By Our Reporter
John Romero has urged the gaming industry to protect id Software’s historic legacy after sweeping layoffs under Microsoft’s latest Xbox restructuring affected the legendary studio.
The id Software co-founder and Doom creator revealed that he has personally preserved the studio’s earliest history, expressing hope that someone inside the company is safeguarding its modern development archives following the cuts.
Microsoft’s ongoing Xbox “reset” is expected to eliminate around 3,200 jobs and includes plans to divest multiple studios. Reports indicate that id Software was among the hardest hit, with claims that nearly half of its workforce was laid off, including members of its renowned technology and engineering teams.
In a post on Bluesky, Romero highlighted the importance of preserving the studio’s contributions to gaming history.
“A note on digital preservation: id’s history is critically important to the history of games,” Romero wrote. “I’ve preserved id’s complete early history from our start at Softdisk through to August 6, 1996, including materials and assets that, as far as I know, id itself no longer has.”
Romero, who left id Software in 1996, said he hopes the company’s ongoing work—including its code, assets, stories and the people behind them—is being preserved internally despite the restructuring.
The comments come as former employees describe the scale of the layoffs. Senior gameplay systems programmer Michael Maynard criticized Microsoft’s decision, saying the company had dismissed talented developers across nearly every discipline.
“Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was no longer needed and should be let go,” Maynard wrote on LinkedIn, praising the efforts of designers, programmers, artists, audio specialists, level designers and technical staff affected by the cuts.
Romero’s remarks also reignite the broader conversation around video game preservation. Development archives have become increasingly valuable as the industry loses source code, assets and historical records. Last year, Fallout co-creator Tim Cain revealed he had been ordered to destroy his archive documenting the early development of the landmark RPG.
Romero has long been an advocate for preserving gaming history. He has also challenged the long-held belief that Doom’s widespread shareware distribution harmed the industry, arguing that the game’s estimated 20 million shareware players were not automatically “pirates” and that the history of software distribution is far more nuanced than often portrayed.
As one of the industry’s most influential studios, id Software helped define the first-person shooter genre with titles such as Doom and Quake. With major layoffs now reshaping the studio, Romero’s message serves as a reminder that preserving the history behind those games may be just as important as creating the next generation of them.
