After a particularly horrendous 2025, 2026 has somehow been an even worse year for video game layoffs. Sony has shut down numerous studios and gutted Bungie, Xbox has sliced studios in half, and Ubisoft even laid off Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced developers the day their game released.
One of the recently hit studios from Xbox’s first wave of layoffs for 2026 is DOOM developer Id Software. Following the release of DOOM: The Dark Ages’ new Revelations expansion, the studio saw a massive reduction in headcount, returning the team to the size it was during the creation of DOOM 2016.
As the dust has started to settle after Xbox’s devastating decision, Id Software producer Andrew Willis claimed that the games industry needs to become developer-owned if it’s to survive. In a prior post, Willis explained that Xbox’s cuts to Id was “an absolute incomprehensible decisions” that “doesn’t make sense from any perspective whatsoever, even financially”.
“The game industry is being run by people who do not fundamentally understand anything about it, not even how it generates value of profit,” he continued. “An unfortunate decision that I hope changes sooner rather than later, though it may take quite a bit more suffering from people who don’t deserve it.”
In their follow-up post, Willis explained that “the only way to fix the video game industry at this point is for developer owned studios to start rising from these closures and layoffs.” Of course, this has already started to occur with Splinter Cell developer Clint Hocking forming a new studio, laid off Zenimax employees starting Sackbird Studios, etc, but the cards are still firmly in the hands of industry giants.
“We’ve got to learn from the past,” Willis continued, “be fiscally responsible and create an environment of sustainable growth… its the only path forward I can see, and these large publishers and monopolies have proven themselves terrible stewards and somehow even worse financial managers”.
The DOOM producer claimed that “if the people who create the value own that value, good things will follow”.
Of course, at one point, Id Software was one of the most successful independent studios, at least during the time of shareware. The DOOM studio’s acquisition in 2009 was, until recently, quite a successful one, but the team’s new ownership under Xbox has resulted in severe cuts.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that industry giants, such as Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, NetEase, etc, will always have their hands in the pies of most game studios. However, perhaps Willis is right, perhaps independence is needed right now.
