id Software's Chris Hays Says Xbox "Fundamentally" Doesn't Understand Art
A 16-year id Software veteran spent a recent podcast appearance explaining exactly why he thinks Microsoft doesn't understand the business it just gutted, and Doom's own director publicly disagrees with him.
I've written about Xbox's Game Pass math and its layoffs enough this year that none of this should really land as a surprise anymore, and it still did. Chris Hays, lead services programmer at id Software since 2010, went on Andre Peschke's Auf ein Bier to talk about the 136 layoffs that hit the Doom studio in July. Hays said making a AAA game at the scope id is used to would be next to impossible with half the staff. "And by hard," he said, "I mean impossible."
What Actually Got Cut
Hays said the roles that got cut weren't padding, they were disciplines the studio needs outright, skybox artists, infrastructure, engine work. He described studio management as working off talking points about what could and couldn't be said publicly in the aftermath, reassurance aimed at stopping people from jumping ship rather than any real plan for how a half-sized team is supposed to make the next Doom. "We're not the same id," he said. "We're half the same id."
Not Everyone at id Agrees
Doom: The Dark Ages director Hugo Martin pushed back publicly on the idea that the studio's in trouble, saying id is the same size it was during Doom 2016 and that id Tech is "very much alive and well." id's own statement to IGN on July 10 struck a similar note, thanking fans and describing the studio as "about the same size we were when making Doom 2016," with the crew it needs to build the games it's known for.
I don't think either of them is lying, and that's what makes this one uncomfortable to sit with. Doom 2016 really was made with a smaller team. But the games after it grew the studio to hit a bigger scope, roughly double the headcount, and Hays is the one arguing that going back to the old number doesn't get you the old studio, it gets you a studio that used to make bigger games than that.
The Game Pass Complaint
The sharpest moment came when the conversation turned to Game Pass. Hays pointed at Microsoft's own financial reporting, which has described "poor sales" under Bethesda-owned studios, and asked the question I've been waiting for someone inside these studios to ask out loud: what's a sale even mean when the game shipped straight into a subscription. Xbox studio leadership has reportedly been frustrated by exactly this for a while now, games judged internally by retail sales targets while going out the door as part of a subscription on day one. Hays didn't dress it up. "They fundamentally don't understand art," he said, and kept going from there, that Microsoft doesn't understand games, doesn't understand the business model it's running.
The Bigger Picture
id's cuts are a small piece of a much larger restructuring. Xbox's broader reset under CEO Asha Sharma hit 1,600 people the day it was announced, with another 1,600 planned across the current financial year. Hays said he'd genuinely like to hit whatever goals id is being measured against, he just doesn't know what those are anymore. Under ZeniMax, before Microsoft owned the studio, a game that scored well critically but underperformed commercially got treated as a marketing problem, not a creative one.
Asked point blank what he meant about Xbox not understanding art, Hays didn't reach for anything abstract. He talked about cohesion, the actual working relationships between departments that got scrambled by who left and who stayed. I've heard a lot of ex-employees blame layoffs on a company generally, in the abstract. Hays is one of the few still inside the building saying it.
