id Software’s Layoffs: What It Means for Doom on Steam Deck and Switch
Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal remain gold standards on Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch—proof that blistering first-person action can run on modest hardware, thanks to id Tech’s legendary scalability and the optimization lessons shown in Halo’s low-settings profile. Microsoft’s decision to cut over half of id Software’s workforce threatens to unravel that magic. The chilling question for handheld players: will the next Doom title run as well on portable devices, or will it be a shadow of its predecessors?
The id Tech Advantage: Why Handheld Doom Worked So Well
id Tech’s aggressive scalability allowed Doom Eternal to hit a locked 60 FPS on Steam Deck at medium settings, while the Switch port of Doom 2016 remains a technical marvel despite the hardware gap. Reports that the layoffs specifically targeted the id Tech team are deeply worrying. If future id games are forced onto Unreal Engine—as rumored—portable devices could lose the bespoke optimization that made Doom so playable on the go, a fate Halo’s Steam Deck port already illustrates. Unreal Engine 5 is notoriously heavy on battery life and framerate consistency in handheld mode. Losing id Tech does not just mean lower settings; it means handheld players could face shorter play sessions, inconsistent frame pacing, and more time tweaking configs instead of playing.
A Smaller Team, a Longer Wait for Portable Doom
Hugo Martin insists id is not “gutted” and that the remaining team is comparable in size to the one that made Doom 2016. That sounds reassuring until you recall Doom 2016 took four years. With roughly 130 staff left and the next Doom in early pre-production, handheld gamers may face a prolonged drought. The layoffs wiped out decades of institutional knowledge — one laid-off employee had been at id since the Carmack era. That expertise directly dictated how well games ran on lower-power chips. Rebuilding that knowledge for handheld-specific optimization could take years. The “support studio” label floating around id suggests future Doom titles could be designed primarily for high-end consoles and PC, with portable versions treated as afterthoughts — a fate the series has so far sidestepped, and one that handheld players have the most to lose from.