Chris Hays, id Software’s lead services programmer, has spent more than 15 years at the studio and remains there after Xbox’s major July layoffs. The veteran developer, whose credits include Doom Eternal and Doom: The Dark Ages, has challenged claims that id can create another game on the scale of Doom (2016) with a much smaller team.
In a recent interview with the Well Played podcast, Hays discussed the impact of the cuts, the studio’s future and Microsoft’s Game Pass strategy. His comments have also spread viral on social media.
“Impossible” to make the same AAA game with half the team
Hays argued that reducing a large development team by half does more than remove individual staff members. It can eliminate whole departments and specialist disciplines needed to build a modern blockbuster.
“It is hard to make a game that is AAA that’s like we’ve done before with half the people. And by hard I mean impossible,” Hays said.
He also rejected the idea that the current studio is simply the same id Software that produced the 2016 reboot. In his view, the repeated reassurance that the studio can deliver another comparable project overlooks the loss of teams and expertise.
“We’re not the same id. We’re half the same id.”
Questions over id Software’s remaining staff
Hays said id’s management had received “talking points” from Xbox about what could be discussed publicly. He believed the messaging was intended to reassure remaining employees that the studio still had a future, partly to prevent more staff from leaving.
Those reassurances included comparisons with the team size used to ship Doom (2016), or claims that the current workforce was close to that level. When the podcast host compared this statement with the long list of names in the 2016 game’s credits, Hays offered a blunt explanation.
“There is a reason they say close to, because it is less.”
He said the central problem was not only the number of people removed, but the damage to the cohesion between the teams. Hays argued that cutting half a studio without considering how its work fits together means failing to understand how games are made.
Game Pass and the meaning of “sales”
Hays also criticised the way Game Pass affects the discussion around Bethesda’s commercial performance. id Software is part of Bethesda, which is owned by Xbox, and its releases are available on Game Pass from day one. As a result, Xbox and PC subscribers can access Microsoft-published games without purchasing each title separately.
He questioned how financial reports describe “poor sales” when many players receive a game through a subscription. In his view, Xbox is no longer operating purely through a traditional games-sold business model, yet Bethesda can still be judged by conventional sales figures.
“If you have Game Pass, are you saying poor sales means a poor number of games sold? Cause of course. [Xbox isn’t] doing a ‘games sold’ business model.”
Layoffs described as Xbox’s biggest restructure
At the end of the interview clip, Hays said Xbox fundamentally did not understand art or video games. His criticism centred on the collaborative nature of game development and the risk of breaking apart the relationships that helped a studio succeed.
In July, Xbox boss Asha Sharma announced 1,600 job cuts for that month, with another 1,600 layoffs expected before the end of the year. Once completed, the reductions were expected to represent about 20 per cent of Xbox’s total workforce.
The restructuring also saw Xbox divest from studios it had acquired, including Double Fine and Compulsion Games. In an email to employees, Sharma described the layoffs and studio changes as the most significant restructure in Xbox history.
The dispute highlights a familiar tension across the arcade and gaming news industry: large games depend on many specialised disciplines, much as a physical cabinet depends on the right combination of controls, display and internal arcade parts. For readers interested in how different formats preserve game design, RETROCADE also covers arcade machines, arcade light-gun shooters and arcade industry videos.
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