The Igloo — Xbox Guts Doom, Palworld Owns the Weekend

Sunday, July 20, 2026. The headline this weekend is blunt: Xbox just cut deep into one of the most respected studios in the business, and the people inside are telling a very different story than the people in charge. Welcome to The Igloo.

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The lead · Xbox cuts two-thirds of the remaining Doom team at id Software

Game Developer reports that two-thirds of the developers from the Doom (2016) team still working at id Software were laid off in the latest round of Microsoft/Xbox cuts. The people who helped build one of the best shooters of the past decade — still at the studio ten years later — gone in a single round.

What makes this land harder than most layoff headlines is the gap between the official line and what the people inside are saying. After reports circulated that id Software had been "gutted," Doom director Hugo Martin pushed back publicly, insisting the studio is intact and healthy. Eurogamer spoke to current and former employees who disagree with that read. That gap — between a director defending his studio in public and the workers living the reality — is a tension that keeps surfacing across this industry in 2026.

Why it matters to players

Institutional knowledge lives in people, not design documents. The developers who shipped Doom (2016) carry in their muscle memory exactly how that movement felt, why the combat loop worked, what made the pacing tick. When those people leave, that knowledge goes with them. It doesn't guarantee the next id game will be worse — but it does mean the craft that made Doom great was in specific hands, and some of those hands just walked out the door.

The bigger Xbox picture

This isn't isolated. The Forza Horizon 5 creative director said this week that Game Pass was "a good idea but it didn't work" as a business model. Xbox is simultaneously removing more games from Game Pass and trying to clarify what an "Xbox exclusive" even means — an admission that even its own players don't know. IGN ran a pointed editorial: "Xbox Is Dismantling Its Future To Rebuild a Past It Can Never Recapture."

On a separate front: Marathon director Joe Ziegler left Bungie just four months after launch. Bungie is a Sony studio, not Xbox — but two director departures in one weekend is a pattern worth noting.

02 · Palworld's 1.0 launch is a monster

Palworld's full 1.0 release is dominating Steam with nearly one million concurrent players. That's the kind of number most live-service games never hit once, let alone after months of Early Access have given the initial hype time to cool.

Our take. Palworld launched in January 2024 into immediate controversy over its visual similarities to Pokémon, hit record concurrent player numbers, got sued by Nintendo, and kept shipping. The 1.0 launch is not just a milestone — it's an argument. Players showed up for this world, for these mechanics, for whatever strange energy the game carries, and they are still showing up in massive numbers. The craft of keeping a game worth returning to is harder than it looks. Palworld is doing it.

Sources: Eurogamer — Palworld 1.0 concurrent players

03 · AC Black Flag Resynced: 3 million copies in one week

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced moved three million copies in its opening week. For a remaster of a twelve-year-old game, that is a remarkable number — and Ubisoft, a company that has had a rough stretch commercially, needed the win.

Our take. The pirate-game itch is genuine, and Black Flag's open-world sailing still holds up in a way that surprises people who go back to it. Three million copies in a week is more than nostalgia math — it's people actively re-purchasing something they already owned, plus a new audience that missed it the first time. The developers are already teasing post-launch support with a pointed wink: "Please play us when GTA 6 comes out." That's the kind of confidence you only earn by shipping something good.

Sources: Eurogamer — 3M sales week one · IGN — post-launch support tease

04 · Cliff Bleszinski opens up, eyes a return

Cliff Bleszinski — the designer behind Gears of War and Unreal Tournament — gave a rare, candid interview this week. He opened up about years of alcoholism, a drinking-related seizure in March, and being four months sober. He is not softening the career story either: "The Gears of War trilogy was largely developed hungover by me" is the quote that tells you how honest this piece is.

Our take. "LawBreakers tripped so Concord could faceplant" — Bleszinski's own line about his shooter's timing — has the ring of someone who has spent a few years sitting with what happened and found the dark joke in it. This industry doesn't make much room for that kind of retrospective honesty from people who were at the top. The piece is worth reading in full, not because Bleszinski is owed sympathy, but because recovery is real and the craft question — whether he wants to make games again — is genuinely interesting. He says he does.

Sources: Rock Paper Shotgun · IGN · VGC

One more thing

Someone built a website that plays Call of Duty voice-chat ambience. Pre-match lobby noise, teammates arguing about loadouts, the low roar of a 2009 multiplayer lobby. You can fall asleep to nostalgic Black Ops and MW2 lobbies in 2026. Whether that is deeply comforting or slightly haunting probably depends on how many of those lobbies you actually survived.

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That's today's Igloo — a rough weekend for studios, a massive one for players, and one honest accounting of a career made mostly by accident. The full episode is up now: listen to today's episode.

Sources: Game Developer — id Software layoffs · Eurogamer — employees vs Hugo Martin · GameSpot — Forza dev on Game Pass · IGN — Xbox editorial · Eurogamer — Marathon director leaves Bungie · Eurogamer — Palworld 1.0 concurrent players · Eurogamer — AC Black Flag 3M sales · IGN — post-launch tease · Rock Paper Shotgun — Cliff Bleszinski · IGN — CoD ambience site