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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#311

Post by iepathos »

parasti wrote: post #258
iepathos wrote: post #197

Wow, that tweet claiming the Doom series is the best first person action game in the entire industry is crazy. That dev has to be completely disconnected from the rest of the game industry or delusional. No stats support that claim at all. Not player count, not sales, not reviews, nothing. The first Doom was certainly industry defining, but it and its sequels have never been considered the best by anyone except appar…

They worked on the reboot games which are considered widely successful relative to other games released around the same time.

Sure, the tweet was about their releases since 2016 when I assume this particular dev was involved, not the original release. To be clear, I'm not saying their games aren't good or even that they didn't have some success. 20 million in sales for their entire franchise isn't bad, it isn't the 500 million in sales we see from CoD or Battlefield, but it isn't bad. I actually liked the games, but claiming they are the "BEST GAMES EVER!" and having the gall to mention Google where no Google results ever show them as the best is where I have an issue. We don't need to spread misinformation like that and if the dev actually believes this I can only assume they live in a bubble.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#312

Post by Toluhis »

eightysixfour wrote: post #13

There's no real evidence in here that the IDTech team or the "coders" were specifically let go. I'm not saying it didn't happen but the article is just raging at the idea of it happening without presenting any evidence of it. I can't help but think the industry will be better off in a few years after this Xbox "restructure." That's a lot of knowledge and talent that's no longer stuck in 14 layers of middle management…

Thanks for reminding me to be more critical in my reception of news.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#314

Post by torginus »

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…

Yeah but afair UE5 Nanite + Lumen + Megalights + whatever is meant to work together, you can't just replace or turn off one of them without it affecting the others.

So your choices are to tweak the defaults (which are not bad, but generic and the same as everybody else's), or rebuild the whole renderer (like ARC raiders did for example)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#315

Post by cozzyd »

mschuster91 wrote: post #271
ptx wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.

The basic principle is everyone gets the same pay, meaning if you are someone who wants to put in a lot of work to rise up quickly, it won't happen.

according to anti-union propaganda, that is.

(sure, that could be what the result of negotations is, but it doesn't have to be)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#316

Post by solatic »

munificent wrote: post #224
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…

You're right, but idTech is almost by definition that "novelty" kind of engine. And it did help id to sell more games. It's just apparently not enough.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#317

Post by tyfon »

lenerdenator wrote: post #47
datakan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how bad Blizzard has gotten the last 10 or so years, I would expect a bloodbath there. I don't know how they avoid it.

Blizzard's golden goose is WoW, and WoW is an ideal IP for a software company: you have people who have been playing it for two decades who will continue to pay a subscription no matter what. The hard work was done decades ago. id, on the other hand, has to keep making better and better new games every couple of years, and each one is a risk. There's a reason game companies want to move towards the digital-only subsc…

For me they are killing the goose.

WoW has become quite soulless after the changes where everyone gets the same end game equipment but you have to grind upgrade currency to improve it.

My wife and I used to play quite a bit but it doesn't really engage anymore. Perhaps we are getting too old, but we should be in the correct customer segment (mid 40 years old).

Now I have spun up a local wotlk server with player bots powered by ollama which is actually a bit fun again.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#318

Post by torginus »

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.

This was the main issue - they DID unionize, so MS had to choose between firing everyone and firing no one. So they fired everyone.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#319

Post by mejutoco »

lenkite wrote: post #273
epolanski wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions have 33% voting power in Volkswagen board. Germany has very strong labor protecting laws. Replacing line engineers and operators is very difficult. Volkswagen is firing 100k employees in Germany none the less. The idea that you can successfully unionize in software..in US..Where you could simply retain a small number of staff key members pay them very well and put them on a mission of outsourcing and milking t…

Volkswagen Group (and in general German manufacturing) profits slumped by ~50% because of banning Russian gas and stringent U.S. import tariffs. The increase in gas costs made German manufacturing uncompetitive compared to China.

One main reason is they are not selling as much in China.

> Over the past few years foreign carmakers in China have been flattened by local rivals such as BYD that have fast become world leaders in electric vehicles. As the Chinese market has gone electric, foreign carmakers’ share of it plummeted from 62% in 2020 to 35% last year. VW has lost its position as the top carmaker in the country. Last year it sold 2.9m cars in China, down from 3.9m in 2020. Only around 200,000 were EVs.

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/12/04/to-halt-their-...

> because of banning Russian gas

That is the symptom. The real reason is the lack of diversification from Germany, assuming that hard discount would last forever.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#320

Post by bathtub365 »

datakan wrote: post #234
bathtub365 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phil Spencer had already put it in the ditch by the time she took over. “Everything is an Xbox” was a joke of a strategy, spending $70 billion on a company with a weak slate in the Activision purchase

I'm not sure thats all on Phil. He was told they needed 30% profit margins or else. He was grasping and trying to make that happen when they only had 12% (market average was something like 10). This really feels like Phil was setup to take a fall and Asha is swooping in to either be a hero or sell it all off so Microsoft can focus on AI.

That’s a fair point. I do think Game Pass was a major strategic misstep, but I assume they were also pushed to show regular recurring revenue which obviously flies in the face of a traditional game publisher’s revenue pattern.
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