A former id Software producer has detailed the brutal crunch that went into finishing the Revelations DLC for Doom: The Dark Ages, revealing days stretching to 17 hours and the bulk of the expansion built in just three or four months before the team was gutted in Microsoft’s July layoffs. Andrew Willis, laid off the day before the July release, told Insider Gaming that two months of the push saw him logging at least 12 hours daily, sometimes starting at 5 or 6 a.m. and hitting 80-hour weeks, missing time with his son in the process.

Willis described it as “pseudo-induced crunch” — no formal mandate, but an overload of 60 hours of work per week that left developers choosing between shipping something passable or the quality expected from the studio and its audience. Veterans with Hollywood and game industry experience called it the worst they had endured in the Doom franchise. The timing stings harder against the broader cuts that hit id especially hard, with reports of 136 roles eliminated from a studio that had around 185 employees.

The revelations land as co-studio director Hugo Martin has pushed back on claims the studio was “gutted,” insisting the remaining team matches the size that shipped Doom (2016) and that id Tech remains intact through collaborations elsewhere. Willis’s account underscores how the sacrifices bought a polished DLC that dropped right as the axe fell, leaving those who delivered it without a seat at the table for whatever comes next.