With studios being gutted and projects being canceled to prioritize flailing IP, it’s hardly surprising that the sentiment among those at Xbox right now—and those who have been let go—is bitter resentment. Not only do you have a former Obsidian Entertainment dev calling Xbox a “cancer,” but a former id Software employee who is now speaking out through the media.
“They didn’t even wait to see if the product is successful before they got rid of the team,” the anonymous dev told Game Developer, speaking of the new Doom DLC that launched just one day after the layoffs. “There are no benefits to being owned by Microsoft. In fact, they have destroyed immense amounts of value that I don’t even think that they’re aware of.”
Doom co-creator John Carmack likewise said that his statement on Microsoft being a good steward of the brand "isn't aging well."
id Software is now the same size that it was when developing Doom (2016), despite Bethesda claiming just last year that The Dark Ages was “the biggest launch” in the studio’s history. A milestone that was celebrated with sweeping cuts that former principal VFX artist Derek Best described as “nuking a team into...
