Things over at Microsoft have been…. rather messy as of late, especially with the growing number of layoffs and funding being pulled from various studios. One of those studios in question being Romero Games, the legendary studio behind the original DOOM and Quake. Romero Games have been hit with the cut hammer and have been put in a very tight financial situation, so let’s get into it.
As we know, the current situation over at Microsoft has been a bit uncertain and tumultuous to say the least, what we didn’t expect was the whole situation becoming bleaker than was initially reported. It was just the other week that the team at Romero were creating a new title when they were hit with layoffs and had to promptly cancel it, leaving many fans of the studio left with concern for the future of the game and the developers involved.
Now here’s the juicy part, Microsoft reportedly met with Romero Games the day before they pulled the funding for the studio and said absolutely nothing about this during the course of the meeting. With this news having been made public, an employee of Romero Games had their say, by sharing that the studio “had meetings with the publisher the day before this happened, there was no mention of it.”, the same employee also carried on to say that the title they were developing, which was an untitled FPS game, was well along in the development progress. With this, the studio is trying to seek alternate sources of funding but for now, it is very much in limbo.
This paints Microsoft in a bad light, especially with how they have handled a naturally heavy studio who have created some absolute bangers. As we know Romero Games aren’t the only studio suffering from the cuts being made, with Rare seeing Everwild cancelled and Turn10 being cut by 50% which led them to rapidly shift from Forza Motorsport projects to putting the majority of their focus on the Forza Horizon series.
One big positive here is that apparently Devolver Digital have reached out to the guys at Romero, so hopefully this gains traction and they will either acquire the studio OR they will supply funding for the new title being developed by the team and perhaps publish the title under their umbrella! Either one could potentially lead to a very positive outcome for the studio and its fans and would be a big win for the community which are all coming together and searching for ways to support Romero Games.
All of us here at the page are hoping that Romero Games find a new source of funding and the studio pushes through these temporary setbacks, but what do you think? Do you believe that this was an unjust move from Microsoft, or a tactical financial decision? Let us know in the comments below!
