The axe is swinging around Xbox at the moment, as hundreds of jobs have already been cut across Microsoft's game studios. Of the teams impacted, id Software's reportedly been substantially hit, to the point that there's apparently only one single person left working on the id Tech engine.
This comes from a report by Kotaku which goes into the changes at the legendary studio. Sources tell the outlet that id Tech is now a department of one following the latest redundancies. The engine is bespoke technology to the company and has been the backbone of the Quake, Wolfenstein and Doom games since the mid-'90s.
"The institutional knowledge is just not there. id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever," a person familiar with the situation says.
Although the engine was mostly for in-house games, it had been used elsewhere, such as in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from MachineGames, and in both The Evil Within installments from Tango Gameworks. Really, though, it's the implementation in the modern Doom games that garnered the most praise.
The bouncy, punchy power fantasy of Doom 2016, Eternal, and The Dark Ages comes from the engine and how confidently id Software was able to use it. These are all among the finest first-person shooters of the last 20 years, and to see people integral to them be treated this way is just sad.
It's noted that id Software has a European office based in Frankfurt, and there's a chance some people there may be drafted in to help maintain id Tech. But that's speculation for now, as direct communication on these issues remains limited for now as companies reel from the sudden changes.
As of now, Obsidian, id Software, Bethesda and more have reportedly been significantly affected by job losses and other changes. Apparently, no projects are currently greenlit at id Software, leaving the outfit in a state of flux for the time-being.
