Laid-off DOOM developers form employee-owned studio Hidden Horses, with a Running Man-inspired shooter in the works
Hidden Horses, a new studio based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, announced itself in a November 11 press release, alongside a pre-launch Kickstarter page, and an 18-minute documentary titled "Foundation of Hidden Horses." The press release puts the team at approximately 20 developers with extensive experience working together at id Software, while the Kickstarter page describes it as more than 20. Among the co-founders are engine programmer Dustin Land, tools programmer Johnmichael Quinlan, and executive producer Andrew Willis.
Laid off a day before Revelations shipped
In the documentary, Quinlan recalls that Microsoft's July 6 job cuts landed one day before id Software released Revelations, the campaign expansion for DOOM: The Dark Ages, and says the timing felt like an attack. id Software was among the hardest-hit studios, with reports putting its losses at 136 people.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's memo to staff that day struck a more clinical note. It announced around 1,600 role eliminations immediately, out of roughly 3,200 planned across Microsoft's 2027 fiscal year. "Our business today is not healthy," Sharma wrote, adding that Xbox was operating at margins three to ten times lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses. id Software has since said that its remaining team is about the same size as the one that made DOOM (2016).
A studio owned by its developers
Rather than go their separate ways, the developers decided to keep working together. Hidden Horses is built on an employee-ownership model that, according to the press release, pairs shared ownership and democratic governance with clear creative leadership. "We believe the people who create games should have an ownership stake in what they build," said Willis.
Land, for his part, framed the decision around the team itself:
"This team has spent years building games together, and we realized that what made that experience special wasn't just the projects we worked on; it was the people we worked with. Hidden Horses is an opportunity to keep that team together, build something of our own, and create the kind of old school shooters that we think people want more of."
Danger Pay: The Running Man meets Smash TV
The studio's first project, Danger Pay, is a single-player first-person shooter with arena-style combat, set on a deadly game show run by a sinister AI host. Hidden Horses names the 1987 film The Running Man and the arcade game Smash TV as its main influences, and promises fast-paced action with "slick optimization," a pitch that leans on the team's id Software pedigree. The studio has not yet shown gameplay, named target platforms, or given a release window.
A Kickstarter without a target
The Kickstarter page is currently marked "Launching soon" and has already been tagged as a Project We Love, with close to 1,000 followers at the time of writing. According to the page, the money raised would cover the basics of starting a studio and financing a game, including licenses, hardware, and healthcare. The funding goal will be set based on the first project's timeline and costs, and further development of Danger Pay will begin once that goal is met. Until the campaign goes live, Hidden Horses is directing interested players to its website and Discord server for updates.
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