Legendary industry veteran and Doom co-creator John Romero has revealed that his in-development shooter, which was at risk of being canceled following what was almost certainly an Xbox funding pull, has been rescued from the brink.
As spotted by Eurogamer, Romero told a Madrid-based gaming fair recently that his game has “survived cancellation”, although the project has been “basically completely redesigned” from its original form.
If you need a reminder, Romero Games revealed in July that funding for its in-development game (which remains officially unannounced and which may or may not be an Unreal Engine 5 title) was pulled, strongly implying that the publisher responsible for yanking the cash was none other than Xbox.
Romero told the Madrid conference that there were “a really good 110 people working on the game”, and that, while it has “nothing” to do with the game on which the studio was previously working, it “incorporates a lot of the elements” from that project.
It’s a little confusing, but it sounds like Romero’s team is still only working on one game, which is essentially a redesigned and cut-down version of the project which it was previously developing prior to losing funding from a major publisher (probably Xbox).
Romero says the team is “not starting at ground zero” for the new game, and that the goal is to “take pieces out of [the previous game] and put [them] into a brand new indie game”.
According to Romero, he’s “never played a game like” the one his team is developing, and playing it for the first time will be “new” in the way that “going through Elden Ring was a really new experience”. Typical Romero bluster or honest summary? We’ll have to wait and see.
Funding for Romero’s game was pulled at around the same time as Microsoft engaged in thousands of layoffs and Xbox canceled a number of projects, including Rare’s Everwild, Avalanche’s Contraband, and The Initiative’s Perfect Dark.
