Former Developer Reports Heavy Crunch During Production of Doom: The Dark Ages DLC

According to a recent interview, the majority of development on Doom: The Dark Ages - Revelations took place under heavy crunch conditions spanning just three or four months. Former Id Software producer Andrew Willis spoke about the intense overtime required to finish the project, noting that team members regularly worked between 60 and 80 hours a week to get the downloadable content out the door.

Willis shared details of his personal schedule during the crunch period, stating that he worked at least 12 hours every day for a two-month stretch, peaking at 17 hours on certain days. He described the period as brutal and noted that continuous additions to the scope demanded further development time. According to Willis, the demanding environment required personal sacrifices, with some days passing without seeing his family in order to meet the standards expected by players and the development team itself.

Describing the nature of the overtime, Willis characterized the decision to work extreme hours as a blurry line. While it was not technically an official company mandate, team members felt compelled to put in extra hours because the assigned workload realistically could not be completed within standard hours without sacrificing quality. Staff members with decades of industry experience reportedly described the environment as the worst crunch they had ever experienced.

The reports of heavy overtime arrive alongside broader operational shifts at parent company Xbox, which moved to eliminate 3,200 roles by the end of the fiscal year. These cuts impacted 136 workers at Id Software in July, with anonymous sources later indicating that roughly two-thirds of the remaining staff who had worked on Doom (2016) were laid off at the beginning of that month. Willis expressed frustration over the timing of the layoffs following the intensive sacrifices made by the team to finish the project.