id Software Is Already Working on a New DOOM — Despite Losing Half Its Staff
id Software is developing a new DOOM game, even after cutting roughly half its workforce. Tom Warren (The Verge) reported on July 11 that the project is in very early stages, with no further details yet confirmed. The news lands just days after 136 employees — about 50% of the studio — were laid off, raising real questions about whether the team can deliver.
The layoffs, in numbers
A Texas WARN filing, cited by Game Developer, puts the total at 136 positions cut: 96 at id's Richardson, Texas office and 40 remote staff. Reports claim the coding team was heavily hit, with QA also gutted. id Software pushed back, saying it now operates at roughly the same headcount as when it made DOOM (2016) — the game that relaunched the franchise and sold millions. The contradiction between that claim and reports of a "gutted" engineering bench hasn't been resolved.
while the id layoffs have been deep, I understand the changes haven’t turned id into a support studio. Instead, they’re now in the early stages of a new Doom game https://t.co/6yhf5wA66U
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 11, 2026
The franchise, the timing, and the question marks
This is a studio with a track record of surviving its own near-collapses. DOOM 4 was cancelled mid-development and restarted from scratch, eventually becoming DOOM (2016) — one of the best-reviewed shooters of that generation. The current situation is different in character: the cuts came from above, not from a creative dead end.
The timing is awkward. DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations expansion launched July 7, the day before the layoffs were announced, and players have rated it highly. Xbox head Asha Sharma had also named DOOM a strategic priority for Microsoft — which makes the scale of the cuts harder to explain.
id Software is pointing fans toward QuakeCon 2026, running August 6–9, as a likely moment for something more official. No platform, timeline, or project scope has been announced by id, Bethesda, or Microsoft. Whether the studio retains enough institutional knowledge — particularly on the id Tech engine side — to build a full new entry remains the open question.