Bethesda has issued a statement to Joystiq confirming that they’ve been trimming employees over at id Software.

Obviously they’re not saying why; only that it’s “standard business practice”.

Very much like suing indie developers and playing a high profile game of takesy-backsies through the courts over popular IPs.

“As part of its standard business practice, id [Software] regularly evaluates staffing to ensure it has a workforce that meets the needs of the studio. As part of that process, some id employees were recently let go.”

id Software’s latest release, Rage, was met with a “meh” response, and hasn’t sold very well, but it legitimately looks like this is just normal post-development trimming.

Bethesda reassure the gaming world that it is “still recruiting and hiring qualified developers” for id Software, and that “development work on future id titles continues unabated.”

Future titles? Doom 4, of course.

Doom 4 was announced way back in 2008 and started getting development attention after Rage shipped.

Source: Joystiq

RAGE