Bethesda cancels John Romero's new FPS, cuts funding for 'several others'

The entire studio at Romero Games is being laid off as Bethesda cuts funding for the team's new FPS.

Yesterday, Microsoft started the process of laying off 9,000 employees across the entire company. Gaming was affected by the layoffs, with around 50% of Forza developer Turn10's studio let go, and whole studios like The Initiative were shut down. New first-party games were cancelled, including Perfect Dark, Rare's new IP Everwild, and ZeniMax Online's new MMORPG codenamed Blackbird.

Third-party partner deals were also affected. Some, like Romero Games' unannounced FPS, were effectively cancelled. Brenda Romero, the wife of legendary FPS maven John Romero and head of Romero Games, shared the news on Twitter this morning that the first-person shooter project was effectively shut down.

While Brenda Romero didn't explicitly reveal the full impact of the news, it was later clarified that the full studio was basically laid off:

"Today I found out our whole studio is being let go because of the layoffs at Microsoft," technical shader artist Leslie Stowe said on LinkedIn.

Brenda Romero's message can be found below:

"We have some difficult news to share. Last night, we learned that our publisher has canceled funding for our game along with several other unannounced projects at other studios.

"This was a strategic decision made at a high level within the publisher, well above our visibility or control."

It's unclear what other third-party partnered projects may have been impacted.

Interestingly enough, the cancellation may not have had anything to do with the FPS project in question. Romero says that she and her team delivered what Bethesda asked for, every time, and that the game itself had been widely liked at the publisher.

"We hit every milestone on time, every time, consistently received high praise, and easily passed all our internal gates," she said in the memo.

The FPS game had been announced in 2022 and would have had online multiplayer set in an all-original new IP. It was also being made in Unreal Engine 5.