It’s worse than that:
Another dev allegedly stripped to the bone is id Software, which according to 3D Realms founder Scott Miller has lost “most, if not all” of its coders.
Man. This is heartbreaking. The Idtech engine is dead, the engine that is extremely optimized and much better that that UT engine junk is dead.
it’s fucking unbelievable how these morons can gut dev studios when the product that came out of them is to the scale of Doom 2016, Eternal and Dark Ages. Ridiculous.
I hope they band together and start their own company.
Speaking of which, if you know a way for me to find games made by devs that were once part of larger studios that were gutted, I’m interested.
Apparently these devs are treated the same way as Mick Gordon
Not like they havent mismanaged the music projects…
Have the Eternal pre-orders received their OST yet?I have no idea about that
So according to discogs (market place for all sorts physical music), users are selling doom eternal casettes on it.
Nope. IIRC they basically told us to fuck off
Not knowing if you did order it, users were trading casette releases on discogs not too long ago
Yeah I pre-ordered the collector’s edition, expecting to get a vinyl box set IIRC ? Oh well, I mostly got it for the other stuff anyway. The cassette I got isn’t actually functional IIRC (never tried it but I recall the edition’s booklet saying so) and was just a fancy download code (that wasn’t even functional at the time. I should check if it at least works now).
Lighting a bowl and playing Quake and Doom wads and mods only this weekend. Let’s see 'em off right, lads.
https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/quake-brutalist-jam-iii.549/
In fairness - and I’m a massive id fanboy - the company that gave us quality games and trailblazing tech disappeared when they went to Zenimax.
The publishers admittedly treated them well at the start (Mick Gordon… less so), but this soulless bottom-line thinking was always going to hit them eventually.
Shame.
zenimax
This. Right there with you. Dead company walking.
Weren’t they bought back in the early 2010s? Doom 2016 was great and Doom Eternal has also a great reputation (I own it but haven’t played it). So they made good games even after being bought by ZeniMax.
Doom 2016 was also the second attempt. They were struggling hard, with the lackluster sales and reception of Rage and the new Doom being stuck in development hell, before management decided to cut their losses and scrap virtually all of it, save for the quick kills system.
So even more evidence that it wasn’t all downhill from the moment ZeniMax bought ID.
Don’t get me wrong, fuck ZeniMax and all the big corporation that gobble up smaller corps just to push their share prices and sell them off or close them as soon as it looks like it would help their share price. But in this case it seems a little bit more complex than just ZeniMax bad.
Well the one potential silver lining to firing an entire team at once like this is that hopefully they can turn around and start their own new gaming studio free from the corporate overlords. In which case we all win.
At least, until the leaders of that studio get greedy and sell out and repeat the shit cycle all over.
There isn’t any money out there, and a production team trying to run their own studio typically doesn’t work out. „Just go indie“ is not a realistic option. More than likely a handful of these people might be picked up (though likely will have to uproot their lives to do it) but the rest will leave the industry. It’s an incredibly destructive thing MS has done, because id folks often did a lot of knowledge sharing at conferences.
There’s plenty of money out there in the economy, we just keep letting private equity buy up everything and funnel it to billionaires while enshittifying the entire world of commerce.
But aside from that you make a good point, if no one will invest in a new studio then that’s a pipe dream. And yeah IIRC the ID folks were regular leaders at conferences like SIGGRAPH so yes this looks bad for the industry 😞
Fucking Bethesda. If Starfield wasnt such a failure (amongst others) this might not have happened. Yet rather than cut where the issues are they decimate the studio that actually produces the great games.
It feels like enshittification has come for the games industry in a big way lately.
I loathe Microsoft.
Stupid fucking “we have money” mentality so the best way to make one look better is siphon up successful developers and expect gold.
I didn’t even like the most recent doom games and even i could see they were fantastic. Didn’t they sell well to? Of all the studios to cut this one seems fucking stupid.
Why do we tolerate this as fans?
Well there’s different groups of folks. There’s a group who aren’t going to tolerate this and won’t give them another cent, and another group who will look past it until it destroys their favourite series completely, and I guess another, enormous group who are entirely oblivious to any of the goings on behind the scenes and just buy game play game
Can someone give me a breakdown on what id has been up to since Doom?
I’ve been out of the scene for a while. Heard they have an engine now? What are their latest games?
Do you mean since Doom 2016 or since the original Doom?
Hahaha 2016. I watched the cutscenes and they seemed really cool. Gameplay is pretty frantic though.
They’ve expanded upon the formula since, with two sequels that add significantly more movement and more complex combat (certain weapons being more effective against certain enemy types) while ramping up the spectacle and scale. Not all of the changes compared to Doom 2016 have been without controversy, but overall, they’ve been received extremely well. At higher difficulties, they do require very quick thinking. On normal and lower, anyone who can play shooters will get through without much trouble though.
I also really like how tongue in cheek these games are at times. They have fun with the absurd universe they are taking place in, right from the first minute.
There’s also a VR spin-off (Doom VFR) that is somewhat downgraded in terms of gameplay, but retains the glory kill system. New story and levels, kind of like Doom 64 back in the day (which you can - and should - play on PC or other modern systems these days if you haven’t already). I own VFR, but haven’t gotten to playing it, so I can’t personally comment on it. It’s not regarded very highly though.
id Software assisted Avalanche Studios (Just Cause series and Mad Max) with Rage 2. Different engine, but you can tell from the combat that id had their hands in it. It’s a fun, silly, over the top and gory open world shooter that does not overstay its welcome, far better in my opinion than it reviewed. It’s the kind of game that many people wanted the original Rage to be, I would argue. Epic gave it away a while ago, so you might already have it.
They also helped out with the development of Starfield, specifically the combat, which really shows. I know many “gamers” absolutely hate this title to no end (the less they’ve played it, the more they hate it), but that’s unfair in my opinion. It’s not without its flaws, but there is much to love here. The punchy combat with creative weaponry is one of the best aspects about it, but not the only thing I like. It’s a surprisingly wholesome, warm sci-fi universe compared to the nihilistic cynicism that is so rampant in modern media narratives. When it came out, it was exactly what I needed.
Speaking of wholesome, Machine Games used a highly modified version of the engine from Doom 2016 for Wolfenstein II, which also has absolutely fantastic combat (just like the predecessor and a spinoff of said predecessor, which used an engine based on id’s prior one for Rage). It’s a bit slower than Doom 2016 and has some stealth gameplay (mostly player-driven and optional), but still frantic enough, given the series’ history. I can’t recommend these games enough, especially since narration and world building are even better than the already brilliant gameplay. And yes, in these games set in a dystopian world taken over by insane Nazi super soldiers, there are plenty of touching, wholesome moments with the diverse cast of resistance members. Really surprised me in a good way. 10/10 stuff.
If I were GOG or Gabe, I would snap those folks up and ask them to make something awesome.
GOG has no money, and Gabe has no incentive.
Who knew the quote:
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
Could work in reverse.
Fuck. Microsoft.
