John Romero’s studio has found a way back from the collapse of its Xbox deal. Speaking at Gamescom Asia in Bangkok, the Doom and Quake co-creator told Video Games Chronicle that Romero Games has signed with a new publisher for its unannounced first person shooter, and that part of the old team is back on board.
There is a significant catch. The project that Microsoft stopped funding was built by a studio of 110 people. What survives is a far smaller operation working on what Romero describes as a different game altogether.
From 110 staff to five, and back up to 16
Romero explained that the studio held on to its developers for as long as it could while it searched for fresh money, before accepting that redundancies were unavoidable. “Last year we basically got defunded, like a lot of people did,” he said. “We were 110 people, going down to five.”
Since then, Romero Games has “brought 10 people back”, according to VGC, and they were “the leads of the different sub-teams that we had”. The headcount now sits at roughly 15 or 16, and Romero suggested it will stay there for the foreseeable future. “We don’t need to be bigger than that, the game is scoped for a team that’s that size and we’re just super happy,” he said.
Who the new partner is remains a secret. “Can’t say anything about who it is, or when the announce is, or any of that stuff,” Romero told the outlet, adding that the deal came about after he reached out to someone he already knew.
A new design built from the old one
The key to the studio’s recovery is ownership. Because Romero Games kept the rights to everything it had made for the cancelled project, it can carry characters, art, weapons and code into the new shooter rather than starting from scratch. “We 100% own everything. We own the name, we own all the IP, all the art, all the graphics, the code and everything,” Romero said.
He was candid that the original vision will not be finished. “That game we can’t get to the end, because it’s a 110-person game. So this is a complete redesign of a totally different game, but it uses a lot of the work that we had in the previous games.”
Romero also said he prefers the leaner setup, since it lets him work hands on in Unreal Editor rather than sitting in meetings all day, and that the studio currently has no producer at all.
A hands off publisher
Perhaps the most striking detail is how little the new publisher wants to steer the project. “The publisher we’re with right now has zero creative goals for this game,” Romero said. Asked whether he would sign with a large publisher again, his answer was a simple “No.”
As PC Gamer points out, the shrunken team means this is still a bittersweet story, given how many developers lost their jobs when the original deal fell apart. Romero’s keynote at the Bangkok show, titled “Why We Still Make Games”, was billed by the organisers as a reflection on setbacks across his career, which feels fitting given the year his studio has had.
There is still no name, platform list or release window for the game. Fans of id Software’s modern revival can catch up on our DOOM: The Dark Ages review in the meantime, and we will report back once Romero Games and its mystery publisher are ready to show what they have been building.
