Not the OP, but Scott Miller said "most if not all" coders at ID were laid off. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/xbox-layoffs-july-2026

I hope the industry will be in a better place in a few years. There is this recurring theme of big companies rolling up little developers and destroying their development culture.

The industry could have been in a better place already if the DOJ hadn't allowed Microsoft to buy up all these studios.

I have near zero hope we'll see any meaningful antitrust action in the future either without a complete overhaul of the incentives in politics.

Xbox div's annual revenue is $23 billion. Its big enough to be its own company and sit upper-mid pack of the F500 on its own. It'd be the number 3 or 4th top gaming company globally, beating out Nintendo even. No reason for Microsoft to not have been broken up by now, let alone have been allowed to buy all the studios they did. Don't forget they also mislead the FTC to convince them to allow the Activision/Blizzard acquisition to go forward, and then once allowed laid off 1900 employees, mostly admin/HR & support, forcing it to integrate into Microsoft gaming and operate less independently.

Yes, it was mentioned in the article. I just don't count a tweet from an "insider" as particularly strong evidence anymore.

> There is this recurring theme of big companies rolling up little developers and destroying their development culture

Why are the little devs selling to the big companies in the first place then? If you’re crushing it as an Indie studio why wouldn’t you stay that way knowing how big tech acts?