmack's own rocket company.

And tbh I'm not sure it was ever a plausible contender for commercial success, more like Carmack wanted to play with rockets. But that might be unfair; I would happily accept a correction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#227

Post by thewebguyd »

ryandvm wrote: post #186
londons_explore wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs in…

> I have to sleep in the bed I made.

If its any consolation, its the bed we made collectively. It was easy to push back against unionization early on, we were likely better off individually. I too am self taught, although I went the ops route, and enjoyed making more money than I thought I deserved from basically a hobby, and a skill so in demand that I could effectively just go to any company I wanted at any time.

I'm also turning 40 this year, and can look back and wish we all did things differently but the wild west nature of early tech that allowed a self taught college dropout to build a successful career was too good, beneficial. It was one of the rare times that true upward class mobility was possible for anyone with a little bit of tech aptitude, so I think it can be forgiven that we didn't unionize or push for it back then.

I do feel bad for anyone graduating right now or just trying to enter the field though. The ladder has been pulled up.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#228

Post by munificent »

bix6 wrote: post #115
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.

> There is this recurring theme of big companies rolling up little developers and destroying their development culture Why are the little devs selling to the big companies in the first place then? If you’re crushing it as an Indie studio why wouldn’t you stay that way knowing how big tech acts?

Because big companies can spend way more on marketing than you.

If a big company decides to make a game very similar to yours, they can make theirs win by throwing more money into marketing than you can. Do you want them to spend that marketing budget on your competition or on you?

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#229

Post by nottorp »

lynndotpy wrote: post #26
Catloafdev wrote: post #9

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

Absolutely, the first versions until idTech 5 were open source and a number of important engines, like Source, derive from it. Wikipedia actually has a family tree that's broader than I remembered: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Quake_-_... The CoD series, Source games (Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead), Titanfall, etc.

> the first versions until idTech 5 were open source and a number of important engines, like Source, derive from it

Huh? They were made open source when they were obsolete, Valve did license ID IP for the first Half Life but they paid for it. And that evolved indeed in Source.

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