Former id Software producer: Doom: The Dark Ages DLC was made in intense months of overtime

# What happened Former id Software producer Andrew Willis told Insider Gaming that the majority of the Doom: The Dark Ages DLC, Revelations, was developed in a condensed period. He says much of the project was completed in three to four months, during which he and colleagues worked long hours to finish the content.

# was Willis gave concrete examples of the overtime: for two months he worked at least 12 hours daily and hit 17 hours on some days. He recalls weeks where he reached "at least 80 hours." Willis described days when he missed seeing his son because of work. Other team members, including developers with 10–20 years of experience, told him this was the worst crunch they had experienced.

# Why the overtime happened Willis framed the extra hours as partly a consequence of scope growth and partly a personal and team decision about quality. Tasks kept getting added during development, increasing workload. He called the decision to put in those hours a "blurry line" — not an official mandate, but a felt necessity when facing a heavy load of work. He said one could ship a barely passable version by doing less, but many on the team preferred to invest more time to reach the level of quality they expected.

# The layoffs that followed In July, Microsoft announced a reset of its video game division that included 3,200 role eliminations across the company. Id Software was directly affected: 136 id employees were impacted by the cuts. Sources later told Game Developer that roughly two thirds of the remaining id staff who had worked on Doom (2016) were laid off at the start of July. Willis described the emotional impact of doing long hours to deliver a product and then seeing colleagues laid off shortly afterwards, saying it felt "wild."

# What this means for studio practices From Willis's account, the overtime was mostly self-imposed or emergent rather than a documented company policy, but it produced prolonged, intense work periods. The combination of compressed schedules, added scope, and team-driven overtime created a development environment that some veteran staff described as unusually severe. When layoffs followed soon after, that intensified the sense of personal and professional cost for people who worked those hours.

# Concrete timeline elements

• Bulk of Revelations development: three to four months, per Willis.

• Occasional weekly peaks of about 80 hours.

# Takeaway for readers Willis's account provides a firsthand snapshot of a compressed development window with sustained overtime. It links those working conditions to later staffing reductions at id Software, highlighting the personal toll on developers who delivered the content under difficult circumstances.