Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#431

Post by ThatPlayer » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #185

mjr00 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

This is correct. It is entirely possible for both the archetypal blood-sucking MBA and the pragmatic industry veteran to reach the same conclusion for different reasons. The build vs. buy calculus in game dev has been steadily shifting over the past 15 years, and when CD Projekt Red announced they were adopting UE5 for their next Witcher game, the writing was on the wall. That said, Id could make a bold "commoditize…

I think their use of 3rd party libraries could prevent them from releasing it as open source without rewriting a bit. This even happened to the original DOOM 1 where they used a sound library so didn't release the original DOS source code. Rather they released the Linux port which used a different sound engine that had different features/bugs.

Looking at the start-up of Doom Dark Ages (with new expansion today), they list Havok, Oodle, Bink, and SpeedTree. According to Havoc's website, that already starts at 50k$ alone. Oodle/Bink don't list prices.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#432

Post by beAbU » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

Cpoll wrote: post #283

munificent wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. I think this is a bit of a myth. Unreal gets this criticism a lot, but it's usually because many studios choose to stick close to the rendering defaults, which does lead to a certain look. To that point, it's probably a lot cheaper to configure Unreal or Unity into a unique "grain" than it is to develop your…

Game engines most certainly have a stank to them that makes it easy(ish) to identity.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#433

Post by kibwen » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #422

kibwen wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the obvious reason their recent games see lackluster sales is because they're on Gamepass, which precludes needing to buy the game to play it.

They still get usage stats.

Yes, and those usage stats show that the overwhelming majority are playing the game without having bought it. One can't argue that these studios should be shut down for poor sales when Microsoft themselves are sabotaging the ability for these games to sell for full price.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#434

Post by mayoff » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

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?

Here’s what Tim Schafer said about selling Double Fine to Microsoft at the time:

> "I think it's perfect for us, because we can just focus on doing our inspired weird games, and not worry about how we're going to get our next deal. We aren't chasing down our next funding and thinking about how many more months of funding we have all the time."

https://gameinformer.com/2019/06/23/tim-schafer-on-microsoft...

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#435

Post by teamonkey » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

Sleaker wrote: post #412

vvillena wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the shader stuttering an issue with games refusing to compile shaders ahead of time?

No, I think it's widely regarded as engine limitations even when people continually claim it's up to individual game devs to optimize their games. If that were the case then why do nearly all UE5 games suffer from the same engine stutter issues. And to OPs point, even if it can be optimized away, why isnt the engine in a state where the baseline performance for realtime rendering does not exhibit these stutter issues…

Unreal’s limitation is that it doesn’t know how a shader will be used until it actually tries to render it on the target hardware. This is a trade-off to gain flexibility and rendering performance. The engine has to compile shaders on the fly when it is first used, which is fine if the shader is simple, but nowadays that usually is not the case.

There are ways to make a player’s PC compile shaders before realtime play begins, but it takes some setup and smaller devs might not know how to do it. This is most likely the reason why stuttering happens.

On fixed hardware targets (consoles, Steam Deck) you can ship precached shaders as you know everything about the target hardware.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#436

Post by moralestapia » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

onraglanroad wrote: post #180

moralestapia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who understand society care about it. When you employ someone you take on a certain responsibility. You can't negate that by pretending that you're in an equal power relationship. That's why we have workers' rights.

>That's why we have workers' rights.

Wrong. Being perpetually employed is not a right.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#437

Post by leecommamichael » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

There are a lot of people blaming the iD for having their own tech. Programming is partly an artistic endeavor. Games programming can especially be so, part of the market is based in novelty, and doing new things sometimes requires new/different capabilities.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#438

Post by LarsDu88 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #393

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.

That isn't commoditizing their compliment. Commoditizing their compliment is what Unity and Unreal do, they give you the game engine for free (unless you're very, very successful) and they sell you the assets.

Unity does not make that much money from assets. They make the majority of their revenue through licensing their engine to "whales"... the small percentage of games that make huge revenue.

They also make money through ad services... a market they seriously missed out on (look at AppLovin stock vs Unity).

Asset sales are barely a blip.

Unreal makes the vast majority of it's revenue through microtransactions on its one major whale game Fortnite

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#439

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

leecommamichael wrote: post #437

There are a lot of people blaming the iD for having their own tech. Programming is partly an artistic endeavor. Games programming can especially be so, part of the market is based in novelty, and doing new things sometimes requires new/different capabilities.

I can only blame them for moving to RT only with their new Doom when they had insane performance on their previous games. Many toasters could easily hit 60fps in high settings.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#440

Post by mohamedkoubaa » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:46 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #209

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.

Yes. As I suggested in another thread: an open-source, modern IdTech would fill the empty quadrant in the Godot : Unity :: ____ : Unreal matrix. A few mid-size studios pitching in to fund continued development on a Blender model could turn IdTech into a major competitor to Unreal Engine in a relatively short timeframe, ultimately costing them a lot less than licensing.

What does this matrix mean?