The industry is once again reeling from another round of layoffs at Microsoft, which has deeply impacted the Xbox brand. Now, we’ve learned of another casualty from Romero Games, the studio co-founded by DOOM co-creator John Romero and his wife Brenda Romero.
Romero’s initial statement left did not mention Xbox or Microsoft, simply stating that their publishing partner had pulled funding, resulting in their game having to be cancelled ” “along with several other unannounced projects at other studios”.
The timing strongly implied that the cause was the layoffs and restructuring at Xbox, and this has since been confirmed by several employees posting on LinkedIn. Hard surface artist Christoph Redl, senior 3D character artist Conor Jordan, and senior producer Emily Winters all stated outright that it was the layoffs at Xbox that resulted in not only the cancellation of the in-development shooter, but that also led to them losing their jobs as well.
Other now former employees worryingly refer to Romero Games as shutting down in their social media posts.
“the mass Microsoft layoff effectively cancelled funding for Romero Games and as a result the whole team was laid off,” said UI artist Ana Mitrovic on LinkedIn.
Sadbh Flanagan and Eric Wong, both artists at Romero Games, talked about the studio closing in their posts.
However, Romero Games themselves has not officially announced their closure, simply saying they are “currently evaluating next steps and working quickly to support our team.”
“This was a strategic decision made at a high level within the publisher, well above our visibility or control,” Romero said. “We deeply wish there had been something, anything, we could have done to prevent this outcome. This absolutely isn’t a reflection of our team’s work, performance, or the quality of the project itself. We hit every milestone on time, every time, consistently received high praise, and easily passed all our internal gates. We are incredibly proud of the work being done, and of the talented team behind it. The best we’ve worked with.”
Romero Games was founded in 2014 and has over 100 employees, according to its website. It has published four games since 2014, two of which (Sigil and Sigil 2) are based on DOOM which Romero co-created. They were later added to DOOM officially.
Given Romero’s connection to DOOM and the fact that Xbox now owns the DOOM IP, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Romero Games was working on something DOOM related.
Hopefully, the company can survive this closure, but I’m not sure. Romero Games hasn’t released anything that has found much commercial success and I can’t find any information on investors etc. so the studio has likely been riding on Romero’s own money for over a decade.