Former id Software Producer Calls Xbox Game Pass "Extremely Poorly Managed" After Doom Debate

Former id Software producer Andrew Willis has delivered a pointed critique of Xbox Game Pass, describing the subscription service as "extremely poorly managed" while raising doubts about the decision to include Doom: The Dark Ages in its day-one catalog.

Speaking in an interview with Kiwi Talkz, Willis reflected on his experience at id Software, the commercial questions surrounding the latest Doom, and the large Xbox layoffs that affected the studio in July. His central argument is that Microsoft has never made the goals of Game Pass sufficiently clear to the teams whose games are used to fuel it. In his view, that uncertainty can make it difficult to judge a game's performance fairly--and may create damaging incentives for developers and publishers.

Willis did not claim to know precisely why id Software was hit so severely by the wider Xbox cuts. However, he said the studio was effectively reduced by around half and suggested that the performance of Doom: The Dark Ages, as well as its presence on Game Pass, may have been part of the wider commercial context. He stressed that this is speculation rather than a confirmed explanation for the layoffs.

A question of strategy, metrics, and priorities

At the center of Willis' criticism is a basic question: what does Microsoft actually want Game Pass games to achieve? Subscription services can be measured in many ways. A company might prioritize new sign-ups, retention among existing members, total playtime, game installations, engagement over a long period, spending on additional content, or conventional unit sales outside the subscription ecosystem. Those targets can point in very different directions.

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Willis said he and colleagues were not given specific performance measures to hit. That absence, he argued, left developers without a clear understanding of whether a game should be designed to keep people playing indefinitely, entice subscribers to install it quickly, encourage repeat engagement, or deliver some other benefit to the service.

For a premium, campaign-driven action game such as Doom: The Dark Ages, that ambiguity carries particular weight. A game can reach a huge number of players through Game Pass while still selling fewer standalone copies than it may have otherwise. The difficult part is deciding whether the subscriber activity generated by the game offsets the revenue that could have come from direct purchases. Willis' concern is that Microsoft may not have had a convincing or consistently communicated answer.

"When you start making decisions about commercial art that are investor-driven rather than consumer, or even developer driven, you're eventually going to make some pretty big mistakes," Willis said.

He framed the problem as one of long-term foresight. Microsoft, he suggested, pursued the broad idea of turning games into a Netflix-style subscription offering without fully accounting for the differences between television streaming and the games business. Games have highly variable development costs, play patterns, sales tails, platform arrangements, and audiences. A subscription model may be an effective fit for some projects while making the value of others much harder to assess.

Why Willis believes Doom was the wrong Game Pass fit

Willis was especially direct when discussing Doom: The Dark Ages. "Doom should not have been on there," he said, calling that decision a mistake. His argument was not that the game lacked appeal. Rather, it was that making such a major release immediately available to subscribers may have weakened its potential retail sales at a moment when those sales were likely to receive substantial scrutiny.

Doom: The Dark Ages launched in 2025 and Bethesda celebrated the game as the biggest launch in id Software history, saying it reached 3 million players seven times faster than Doom Eternal did. That headline is undeniably significant, but player totals and sales totals are not interchangeable. A subscription service can dramatically expand access, allowing members to try a game without buying it individually. That can boost participation while complicating comparisons with traditionally sold releases.

The platform split made the debate even more complicated. More than 2 million of the game's 3 million early players were reported to be on Xbox, while PlayStation 5 accounted for roughly half a million players. The Xbox figure reflects the influence Game Pass can have on a high-profile launch, particularly where subscription access lowers the barrier to entry.

Willis said he knew sales had not met expectations, though he was not told that this directly contributed to the cuts at id Software. He wondered whether the game might have sold better if it had not been included in Game Pass, and whether whatever value Microsoft attributed to installations, playtime, or other internal subscription indicators ultimately failed to compensate for reduced outright purchases.

That is the key trade-off in the Game Pass discussion. A day-one release can be an attractive proposition for players and can make the service feel more valuable. It can also expose a game to a much larger audience than it might reach through purchases alone. But for a publisher, the model requires reliable accounting: the commercial value generated through subscriptions must be understood well enough to justify the impact on traditional sales. Without transparent targets, employees may be left trying to interpret performance after decisions have already been made.

Microsoft's own growth concerns

Willis' comments arrive after a difficult period for Xbox, during which Microsoft leadership has publicly acknowledged that its games business has not been growing at the expected pace. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said in May that a price reduction to $23 was a "good first step" and that the company would need to work through the challenges standing in the way of durable growth.

By July, Sharma had characterized the business as unhealthy, while noting that Xbox had invested in Game Pass, multiplatform publishing, and a broader content portfolio as paths to expansion. She said those businesses had produced meaningful value but had not grown as quickly as Microsoft expected.

Those remarks put Willis' criticism in a wider context. Microsoft is not simply trying to maintain a subscription catalog; it is attempting to balance the costs of blockbuster development, first-party studio operations, multiplatform releases, subscription pricing, hardware strategy, and audience growth. The company's recent plans have also included publishing another game involving Hideo Kojima, further showing that Xbox continues to pursue major content investments even as it restructures.

Still, from the perspective of a developer affected by layoffs, a strategy's broader ambitions may offer little reassurance if the practical standards used to evaluate projects remain unclear. Willis said he could only speculate about why id Software was treated as it was and that he did not have a definitive explanation for the scale of the studio's reductions.

The challenge of measuring subscription value

The disagreement over Doom: The Dark Ages illustrates why Game Pass remains such a contentious model. Player access is easy to communicate publicly: millions of people played a game, and a launch can become the largest in a studio's history by that measure. But internal business performance is more difficult to see. Did the game retain subscribers? Did it draw in new members? Did players go on to buy other games or add-ons? Would its sales have been markedly higher without Game Pass? How much of that hypothetical sales revenue would have been lost?

There is no single universal metric that settles all of those questions. A smaller experimental game could benefit enormously from instant access to a massive subscriber base. A multiplayer game could gain momentum through a large day-one population. A prestige single-player release might strengthen the value proposition of the entire service, even if direct sales are lower than they would be under a conventional launch.

But the more expensive the game, the more important it becomes to define what success looks like before release. Willis' account suggests that developers did not always receive that clarity. If that assessment is accurate, it raises concerns not only about Game Pass management but also about how Xbox communicates financial expectations to its studios.

What the criticism means for Xbox's future

Willis is not arguing that subscription gaming can never work. His comments instead focus on execution: determining which games belong in the service, how their results should be judged, and whether business decisions are being guided by player and developer needs rather than investor-led assumptions.

For Xbox, the stakes are substantial. Game Pass remains one of the company's defining products, and day-one access to first-party games has been a major part of its identity. Yet the model faces constant pressure to demonstrate sustainable growth while supporting increasingly expensive games. The business must also make its logic understandable to the studios creating those games.

Doom: The Dark Ages may therefore stand as a particularly revealing case. It achieved a major player milestone, but questions remain around its sales performance, the effect of Game Pass availability, and how those outcomes were interpreted internally. Willis cannot provide a final answer on the decisions that led to id Software's cuts. What he can provide is the perspective of someone who believes the company's subscription strategy lacked the planning, communication, and consumer understanding necessary to avoid those outcomes.

As Microsoft continues to adjust Xbox's approach to subscriptions, pricing, multiplatform releases, and first-party publishing, those questions will not disappear. The measure of success for Game Pass cannot just be how many people can play a game. For studios and employees, it also has to be clear how that access translates into a stable, sustainable business.