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John Romero Finds New Publisher for FPS that Xbox Cut Funding For, Rehires Some Staff – News
Doom co-creator John Romero had been developing a new first-person shooter at his Romero Games studio, however, funding for the game had been pulled in summer 2025 by Xbox and the studio was forced to layoff employees.
Romero has told VideoGamesChronicle during Gamescom Asia the game has a new publisher and some of the previously laid off staff has been regired.
“You know, last year we basically got defunded, like a lot of people did, and so we had to spend time figuring out what we were going to do,” said Romero.
“Eventually we decided that we can’t keep everybody on forever, and we kept them on as long as we could, trying to find funding to finish the game, keep everybody there, but as time goes on and people leave you can’t build that game again.
“So at some point we were like ‘okay, we can’t do that, so we need to do redundancy and then figure out what we’re going to do with a super-small team’. We were 110 people, going down to five.
“So we went down to five people, we had this big game that we had made. We 100% own everything. We own the name, we own all the IP, all the art, all the graphics, the code and everything. And so I needed to basically design a new game that could use as much of that stuff as possible, to just basically get a head start.
“I just contacted somebody that I knew, and we basically did a deal, and so we have a new publisher. Can’t say anything about who it is, or when the announce is, or any of that stuff.”
Romero Games has been able to rehire 10 people that were “the leads of the different sub-teams that we had” to bring the total size of the team to around 15 people. It would likely stay that way for now as the game will be redesigned and rescaled due to the smaller size.
“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. “The game’s going extremely well, we’re very happy with it.
“I mean, it’s a shooter – that part totally makes sense – but everything else around it is really new, and everybody on the team is so excited. We’re very excited with how the game is turning out.”
Romero said there was no way to get the original plan for the game finished as it required a team of over 100 staff.
“We’re not getting that game to the end,” he said. “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. So it’s like ‘here’s all these characters that we can move over’, you know?
“Art, code assets – I mean, shooters have a lot of common code – so we’ve moved a bunch of stuff over to the new game, which got us a big head-start, starting with really great art, cool weapons, all that kind of stuff. So it’s one thing to finish a 110-person game, [but] with that small of a team it can’t really happen – the complexity is too much. We had that team size because we needed that team size.”
He added, “I’ve had teams of that size [100+ staff] before, but I don’t like it when I’m just in meetings all day,” he told us. “I like to make the game, designing by hand, and that’s what’s happening right now – making every single decision, working in Unreal Editor, making stuff, designing things, directing all the rest of the people on the team.
“It’s a small team, and the people are self-driven because they’re all leads. They know what to do. They all know what the game is. They get the whole thing. We work very closely because it’s pretty much flat.”
Remero was asked if he would ever work with a large publisher again and he replied, “No. Because I really like to be in the game. I don’t like having a bunch of producers, because a bunch of producers means a bunch of people, and right now there’s no producer. It’s great. Don’t need it, we’re all leads, we know how it goes, it’s not complex. So, we’re at the right size. We don’t need a producer yet, and we’re not going to get one. So, yeah, I guess as soon as you need a producer, you’re too big.
“As far as I’m concerned, I love small teams, and it’s way more fun making games on small teams. You can pivot – in hours you can completely pivot everything if you have to.
“It’s also the deal that we have… every publisher has various things that they put in the contract. And most of the time you’re working with the publisher to make the game that they believe will make money, and that your vision is going to hopefully meet at the same point of making money.
“A lot of times the publisher changes what your game is going to be because they have a specialization, or they know something you don’t, and they want to steer you in a certain direction because of whoever they are.
“The publisher we’re with right now has zero creative goals for this game. They’re like ‘you make what you want, we’re publishing it, we’re not going to tell you what to make’. That’s the perfect deal, you know?”
A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
