Xbox claims that reports of there being only one person in Texas left working on id Software's id Tech engine are inaccurate.
Reports emerged that as part of the devastating layoffs at id Software – which saw 136 of the studio's 185 staff members laid off – the team working on the id Tech engine was affected massively. Yesterday, it was claimed that this was so widespread that only one person was left working on the engine at id Software's main Richardson, Texas studio. However, in a statement given to Kotaku, an Xbox spokesperson says this is inaccurate
"There are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," the spokesperson says , adding: "Reports that there's only one person left in Texas are inaccurate." That being said, it is unconfirmed just how many people are left working on the tech.
Kotaku's source said they weren't sure how the engine could be patched due to the breadth of the layoffs, saying: "The institutional knowledge is just not there." The same source said: "id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever."
Derek Best, former principal VFX artist at id Software who worked on the latest Doom trilogy as part of his 12 year tenure at the studio, claimed the studio has been relegated "to support studio size," while saying Microsoft was responsible for "nuking a team into the dirt" and "throwing out massive technological achievements."
Alongside these comments, Best noted that "the VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer." As for the engine, he also mentioned that "the engine programmer responsible for the massive gains in VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was let go as well," adding that "all devs that had Houdini knowledge for procedural modeling or cached animations were wiped out." Best said: "All the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program has gone to waste with no one to carry it on."
