[STEAM] After "incomprehensible" Xbox layoffs, id Software producer says worker-owned studios are "the only path forward"

[Steam 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

id Software producer Andrew Willis can only see one way through the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

mess as

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

: studios owned by workers, rather than executives who don't mind setting fire to, say, 3,200 jobs.

Willis mourned the layoffs –

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

– in

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

earlier this week, calling the layoffs an "incomprehensible decision," and remarking that "the game industry is being run by people who do not fundamentally understand anything about it, not even how it generates value or profit." He's decided in

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, then, that "the only way to fix the video game industry at this point is for developer owned studios to start rising from these studio closures and layoffs."

Doom studio id Software, of course, was originally created by Doom's developers in 1991, but Willis also seems in favor of true

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

where all of a business' employees double as owners who can guide direction. A co-op is not impervious to problems – worker-owned Dead Cells developer Motion Twin

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, for example – but I think many people would prefer interpersonal drama to receiving an email from a CEO you've never met informing you that something like 3,531,840 more people in your field have just been laid off.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

(Image credit: Bethesda) So, Willis, who also helped lead

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, says, "We've got to learn from the past, be fiscally responsibly, and create an environment of sustainable growth (though growth should be a byproduct of success, not a goal in and of itself)."

"Its the only path forward I can see," he reiterates. "These large publishers and monopolies have proven themselves terrible stewards and somehow even worse financial managers." To his point, although

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Gaming had already eliminated

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

killed

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, Xbox began 2026 with

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

in a hole.

"If the people who create the value own that value, good things will follow," Willis concludes. Makes sense to me.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

[/url]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up