"Cherish this DLC with every second you spend playing it. It may very well be the last piece of good DOOM content that we ever get." That Steam review, currently sitting at the top of the Revelations DLC page, says everything about the mood surrounding DOOM: The Dark Ages right now.
The Revelations expansion dropped this week to a "Very Positive" rating on Steam, and players are genuinely enthusiastic about what id Software delivered. Here's the thing, though: the timing could not be more bittersweet. The DLC launched the same week Microsoft reportedly laid off roughly half of id Software's staff, the fifth round of cuts since Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
What players are actually saying about Revelations
The fan response to Revelations has been notably warmer than the reception to the base game. DOOM: The Dark Ages divided players with its slower, more deliberate combat pacing, a conscious departure from the relentless speed of Doom Eternal. Revelations appears to correct course. One Steam reviewer called it "what the base game should've been from the start," while another described it as feeling like "Dark Ages and Eternal had a child," adding that it plays less like a DLC and more like a full sequel.
That shift toward a more aggressive combat style is exactly what a chunk of the fanbase had been asking for. The base game's shield-heavy, methodical approach split the community pretty cleanly down the middle, and Revelations looks to have threaded the needle between the two styles.
The layoffs casting a shadow over the launch
The goodwill in those Steam reviews is real, but so is the grief underneath them. Multiple top reviews explicitly mention the reported layoffs, with players urging others not to review bomb the DLC since doing so, as one reviewer put it, would not give any laid off staff "their jobs back."
The scale of what reportedly happened at id Software is significant. This is not a routine restructuring. Losing close to half a studio's headcount in one cut represents a fundamental change to what id Software is as an organization. John Romero, the co-creator of the original Doom, publicly praised the developers who carried the studio's legacy forward through the modern era. The Duke Nukem 3D co-creator went further, stating that id Software is "essentially dead" following the cuts.
For context, Microsoft has now conducted five separate rounds of layoffs across its gaming divisions since acquiring Activision Blizzard. The fact that id Software, one of the most historically significant studios in the medium, was not spared has landed hard across the broader gaming community.
What this means for the future of Doom
Revelations may be the last major content drop from the team that built the modern Doom revival. That includes the people behind Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, both of which are widely considered among the best first-person shooters of their generation. Whether a meaningfully sized id Software continues to exist in any creative capacity after these cuts is genuinely unclear.
The franchise itself is reportedly still a priority within the ZeniMax and Bethesda structure, with Doom, Wolfenstein, and Quake flagged as focus properties going forward. But a franchise name surviving a restructuring and the team that defined it surviving are two very different things.
For players who want to get the most out of what may be id Software's final major work in this era, the full Revelations DLC complete walkthrough covers Chapter 1, key enemy encounters, and the Chain Spear bug fix in detail. Play it knowing the people who made it put real craft into every encounter.
