Microsoft was rocked by greater than 9,000 job cuts this week. A big quantity have come from its gaming division, ensuing within the closure of a number of recreation studios and the cancellation of quite a few in-development initiatives at Xbox and its contracted studios. We’ve already discovered that Microsoft has closed the studio that was creating the much-anticipated Perfect Dark reboot, and Uncommon’s Everwild has additionally been sunsetted. And now Romero Video games — the studio headed up by Doom creator and veteran developer John Romero — is one other main casualty of the sweeping cuts.
The information was initially confirmed in a statement signed by Brenda Romero and posted on X. “Final evening, we discovered that our writer has canceled funding for our recreation together with a number of different unannounced initiatives at different studios,” it stated. “This was a strategic choice made at a excessive stage throughout the writer, properly above our visibility or management.” It went on to say that the studio was powerless to alter the end result, and that the choice was not reflective of the standard of labor its staff has produced.
Eire-based Romero Video games shouldn’t be owned by Microsoft, nevertheless it seems the corporate’s monetary assist was essential to protecting the studio alive — a incontrovertible fact that wasn’t publicly recognized till the shutdown occurred. IGN is now reporting that your complete Romero Video games workforce has been let go, and lots of Romero Video games staff affirm on Linkedin that they not have jobs.
In line with the corporate website, Romero Video games was based by John and Brenda Romero in 2014, and had greater than 100 builders on its employees. Its most up-to-date launch was 2023’s Sigil II, the unofficial sixth episode within the Doom collection, which John Romero co-created in 1993 with id Software program, the studio he additionally co-founded. The upcoming recreation was described by Romero Video games as an “all-new FPS with an authentic, new IP working with a serious writer.”
