Doom's John Romero confirms his new FPS is saved after Xbox abandoned it, new publisher deal helps studio re-hire 10 laid off staff

id Software co-founder John Romero says that his studio's axed Xbox title has a new publisher, with a smaller staff reworking the game's scope.

Romero Games announced that it was working on an "all-new FPS with an original, new IP" back in 2022. But in the summer of 2025, in the wake of what has become yearly layoffs at Xbox, the project was seemingly cancelled. It became clear after the announcement that the game's unannounced publisher had been Xbox, and Romero Games was put at risk of shutdown in the wake of more Microsoft cuts.

Now, over a year later, Romero has updated VGC on the studio's current standing. He says that the studio kept on staff "as long as we could, trying to find funding to finish the game." But eventually, the studio was forced to "do redundancy and then figure out what we're going to do with a super-small team."

The team of 110 people went down to five at one point, but Romero says that the FPS title has a new publisher, and that the studio has "brought 10 people back." The returning devs were "the leads of the different sub-teams that we had." The game is being redesigned in accordance with the smaller team.

"We don't need to be bigger than that, the game is scoped for a team that's that size and we're just super happy," Romero explains. As far as the original plans, he says, "We're not getting that game to the end. That game we can't get to the end, because it's a 110-person game. So this is a complete redesign of a totally different game, but it uses a lot of the work that we had in the previous games."

However, Romero notes "we've moved a bunch of stuff over to the new game, which got us a big head-start, starting with really great art, cool weapons, all that kind of stuff." As for the new publisher, Romero notes that he's unable to reveal what it is, but notes it's pretty hands off.

"The publisher we're with right now has zero creative goals for this game. They're like 'you make what you want, we're publishing it, we're not going to tell you what to make'. That's the perfect deal, you know?"

Doom creator John Romero praises the devs who carried on id Software's legacy as Microsoft reportedly lays off half of the studio: "The last few games showed real care, skill, and respect"