Microsoft DOOMs ID with layoffs

**ThePrimeagen** (0:00)
Welcome to The Standup. Today, we have a very special episode. You may notice that it looks lower quality video. That is because we have nobody here to record.
And we have a lot of pieces of information I did not think we were going to learn, along with also crazy management style of Xbox itself, and a bunch of studios, and people have been hit today directly because 1600 were laid off, and 1600 more throughout the fiscal year of 2027 Also, really weird way to measure time is the fiscal year. I'm just throwing that out there. I think that's just weird personally.
But at the end of the day, that is what has happened, and we're here to discuss it. And I figured one of the big burning topics that I see all over the Internet is about id studios. id right now is kind of like the the star of the layoff, if you will. Approximately 10% of the total layoffs, 132 out of 1600 of the layoffs, I believe it's 132 or 135, came from id studios. Most of the Injun team has been gutted. A bunch of designers, a bunch of people running it. Effectively, the heart and soul of id has been ripped out. And now what is left is just whoever is remaining there right now. And it would probably be impossible if, or improbable if not impossible to be able to make anything. And so I first wanted to talk a little bit about that because I am not in the video games industry. I don't know what it takes to create an Injun. I don't know what it takes to maintain an Injun. I don't know what it takes to move forward an Injun. And we do have with us a legendary game programmer, Casey Muratori, who does Injun work in fact. And so I would just like to hear some of your thoughts maybe from the Injun perspective of like how does it is it just doomed to become yet another Unreal 5?

**Casey Muratori** (2:10)
Was that a pun? Was that a pun?

**ThePrimeagen** (2:12)
It actually wasn't a pun. I didn't even realize it was a pun until you said it, but is it doomed to become another Unreal Engine game?

**Casey Muratori** (2:20)
Before we attempt to answer that question, I wanted to talk about something you mentioned in that lead up as well, which was you were pointing out fiscal year 2027
And I don't know about you guys, but in my mind, I imagine like Sachin Nadella and Asha Sharma, and I guess I don't know who runs the other divisions there. Do they get together for a fiscal new year's party? Like whenever this year, do they all stay up till midnight and then they pop the champagne and they're like, happy new year. Happy fiscal new year.

**ThePrimeagen** (2:52)
Do they all press the button together? Like when it rolls over, they're like, new filings, SCC, and they press and everybody freaks out.

**Casey Muratori** (3:01)
And then they sing a song that's like old langsime, but it's about, you know, accountability margins or something for some, you know, or whatever.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:08)
Teej, production's down.

**Trash** (3:11)
I don't concern myself with such matters.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:13)
What do you mean production doesn't concern you?

**Casey Muratori** (3:15)
I've shipped 37, nay, 38 features today.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:23)
Teej always makes the mess and I always clean it up.

**Trash** (3:25)
I'm better than that.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:26)
I don't have to be a janitor.

**Casey Muratori** (3:28)
Someone has to be the adult around here.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:31)
Who is that?

**Trash** (3:32)
It's me, your Westlake godfather.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:36)
John Carmack?

**Trash** (3:36)
What? No, it's me, Trash.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:38)
Oh, wait. Are you here to finally get management to understand software?

**Trash** (3:43)
What? I'm a Westlake godfather, not a miracle worker.

**ThePrimeagen** (3:46)
Oh, then why are you here?

**Trash** (3:48)
I'm here to tell you about Seer by Sentry, the world's first AI debugger that actually has access to all of your logs, stack traces, code, commit history and more. Code breaks, but you can get the fixed faster with Seer.

**ThePrimeagen** (4:00)
Who are you talking to?

**Trash** (4:02)
What?

**ThePrimeagen** (4:02)
Build with AI, fix with Sentry.

**Casey Muratori** (4:06)
I think there's a couple of problems here with trying to answer it. We can talk about some abstract stuff, but the biggest problem or the thing that I don't know is, we have no... I don't know any inside stories or anything from the people there and what happened.
So everything is on the table. Everything from literally they just got handed layoff notices, so a substantial portion of the engine team just wakes up in the morning to a thing where someone from HR told them that you don't have a job anymore, all the way to like they were approached and said, look, we need people to do programming on stuff because we want to build out these other properties like Minecraft and Forza or not Forza, that playground has their own engine team. But these other properties we have, a king, we want to put you on these other things and you'll be a centralized engine division. They were like, we don't want to do that. We would rather take voluntary layoff or something.