Microsoft’s latest Xbox cuts have reportedly reached deep into some of its best-known game studios, including id Software and Bethesda, after the company announced plans to eliminate 3,200 roles across the division.
CEO Asha Sharma initially framed the reductions around the Xbox platform team and layers of middle management. Reports from developers, trade outlets, and former id figures now point to broad cuts at the studios that make and maintain franchises such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield.
At id Software, longtime programmer Michael Maynard wrote on LinkedIn that he was among the “roughly 50%” of the studio laid off Monday. Maynard’s credits at id go back to Rage, released in 2011. He described the treatment of id, one of the foundational first-person shooter studios, as being reduced to another asset reorganization.
Scott Miller, founder of Apogee and 3D Realms, wrote on X that he had heard “insider reports” that most of id had been laid off, including most or all of its programmers. Miller’s Apogee helped publish some of id’s earliest games, so his comments carried more weight than the usual social media fog, though he did not name the people behind those reports.
Game Developer said it confirmed the id cuts with multiple anonymous sources. According to that report, about 90 people at the Doom studio were made redundant.
John Romero, who co-founded id and left the company in 1996, also responded on X. Romero wrote that the current id team had done strong work carrying forward the company’s legacy, citing Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein as difficult names to steward in the current games business. He urged Microsoft to preserve code and documentation from the modern id, saying he had done the same for the version of the company he helped lead.
Bethesda told staff it must “change course”
The Bethesda side of Microsoft’s cuts appears severe as well. IGN reported that it obtained an email from Bethesda president Jill Braff to employees, in which she thanked colleagues affected by the layoffs and said the company needed to “change course.”
According to IGN, Bethesda studios were hit “particularly hard,” and employees who remain are facing uncertainty as Microsoft continues with a broader plan that includes 1,600 more layoffs during the fiscal year, on top of 1,600 already carried out.
Braff’s email said Bethesda must become a company focused on its “strongest franchises,” according to IGN. She also wrote that Bethesda had to strengthen its business, return to sustainable growth, and keep investing in its franchises and players.
That language raises obvious questions for projects outside the safest Bethesda names. IGN pointed to fan concern around Starfield, Bethesda’s newer sci-fi franchise. Kotaku reported that the team behind The Elder Scrolls Online may have lost as much as half of its developers.
Microsoft has spent years buying its way into owning more of the games people already play. The reported cuts show the other side of that strategy: once the logos are collected, the people who build the games can still be treated as costs to remove.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
