{"id":14970,"date":"2026-08-08T20:03:41","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/08\/08\/they-fundamentally-dont-understand-art-doom-dev-blasts-xbox-after-microsoft-gutted-id-software-with-layoffs\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:03:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:03:41","slug":"they-fundamentally-dont-understand-art-doom-dev-blasts-xbox-after-microsoft-gutted-id-software-with-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/08\/08\/they-fundamentally-dont-understand-art-doom-dev-blasts-xbox-after-microsoft-gutted-id-software-with-layoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;They Fundamentally Don&#8217;t Understand Art&#8217; \u2014 Doom Dev Blasts Xbox After Microsoft &#8216;Gutted&#8217; id Software With Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<section class=\"article-page\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets-prd.ignimgs.com\/2026\/06\/30\/ss-11a281028fce729b2ee4ac1dba64c652bcb4c07e-1920x1080-1782779581025.jpg\" \/>\n<section data-transform=\"mobile-ad-break\"><\/section>\n<p>After layoffs ripped through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/doom\">Doom <\/a>developer id Software in July, lead services programmer Chris Hays has taken aim at Xbox: &#8220;They fundamentally don&#8217;t understand art.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hays, who is currently employed at the studio behind first-person shooter classics like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/doom-eternal\">Doom Eternal<\/a> and has been with the team since 2010, unloaded on the recent decision to cut 136 staff during a recent conversation with Andre Peschke on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aA64Ogzm_VU\"><u>Auf ein Bier<\/u><\/a>. He didn&#8217;t mince words, to put it lightly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to make a game that is AAA, that&#8217;s like we&#8217;ve done before, with half the people. And by hard, I mean impossible,&#8221; Hays said. &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to make a game when there are entire departments that are gutted that you need, entire disciplines that are gone.<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"ignvideo\" data-slug=\"doom-the-dark-ages-revelations-dlc-video-review\" data-loop=\"\"><\/section>\n<p>&#8220;So, if they&#8217;ve got some kind of new plan for how this is going to work, that hasn&#8217;t been told; we don&#8217;t know what that is. The reassurances that we&#8217;re still the same id and we&#8217;re still going to do things, well, first of all, we&#8217;re not the same id. We&#8217;re half the same id. id was the people. What made us special was the people and the relationships we have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;reassurances&#8221; Hays mentioned at least partially refer to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/id-software-creative-director-says-claims-the-doom-developer-was-nerfed-into-the-ground-by-xbox-layoffs-are-untrue\"><u>some of the messages<\/u><\/a> that have emerged in the fallout of last month&#8217;s layoffs. id issued <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/id-software-issues-statement-following-xbox-layoffs-says-its-back-to-the-size-it-was-when-it-made-2016s-doom\"><u>a statement to IGN<\/u><\/a> July 10 that thanked fans for their support, acknowledging that, while the studio had been &#8220;impacted,&#8221; the restructuring left it at &#8220;about the same size we were when making Doom 2016.&#8221; It added, &#8220;We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we&#8217;re known for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>id reclaimed its title as a leading FPS studio with its 2016 Doom game and went on to keep its crown with 2020&#8217;s Doom Eternal and 2025&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/doom-the-dark-ages\">Doom: The Dark Ages<\/a>. Hays said id&#8217;s overseers at Microsoft and Xbox are trying to minimize the &#8220;unrest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"slideshow\" data-slug=\"doom-the-dark-ages-revelations-reveal-trailer-xbox-games-showcase-2026-screenshots\" data-value=\"doom-the-dark-ages-revelations-reveal-trailer-xbox-games-showcase-2026-screenshots\" data-type=\"slug\" data-caption=\"\"><\/section>\n<p>&#8220;Studio management is given talking points on things that are allowed to be said and what is not allowed to be said,&#8221; he added. &#8220;It feels like it is, instead, more reassurances. They don&#8217;t want more people to jump ship and say, &#8216;Oh, there&#8217;s no more future in id, so we&#8217;re all going to leave,&#8217; and then there&#8217;s no one left. They don&#8217;t want unrest. At the end of the day, most of it was just trying to tell us that, &#8216;Oh, no, everything is fine. Things will be OK.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hays said the reality is that id now houses &#8220;less&#8221; than the number of staff that worked on Doom 2016. He noted that fans will certainly have their preferences in the series but added, &#8220;There is a lot more that went into each of the [Doom] games that went along. We made bigger and better games, but that&#8217;s with twice as many people as we had. So, we have fewer than we had before. So, are we going to make something equivalent to a single-player Xbox 360 game? Because that&#8217;s the size of the studio we have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>id has a special place not only in gaming history but in the hearts of those who have continued to show up for the studio&#8217;s work in the decades since its inception. Doom has also stood the test of time \u2013 so why was id hit so hard?<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"slideshow\" data-slug=\"the-100-best-xbox-games-of-all-time\" data-value=\"the-100-best-xbox-games-of-all-time\" data-type=\"slug\" data-caption=\"\"><\/section>\n<p>That&#8217;s the question Peschke asked, but Hays said he has &#8220;no idea&#8221; why the layoffs were spread out like they were. One topic the question did lead to, however, was Game Pass.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On the ground level, we don&#8217;t get to know what that is,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We can have guesses just like everyone else. I know that we have serious issues with how Game Pass is done. Whenever we see the [Microsoft] financial reports that say there were, you know, poor sales under Bethesda. What&#8217;s a sale if you have Game Pass? Are you saying that poor sales means poor number of games sold? Because, of course.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not doing a game-sold business model. They fundamentally don&#8217;t understand art. They don&#8217;t. They don&#8217;t understand art. They don&#8217;t understand games. They don&#8217;t understand that business model.&#8221;<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"poll\" data-id=\"4365fece-0f37-4648-a820-e3af34541677\"><\/section>\n<p> While the layoffs at id seem to have shaken the Doom studio&#8217;s foundation, the employees lost represent a fraction of the total layoffs that swept through Xbox teams in July. It&#8217;s part of a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/xbox-reset-halo-elder-scrolls-fallout-opinion\"><u>reset<\/u><\/a>&#8221; that new CEO Asha Sharma called the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/xbox-boss-asha-sharma-announces-3200-layoffs-including-1600-today-with-4-studios-leaving-for-new-management-read-the-email-to-staff-in-full\"><u>most significant restructure in Xbox history<\/u><\/a>&#8221; at the time. It immediately impacted 1,600 staff the day of its announcement, with another 1,600 spread throughout the current financial year.<\/p>\n<p>Hays said he would &#8220;love to try to hit the goals that are set for&#8221; id, but those goals aren&#8217;t evenly communicated. Instead, they are told to &#8220;just make the best game we can.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Under ZeniMax, before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/microsofts-zenimax-acquisition-officially-complete-bethesda-now-a-part-of-xbox\"><u>the acquisition<\/u><\/a>, that was also how it worked for attributing success,&#8221; he added. &#8220;If we did well on a score for critical acclaim, and we had decently solid sales but they weren&#8217;t meeting expectations, then that is a problem for marketing and sales. If you scored low, you didn&#8217;t make a good game.<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"ignvideo\" data-slug=\"xboxs-reset-what-its-franchise-first-future-could-look-like-ign-opinion\" data-loop=\"\"><\/section>\n<p>&#8220;They tried better to find that. That is obviously not how Microsoft is operating. It doesn&#8217;t make any sense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asked to elaborate on why Xbox and Microsoft don&#8217;t understand art, Hays said, &#8220;If you cut half of a studio and don&#8217;t actually take in account how it&#8217;s made, you don&#8217;t understand that the cohesion between our teams was what was important. What made us successful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>id launched Doom: The Dark Ages last year and went on to release its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/doom-the-dark-ages-revelations\"><u>Revelations<\/u><\/a> DLC last month. IGN called it &#8220;Amazing&#8221; in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/doom-the-dark-ages-revelations-review\"><u>9\/10 review<\/u><\/a>. For more, you can read about why one of our writers believes<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/xbox-is-dismantling-its-future-to-rebuild-a-past-it-can-never-recapture\"> <u>Xbox is dismantling its future to rebuild a past it can never recapture<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"divider\"><\/section>\n<p>Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He&#8217;s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).<\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After layoffs ripped through Doom developer id Software in July, lead services programmer Chris Hays has taken aim at Xbox: &#8220;They fundamentally don&#8217;t understand art.&#8221; Hays, who is currently employed at the studio behind first-person shooter classics like Doom Eternal and has been with the team since 2010, unloaded on the recent decision to cut [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&#039;They Fundamentally Don&#039;t Understand Art&#039; \u2014 Doom Dev Blasts Xbox After Microsoft &#039;Gutted&#039; id Software With Layoffs - Next Level News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stay on top of the gaming world with Next Level News. 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