John Romero says the shooter Microsoft dropped from its publishing slate in 2025 has found a new publisher, and that he’s rehired 10 of the people the studio let go. Speaking to VGC at Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok, the Doom and Quake co-creator wouldn’t say who the publisher is or when it will be announced. He did say the game is no longer the one that was cancelled. It’s been rebuilt around a much smaller team.
How a 110-person game became a 15-person one
The original project hit trouble when Romero Games confirmed it had lost funding for the unannounced shooter after a publisher, later named as Microsoft, pulled its publishing agreement during a wave of company-wide layoffs. Employees claimed the whole studio had been let go, but Romero Games later denied it was closing and said it hoped another publisher could save the project. Romero now says the studio kept the team together as long as it could while looking for funding, but staff drifted away and the original game became impossible to rebuild. It eventually made people redundant, going from 110 staff to five.
That left a small team with a large pile of finished work. Romero says the studio owns the name, the IP, the art, the graphics and the code outright, so he designed a new game that could reuse as much of it as possible. “We’re not getting that game to the end,” he said, because it needed 110 people. The replacement is “a complete redesign of a totally different game” that carries over characters, weapons and shooter code, which he says gave the team a big head start.
The rehired staff are the leads of the old sub-teams. Romero told VGC the studio has “brought 10 people back” and that the current headcount of around 15-16 is probably where it will stay, since the game is scoped for a team that size. He added that he’s very happy with how development is going.
What else we know about the game
Romero has been tight-lipped on the design beyond calling it a shooter with “really new” elements around it. In a separate interview with IGN at the same event, as relayed by GamingBolt, he said the game uses Unreal Engine 5.8 and brings over a lot from the cancelled project. He also pointed to Blue Prince and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as touchstones for exploration, describing the feel he wants as players getting sidetracked on the way to a goal. GamingBolt notes he didn’t confirm whether the game is fully open world.
The small team also changes how Romero works. He told VGC he’s back to designing by hand and directing the team directly in Unreal Editor, rather than sitting in meetings. The team is flat, with no producer, and he said that as soon as you need a producer, you’re too big.
A publisher with no creative demands
The deal itself came together quickly. Romero says he contacted someone he knew and they struck an agreement. He says the publisher has “zero creative goals” for the game and is leaving the content up to him, which he called the perfect deal. Asked whether he’d work with a large publisher again, he answered with a flat no, saying publishers often steer a game towards what they believe will sell, and he’d rather make the game he wants.
The story sits against a rough year for Xbox’s studios. Microsoft’s July restructure is a separate, later round than the 2025 cuts that cost Romero his funding, but the fallout has reached close to home. id Software, the studio Romero co-founded, was reportedly hit by layoffs affecting 136 staff.
Who is publishing John Romero’s new shooter?
Romero hasn’t said. He told VGC he can’t name the publisher or give an announcement date, and told IGN that the reveal is up to the publisher.
Is this the same game Microsoft cancelled?
Not exactly. Romero describes it as a complete redesign of a different game for a much smaller team, built on art, weapons and code carried over from the cancelled project. The studio owns all of that material.
How many people are working on it?
Romero says around 15-16, after the studio shrank from 110 to five and then rehired 10 sub-team leads. He expects the team to stay that size.
