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Posted by bauc 9 hours ago

Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software(gamefromscratch.com)
517 points | 479 commentspage 7
2OEH8eoCRo0 8 hours ago|
$2.93 trillion market cap....layoffs

Bizarre incentives we have created

HDThoreaun 6 hours ago||
msft gaming likely has a negative market cap
epolanski 7 hours ago||
Their gaming division is not doing well.

Those are de facto separate organizations.

iepathos 7 hours ago||
Wow, that tweet claiming the Doom series is the best first person action game in the entire industry is crazy. That dev has to be completely disconnected from the rest of the game industry or delusional. No stats support that claim at all. Not player count, not sales, not reviews, nothing. The first Doom was certainly industry defining, but it and its sequels have never been considered the best by anyone except apparently this dev. If they were the best, they probably wouldn't be getting laid off right now.
parasti 7 hours ago|
They worked on the reboot games which are considered widely successful relative to other games released around the same time.
iepathos 6 hours ago||
Sure, the tweet was about their releases since 2016 when I assume this particular dev was involved, not the original release. To be clear, I'm not saying their games aren't good or even that they didn't have some success. 20 million in sales for their entire franchise isn't bad, it isn't the 500 million in sales we see from CoD or Battlefield, but it isn't bad. I actually liked the games, but claiming they are the "BEST GAMES EVER!" and having the gall to mention Google where no Google results ever show them as the best is where I have an issue. We don't need to spread misinformation like that and if the dev actually believes this I can only assume they live in a bubble.
0xWTF 8 hours ago||
Interestingly, Id was led by John Carmack, who was also a big fan of VR. And Microsoft killed the AR/VR/MR teams a year ago.

So, I'm guessing internally there were some leadership hopes that IdTech would help support IVAS and related professional AR systems and when those failed to be adopted at scale, IdTech lost a key sponsor. I'm guessing it's been a rough year of internal advocacy since.

bcjdjsndon 8 hours ago||
Carmack had left id by the time he got into vr/at, iirc they snagged him from a rocket company?
azornathogron 7 hours ago||
Armadillo Aerospace was Carmack's own rocket company.

And tbh I'm not sure it was ever a plausible contender for commercial success, more like Carmack wanted to play with rockets. But that might be unfair; I would happily accept a correction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace

bathtub365 8 hours ago|||
Carmack hasn’t worked at id for 13 years
DarkNova6 8 hours ago||
Carmack left id waaay before Microsoft has acquired id (transitively by acquiring Zenimax/Bethesda)
falcor84 8 hours ago|
> Yet today, Microsoft/XBOX decided half the team was deemed USELESS and needed to be let go

I feel that this is an incredibly unfair and demeaning take both towards Microsoft and towards the people being fired. As I see it, getting fired is just like being dumped by a romantic partner. It typically says very little about your value as an individual, and almost everything about their current situation and how the relationship with you fits into their future plans and the other opportunities available to them.

dymk 8 hours ago||
It’s nothing like a romantic relationship, and it does say something about msft: they failed at planning and managing company resources, and as a result fired a bunch of people
falcor84 6 hours ago||
It sounds like you're fully agreeing with me that it has pretty much nothing to do with the value of the employees and essentially everything with how the employees no longer fit the company's plans.
dymk 4 hours ago||
I think if you read the words I wrote you’ll find I did not agree with your framing
falcor84 4 hours ago||
I promise that I did, and I did not find that; you said that it's "nothing like" but then the rest of it seems to match what I was saying in my analogy. Would you mind please saying more about the difference you see between our opinions?
MisterTea 8 hours ago|||
Nice downplay. This is getting dumped by a romantic partner who supported you by paying for your rent, food and other needs/wants.
lenerdenator 8 hours ago||
The problem with the romantic partner analogy is that when things ended with my ex, I didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent.

Corporate culture spent the last fifty years convincing the working public that it was important to identify with your job, career, and most importantly, your employer. That's how you get the most out of a worker. If they identify themselves as - just as examples - "parent" or "spouse" first, those priorities can get in the way of their value creation for you.

The employer can, of course, drop you as an employee pretty much at-will. You'll be left with shame, disillusionment, and potential financial setbacks, but they'll have accumulated the value from your best efforts.

ButlerianJihad 8 hours ago||
> didn't lose my career continuity, health insurance and income stream that goes to pay my rent.

But that is basically the minimum set of consequences for any homemaker or non-breadwinner when a marriage fails.

Think about women through the centuries, who’ve been faced with basically homelessness and poverty, and the full responsibility to all their children, if they divorced or separated.

And then it becomes crystal clear why many people cling to suboptimal and abusive relationships, because really, we need one another.

lenerdenator 8 hours ago||
At least in today's world, there are things like alimony that are supposed to go to the prevention of that issue. It's not perfect, but it's at least something.

There's also an increase in the number of women who are able to independently support themselves.

People are also less likely to get married now for that exact reason.

If there were some sort of alimony for employment, even if just for a year, and a public health insurance option to fall back on, you probably don't see that much outrage from the people who have lost their jobs. But then, you'd also, at least in the minds of certain employers, see less willingness on the behalf of employees to throw their whole lives into the production of value for the business, and I think that's part of why you don't see guaranteed severance and public health insurance in the US.