Active id Software developer Chris Hays has said that Microsoft fundamentally doesn’t understand art, games, or their business model.
During an interview with Auf ein Bier (via IdleSloth84_ on Twitter/X), id Software lead services programmer Chris Hays, who has worked at the studio for 16 years, discussed the layoffs that recently hit the studio. According to him, one of the biggest problems is that Microsoft’s approach to evaluating game development doesn’t align with how games are actually made or how their success should be measured.
Hays said he has “serious issues with how Game Pass is done,” particularly when it comes to understanding what constitutes a successful game under a subscription-based model. “What’s a sale if you have Game Pass?” he asked, pointing to the difficulty of interpreting reports that describe poor sales when games are also being distributed through Microsoft’s subscription service.
“They don’t understand art. They don’t understand games. They don’t understand that business model,” Hays said, adding that he believes Microsoft needs to think in terms of multiple years rather than evaluating games and studios one fiscal year at a time. He also questioned whether the company’s financial reporting adequately reflects the way games generate value over time. According to him, Microsoft is approaching the industry with a conventional business-to-business mindset focused on financial quarters, fiscal years and stock performance. “Those don’t align with the same things that make a successful game.”
According to the id Software developer, before the Microsoft acquisition, the studio’s primary goal was to make good games, while sales were treated as the responsibility of the sales and marketing sides of the business. Where the prior approach led to consistent success both critically and commercially, he said that, under Microsoft, it become difficult for employees to understand what specific metrics they are actually expected to achieve. “We would love to know specifically what do we need to hit?” he said. Yet, according to him, employees have repeatedly been unable to get straight answers about the criteria being used to judge the studio.
Hays also criticized the decision to cut roughly half of id Software’s workforce, arguing that the value of a game studio lies not simply in its intellectual property but in the people and relationships that make the games possible. “If you cut half of a studio and don’t actually take into account how it’s made, you don’t understand that the cohesion between our teams was what was important, what made us successful,” he said.
