Nothing zaps the joy right out of launch day celebrations like getting laid off alongside half of your team, but that's exactly what happened to dozens of Id Software developers during Microsoft's July 2026 bloodbath (not to be confused with its September 2026 bloodbath) alongside the release of the Revelations DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages. Amid reports that the studio was gutted down to support studio size, the total confirmed number of laid off employees, per Game Developer, was 136 as of this past July, which current studio leadership has confirmed was about half of the team. That's an absolutely devastating loss of institutional talent, but a group of former Id Software devs has risen from the ashes as new worker-owned studio Hidden Horses. In the studio's announcement documentary, they don't hold back.
"It's just wild the talent that they let go. It's just wild that they would attack Id like that the day before we release our DLC. It really felt like an attack," says Hidden Horses co-founder and former Id Software tools programmer John-Michael Quinlan.
"It was probably emotionally the worst day of my life," says former Id Software senior technical designer Jordan Turner, who's now co-founder and, fittingly, technical designer at Hidden Horses. "I don't think I've cried that much in my entire life."
"I did not see it coming at the time that I was told," says former Id Software programmer, now Hidden Horses rendering programmer, Regan Carver. "I just told my wife, 'well that was not a fun conversation.' She thought I was joking at first, and then she realized I wasn't. I was in shock, but she was in tears.
"I usually spend the release days scouring social media looking for all the good news. It drives up my morale ... I'm always excited to see people receiving our stuff well and knowing I was a small part of it, so that was gone."
Amid a period of historic tumult in the gaming industry, it's easy to become desensitized by news of another mass layoff, but hearing from the workers themselves in this way really underscores the immense human toll of corporate downsizing.
Former Id Software AI engineering lead Daniel Young says the hardest part about being laid off was losing friends he'd worked with for years. "It hit me pretty hard. I think that was the biggest thing was the people that I was gonna be leaving behind. I hate to say it's like a death in the family, but it's almost like that's what it felt like," says Young.
"Personally the biggest thing was that I'm trying to help my kids through college," says Todd Boyce, former Id Software lead VFX artist and Hidden Horses technical artist. "I have two kids in college right now, and that is really expensive. That's probably the thing that hurts me the most is the possibility of them being financially stressed because of something that wasn't even in their control, and for a layoff that honestly didn't need to happen."
Hidden Horses is a small studio of 19 developers according to this announcement video, and its Kickstarter describes its debut title, Danger Pay, as "a single player FPS based around a deadly gameshow with high-octane action and gameplay focused design." Meanwhile, Hidden Horses producer Andrew Willis says players can expect "absolutely stellar out-of-this-world fun gameplay, amazing and super cohesive and stylistic visuals, and really optimized gameplay on the technical side."
Technical designer Tim Locke says one key difference between working at a corporate-owned studio like Id and now Hidden Horses is creative freedom. "Being able to do what we want and talk through, like, what are our ideas, like, which ones resonate with the most people and how do we move forward with that. That's really the difference, and it has been different so far. It's been great."
Echoing that sentiment, Hidden Horses lighting artist Tyler DeLisle says "the people that were let go at Id ... we were all, none of us were slackers. We were all best of the best, top of our game, so now that we're all given this opportunity to come together and keep doing what we love to do, but kind of untethered and more collaborative, I think we can really put out something special."
"If even a small measure of those games that we've worked on in the industry, for me over the past 20 years, is able to be distilled down into a game for our fans, I think they're gonna get something really special," says Quinlan. "And I think you only have to look at the pedigree of the people involved to know that we can do something really special here."
