Former id Producer Says Game Pass Was Poorly Managed, Questions Doom Launch

Former id Software producer Andrew Willis has criticized Xbox Game Pass as “extremely poorly managed,” arguing that Microsoft’s subscription strategy lacked the planning, consumer understanding and internal measurement needed to make sensible decisions about games such as Doom: The Dark Ages.

In comments from a recent interview, Willis said he believes Microsoft was caught by the broad idea of turning entertainment into a Netflix-style subscription proposition without establishing a clear definition of success for the service. His central concern is not simply whether Game Pass has value to players, but whether its operator knew which results—sales, installations, time played or subscriber retention—it was trying to maximize.

Willis also said Doom: The Dark Ages “should not have been” included in Game Pass. That is a pointed claim from someone associated with id Software, but it is important to separate his conclusion from what is established: Willis said he was not told that the game’s commercial performance was a reason for layoffs at the studio, and he said he can only speculate about why id Software was cut so heavily.

The argument is about incentives, not just subscriptions

Game subscriptions create a different commercial equation from a traditional premium release. A conventional sale is relatively easy to identify: a player buys a game at a listed price through a storefront or retailer. A subscription catalog instead combines many games under one recurring fee. That can lower the immediate barrier to trying a title, but it also makes it harder to assign a precise share of subscription revenue to any one release.

Willis’s comments focus on that ambiguity. He questioned whether teams were expected to drive hours played, installations or user retention, and said he and colleagues did not hear concrete targets they were meant to hit. Those measurements are not interchangeable:

Hours played tracks how long players spend in a game. It can favor experiences people revisit or play over a long period.
Installations show initial interest, but do not necessarily establish that players stayed engaged or that the title persuaded anyone to subscribe.
User retention measures whether subscribers remain with a service over time. It is especially important to a recurring-revenue business, though linking one individual game to a decision to stay subscribed can be difficult.
Premium sales are direct purchases of a game. They can be reduced when a potential buyer already has access through a subscription, although the scale of that effect cannot be determined from player totals alone.

The tension is straightforward. A major new release may bring attention and new subscribers to a catalog, while also giving existing subscribers little reason to buy that game separately. If the company has not communicated which outcome matters most—or how it will weigh the trade-off—developers have little clarity about how a release will be judged.

That is why Willis’s criticism extends beyond a single Doom release. He described decisions about commercial art becoming investor-driven rather than focused on consumers or developers, and said that kind of approach can produce major mistakes. It is a critique of strategy and incentives, not a documented account of one specific performance review.

Why Doom: The Dark Ages is central to the debate

Doom: The Dark Ages, released in 2025, provides a useful example because it was publicly framed as a record launch for id Software. Bethesda said the game reached 3 million players seven times faster than Doom Eternal. That is an impressive player-reach figure, but it is not identical to a sales figure.

Reported platform data at the time indicated that more than 2 million of those players were on Xbox, while around 500,000 were on PlayStation 5. The available information therefore suggests that Xbox access made up a substantial portion of the early player base. It does not, by itself, reveal how many Xbox players bought the game, how many were Game Pass subscribers, how much subscription revenue the title supported, or what sales target Microsoft and Bethesda had set.

Willis said sales did not perform as expected and suspected Game Pass was a major factor. His reasoning is plausible as a business question: if an audience can play through an existing subscription, some of the audience that might otherwise purchase the game may choose not to do so. But that remains Willis’s assessment rather than confirmed causal evidence. Subscription availability may also generate engagement, visibility and customer value that a sales chart cannot fully capture.

The deeper problem is that a “biggest launch” claim can mean different things depending on the metric. A player count describes access and participation. A revenue result describes money earned. A subscriber-retention result describes whether people kept paying for a broader service. A title can perform strongly by one measurement and fall short by another. Without a publicly stated benchmark, outside observers cannot responsibly turn the 3 million-player milestone into a final commercial verdict.

That distinction matters when people discuss the fate of teams. A game being widely played does not automatically mean it met a company’s financial expectations; equally, a game that misses a sales expectation does not establish that its availability on a subscription service was the cause. The available comments leave both questions unresolved.

Microsoft has acknowledged a growth problem

The criticism arrives against a backdrop of difficult admissions from Xbox leadership. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said in May that reducing the service price to $23 was a “good first step” and that staff would need to work toward restoring durable growth. In July, Sharma said the business was not healthy and stated that the company had bet on Game Pass, multi-platform distribution and a broader content portfolio to grow.

Sharma also said those businesses had created meaningful value but had not expanded at the expected rate. That is a meaningful distinction. It does not portray the strategy as useless; it acknowledges that the pace of growth did not meet expectations. The comments align with the pressure behind Willis’s questions about metrics, although they do not verify his claim that Game Pass was internally managed without adequate foresight.

Xbox has also seen 3,200 layoffs. Willis was affected by the July cuts at id Software and described the studio as having been cut in half. He stressed that he had no good answer for why id was treated that way. Any attempt to directly attribute those reductions to Doom: The Dark Ages, Game Pass, or one particular metric would therefore go beyond the evidence available.

What players should take from this

For subscribers, the appeal of a day-one catalog release is obvious: access to a major game without a separate full-price purchase. For developers and publishers, the accounting is more complicated. The question is whether a game’s value should be judged by the number of people it reaches, the subscriptions it helps win or retain, the premium purchases it still generates, or some blend of all three.

Willis’s comments suggest that the uncertainty itself can be damaging. If a studio does not know whether it is being rewarded for a short burst of installs, lengthy engagement or a sales result, it cannot confidently design, market or scope a project around the criteria that will decide its future. That does not mean every game must become longer, endlessly replayable or built around engagement loops. It means the business model needs a transparent way to recognize different kinds of games.

A focused single-player shooter and a game designed for perpetual play may each have a place in a catalog, but they may contribute differently. The former may serve as a prestige release and a reason to try the service; the latter may generate recurring activity. Treating both with one opaque measurement risks confusing player reach with financial outcomes and confusing artistic fit with subscription utility.

There is also a consumer trust angle. Players can reasonably celebrate broad access to a new Doom game while still asking whether the model that delivered that access is sustainable for the people making it. Layoffs make those questions more urgent, particularly when neither the success criteria nor the connection between a release’s performance and staffing decisions are clear.

The present record supports a narrower but important takeaway: Microsoft has said Xbox’s growth has not met expectations, Willis believes Game Pass lacked clear management and measurement, and he thinks putting Doom: The Dark Ages into the service was a mistake. It does not establish that Game Pass caused the game’s sales result or id Software’s layoffs. Those remain unresolved claims in a larger debate over how subscription gaming should measure a hit.

For another look at how platform strategy and game launches shape the wider console conversation, read our coverage of Ace Combat 8’s Hour Zero prequel and its lead-in to launch.