Id Software co-founder John Carmack “can’t muster anger or outrage” over Xbox gutting the Doom studio, but does say it’ll “dampen the mood of the founder reunion”

Aw shucks. That’s a bummer. I’m not angry about it, though. Surely this had to happen, just like the execs said it did. I’m paraphrasing quite facetiously, but that is the basic gist of id Software co-founder John Carmack’s reaction to the studio cutting 136 workers as part of Microsoft’s mass layoffs earlier this week, a devastating blow that leaves the Doom developers facing an uncertain future.

“I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs,” Carmack, who’s currently heading up artificial general intelligence company Keen Technologies, wrote in a post. “My ‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month.” So far, so along similar lines to fellow id co-founder John Romero’s response to the cuts earlier this week.

Then, things diverge a bit. “I’m saddened, but I can’t muster anger or outrage over it,” Carmack continued. “I don’t have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft’s perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios.” Woah, woah, hold up John. Surely you’re not thinking now, in this post acknowledging a bunch of talented people suddenly losing their jobs and their colleagues being left in limbo, is the ideal time to argue that they might’ve deserved it, actually?

“To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved.” Ah. That is the direction he’s headed in. “Games are competing with every other option for spending your leisure time and money, and the competition is brutal. You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief. I don’t think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from Id games.”

He’s got a point. At a time when Xbox are gutting their studios with brutal mass layoffs and blaming those layoffs on the strategy of their last set of executives having proved to be idiotic, you can’t just automatically assume that executives are idiots. Carmack went on to float some ideas as to how MS execs could potentially have made more money from Id’s games, such as ratcheting up prices, cutting development costs and times, or simply making “more things for fans to buy”. He closed by conceding that he doesn’t know if any of those would have worked, but that “the game isn’t over yet” and he hopes the studio “rallies through”.

It’s worth noting that Carmack doesn’t mention the effect that Id’s games being used to push Xbox Game Pass while Microsoft’s execs were still all-in on the service, thereby sacrificing some of their traditional sales potential, has had on determining just how successful the studio have been over the past decade or so.

I’m sad on behalf of any laid off Id devs who might end up reading Carmack’s post this week. I can’t muster anger or outrage towards the veteran developer, though. After all, it’d be unfair if my default belief was that executives might be able to read a room.