Doom: The Dark Ages developer says crunch on Revelations DLC hit 17-hour days before layoffs

A former id Software producer has described the working conditions on the recently released Doom: The Dark Ages expansion, Revelations, as the worst crunch many on the team had ever experienced, only for several staff members to be laid off as the DLC shipped.

Andrew Willis, who worked as a producer on the game, told Insider Gaming that he and his colleagues put in punishing hours in the months leading up to the expansion's July launch. Willis said he personally worked at least 12 hours every day for two months straight, with some days reaching 17 hours. "It was brutal, and the majority of the game got made in three or four months," he said.

The toll on his personal life was severe. "There were days where I didn't see my son the whole day; multiple days of that that I sacrificed to get this out the door at the level of quality," Willis said. He stressed that the intensity was not limited to him alone. "And it's not just me, but everybody on the team was really putting in the hours."

Willis added that some team members who had worked in Hollywood for two decades and in game development for a further ten described this as the worst crunch they had ever been part of. He noted that the overtime was not formally mandated by the studio. Instead, he described a situation where staff were given workloads that could not be completed in a standard week. "You get loaded up with 60 hours of work in a week, and what do you do?" he asked. He characterised the resulting pressure as "pseudo-induced crunch" — a self-imposed drive to meet the quality standards players expect and that developers expect from themselves.

The release of Revelations coincided with a wave of layoffs across Microsoft's gaming division. In the same week the DLC launched, Microsoft announced sweeping cuts of 3,200 staff, impacting almost every studio in its Xbox portfolio, including id Software. Willis was among those laid off on the day the expansion came out. "You spend so much of your energy and hours of your life, and sacrifice a bunch of things, to get something out the door, and then they lay you off the day before," he said. "It's such a wild feeling."

The impact on id Software was severe. Reports indicate that the studio lost over half of its members, with some sources putting the figure at 75 percent. Among those let go were key senior and long-serving staff, including individuals responsible for the id Tech engine and other core disciplines. One veteran who had been with the company since the 1990s, during the era of founders John Romero and John Carmack, was also affected.

The scale of the cuts has sparked debate about the studio's future. Some observers have argued that id Software was effectively gutted. Co-studio director Hugo Martin pushed back against that characterisation, stating that the remaining team is roughly the size of the one that developed 2016's Doom. However, Chris Hayes, lead services provider at id who remains at the studio, has publicly disagreed, saying it is "impossible" to make games like that 2016 title with the number of people that remain.

Willis has previously spoken critically about how id Software has been treated under Xbox ownership, blaming large corporations for the industry's current problems and calling for more developer-owned studios. Revelations is the only add-on released for Doom: The Dark Ages, and it is not yet clear what the future holds for the franchise or the studio.