John Romero’s Axed Xbox Game Lives Again

John Romero’s cancelled Xbox shooter is alive again. Speaking to VGC at Gamescom Asia, the Doom and Quake co-creator confirmed that his unannounced first-person shooter, dropped by Xbox last year, has found a new publisher — and that some of the staff who lost their jobs have been rehired.

The story starts in the summer of 2025, when Microsoft pulled the publishing deal for Romero Games’ unannounced shooter as part of a wave of layoffs across the company. The blow was devastating: the studio went from around 110 people down to just five in a matter of weeks. Romero Games denied it was closing and said it hoped another publisher could save the project — and now, that rescue has happened.

Romero told VGC he contacted somebody he knew, and the two sides struck a deal. He cannot say who the publisher is, or when the game will be announced — that reveal is up to the publisher. What he could share is the shape of the deal: the publisher has, in his words, zero creative goals for the game. They are leaving the content entirely up to him, which he called the perfect arrangement.

The rescue came with a rebuild. Romero Games has brought back 10 people — the leads of its different sub-teams — bringing the studio to around 15 or 16 staff, and that is likely where it stays. The game itself has been completely redesigned for a team that size. It is, Romero said, a totally different game from the cancelled project, but it reuses as much of that work as possible — characters, weapons, shooter code, art — because Romero Games owns all of it outright. As he put it: they own the name, all the IP, all the art, all the graphics, the code and everything, which gave the new version a head start.

What kind of game is it? Still a shooter, built in Unreal Engine 5.8, with exploration as a major part of the loop. Romero pointed to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Blue Prince as inspirations for the feeling he wants: players going on an adventure, getting distracted, and just having fun. He stopped short of promising a fully open world, but freedom and exploration are clearly central to the redesign.

For context, Romero is one of the co-founders of id Software and a co-creator of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake — the games that defined the first-person shooter. His studio Romero Games, based in Ireland and run with his wife Brenda Romero, has been chasing this project for years, and was reportedly midway through development when the funding was pulled.

For now, the things to watch are the publisher’s identity and the announcement date — both in the publisher’s hands, not Romero’s. But after going from 110 people to five, the fact that this game exists at all is the story. We will update this article when the publisher reveal lands.