Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

SurajMishra

Really a sad day. DOOM was fantastic.

ranger_danger

q3dm17 for life.

koteelok

No more DOOM games (((

delduca

Next: Blizzard

colechristensen

why wouldn't they just sell it? I'm deeply opposed to game distribution companies (console makers) being allowed to acquire game studios. In the same way that theaters and streaming services shouldn't be allowed to do acquisitions. Disney owning whatever ridiculous proportion of media by buying everything serves nobody's best interest.

Catloafdev

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

eightysixfour

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 hell.

Grombobulous

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.

ndiddy

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 you can get access to tons of low-wage contractors who know UE5. You can hire a bunch of them when you start a game project and then lay them all off when it's finished, and rinse and repeat as necessary. It lets you treat your employees as a replaceable commodity that can be scaled up and down as it makes monetary sense rather than a cohesive team of skilled artisans.

HeavyStorm

What the fuck

feelamee

I don't really understand. Id Software is owned by Microsoft? Why Microsoft can laying off employees of Id Software?

ChrisArchitect

Related: Resetting Xbox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48804993

iamleppert

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

falcor84

> Yet today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go I feel that this is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people being fired. As I see it, getting fired is just like being dumped by a romantic partner. It typically says very little about your value as an individual, and almost everything about their current situation and how the relationship with you fits into their future plans and the other opportunities available to them.

ChrisArchitect

Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810496

SurgeArrest

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.

georgemcbay

Remember when Satya Nadella and Bobby Kotick got up in court and told everyone how all these giant Xbox mergers would be good for the consumer and went after Lina Khan for suggesting that maybe that wasn't the case? Who woulda thunk they were full of crap...? (besides everyone who didn't have a financial stake in the deal)

moogly

On the same day they release the new Dark Ages DLC. The game industry continues to be brutal.

LarsDu88

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.

danjl

Perhaps also a bit of ageism. Always hard to prove. Often implicit.