Former id Software employees shared their impressions of the recent layoffs. According to them, the scale of the dismissals came as a complete surprise even to those who expected restructuring.
Earlier, it became known that 136 people left the studio: 96 employees who worked in the office, and another 40 remote specialists. Now, the GamesBeat portal has published anonymous comments from several former employees who spoke about what was happening within the company.
One of the interviewees called what happened "a real massacre" and admitted that he did not expect such large-scale layoffs.
This completely caught me off guard. Especially the scale.
Another employee noted that the layoffs occurred immediately after the completion of work on the DOOM: The Dark Ages expansion. According to him, the team was severely exhausted by the intense development and assumed that layoffs were possible, but no one expected such serious consequences.
This is a very difficult situation, and I'm completely burned out because we just finished the expansion. We understood that layoffs were possible, but we didn't think they would be so massive.
The GamesBeat article also mentions one of the studio's internal projects codenamed Fury. The game is described as a modern cyberpunk action game with elements of noir and science fiction. The concept combined dynamic gunfights with gun-fu style martial arts, and the project's atmosphere was compared to the "John Wick" film series. However, the development never received official approval and did not move into full production.