Romero Games' next project loses funding due to Xbox cuts — most of the studio is now laid off

The repercussions of Microsoft's recent cuts to the Xbox division are continuing, with news of additional game cancellations and consequential layoffs.

John Romero and Brenda Romero of Romero Games shared a joint statement on Thursday via Bluesky, confirming that the studio's project and future were uncertain following the loss of funding from a major publisher.

"We deeply wish there had been something, anything, we could have done to prevent this outcome," they write. "This absolutely isn't a reflection of our team's work, performance, or the quality of the project itself. We hit every milestone on time, every time, consistently received high praise, and easily passed all our internal gates. We are incredibly proud of the work being done, and of the talented team behind it."

Following this news, numerous staff began sharing on LinkedIn that they'd been laid off, while also confirming that the project wasn't continuing due to cuts from Microsoft.

John Romero is well-known as the co-founder of id Software and designer on numerous games, including the original DOOM. His wife Brenda Romero is also an experienced game developer, working on numerous projects like Jagged Alliance 2 and Wizardry 8.

Despite no longer working at id Software, John Romero has collaborated a bit over the past few years, with SIGIL (the "unofficial" fifth episode of DOOM) eventually being bundled into the latest console releases of DOOM.

Per Insider Gaming, this latest project from Romero Games would've been published by Bethesda Softworks, and was canceled specifically because of layoffs and budget cuts to Bethesda's publishing operations.

Multiple Xbox projects are no longer in development

This marks four games known to be canceled as a result of the cuts to Xbox. Rare's long-in-development Everwild was also canceled, while The Initiative studio and its Perfect Dark reboot were shuttered.

A new MMORPG from ZeniMax Online Studios codenamed "Blackbird" was also canceled, with an unknown number of staff being laid off as a result.

Personally, I'm extremely disappointed to see this. John and Brenda Romero are the definition of institutional game knowledge, and it would've been interesting to see what the team had come up with that was so eye-catching Bethesda was willing to publish, something that has happened in the past but only on rare occasions.

As always, my thoughts are with those affected, and I hope the untold workers that have been directly or indirectly cut by Microsoft can find new jobs soon.