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id Software has issued a statement following layoffs at Xbox that saw roughly half the staff at the legendary first-person shooter studio lose their jobs.

On Wednesday, a WARN notice filed in Texas reported by Game Developer confirmed that 96 workers had been laid off in Richardson, Texas, home of id Software, with a further 40 remote roles cut. The cuts were part of new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma’s “reset” of Microsoft’s gaming business, which began with 1,600 staff losing their jobs on Monday. Another 1,600 will be let go during the rest of the current financial year. Four Xbox studios are already out the door, with another hot on their heels.

Some have expressed concern that id Software would be unable to lead development on any new games in its current state, and that it might be relegated to support studio status. But in a new statement issued to IGN, id Software said it was now at the staffing level it was back when it made the much-loved 2016 Doom reboot — and insisted it was still capable of making “great games.”

Here’s the statement in full, posted to id Software's X / Twitter page :

Thank you all for the support this week.

While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we're known for. The team today is about the same size we were when making Doom 2016. We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward.

We are focused on supporting each other and the team members impacted. We're going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years, and we're looking forward to seeing you at QuakeCon this August.

id and Xbox are also pushed back on the suggestion that there’s essentially no-one left at the company working on id Tech, the game engine it and fellow Bethesda-owned studio MachineGames uses to build their games (MachineGames is rumored to be working on Wolfenstein 3). Xbox confirmed to IGN that "there are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," and that previous reports that there was only one person left in Texas are "inaccurate."

While id Software currently has no announced project, IGN understands that the studio is prototyping a number of potential projects, with the belief it is still capable of building its own games. According to GamesBeat , id was formulating new game ideas, such as a John Wick-style original IP, a new Perfect Dark game, and a multiplayer / co-op Doom game before the layoffs hit.

Bethesda studios will collaborate more closely from now on, however, and, generally at Xbox, there is a focus on bigger franchises such as Halo, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. As revealed by IGN, in an email to Bethesda staff sent following Sharma's memo on Monday , Bethesda boss Jill Braff said the layoffs and change in strategy “reflect the realities of our industry and business – and our responsibility to ensure Bethesda is operating from a more stable foundation.”

"To be successful in the future, we need to change course,” Braff continued. “We must strengthen our business, return to sustainable growth, and ensure we can continue investing in our franchises and our players. I know that doesn't make a day like today any easier.”

But what does that actually mean beyond layoffs at the likes of id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, and elsewhere at Bethesda? Without naming games, Braff said “to best position Bethesda for future growth, we are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what's next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises and determining the content roadmap that best serves our players and Bethesda as a whole.”

“From there, we’ll align the right talent, technology, and resources across the organization to deliver on those priorities,” Braff added.

id Software co-founders John Romero and John Carmack have both issued statements on the layoffs at the studio. John Romero took to social media to offer affected id Software staff his support , and to call on the studio’s recent legacy to be preserved. “Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein are not easy names to carry on, especially in today’s industry,” he said. “The last few games showed real care, skill and respect for what those worlds mean to people.”

Carmack, however, expressed sadness but not “anger or outrage," questioning whether id Software's games had sold well enough to prevent the layoffs .

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

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Individuals training to become U.S. Navy tactical jet pilots can still get in carrier qualifications in T-45 Goshawk jet trainers , even though it is no longer a graduation requirement . If there is time and space available, they can join future E-2 Hawkeye pilots , as well as foreign student aviators training with the Navy, for whom this is still a requirement, at least for now.

The Navy is separately in the process of evaluating new ways to ensure it can keep providing key carrier aviation training, at least in the virtual realm, as it moves ahead with plans to replace its T-45 fleet. The service’s next jet trainer will not even be required to perform carrier landing touch-and-go training .

TWZ had reached out to the office of the Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) for an update on carrier aviation training plans last week. This followed the release of a new batch of pictures showing T-45s conducting carrier qualifications aboard the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower at the end of June. CNATRA also forwarded some of our queries to Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), which offered additional details about the full ‘systems of systems’ being pursued under the Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) program that will take the place of the just under 200 Goshawks in inventory today.

A T-45 Goshawk seen coming in to land on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower during carrier qualification training in June 2026. USN

“Those photos consisted of 26 student naval aviators from the following pipelines: 17 E-2 students, seven international military students and two strike students,” a spokesperson for CNATRA told us to begin with. “Carrier qualifications are not required for strike students, but if aircraft and deck time are available, we will select a small number of strike students to participate alongside E-2 and international military students.”

“Carrier qualifications remain an integral part of the E-2 and international military student training pipeline,” they added.

“The determination of when a student conducts carrier qualifications is dependent on several factors, including the student’s position in the training pipeline at the time the opportunity becomes available,” they also explained when asked for more details. “More specifically, CNATRA and the fleet determine that a carrier has the deck time and aviation assets available to support training operations, and the Training Air Wings evaluate their rosters to determine if there are students at the right phase of their training where a carrier qualification evolution is appropriate.”

As noted, as part of the UJTS effort, the Navy is already moving to acquire a new jet trainer to directly replace the T-45, which will not be required to perform carrier landing touch-and-goes or similar training called Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) at facilities ashore. FCLP, as it exists now, is structured in a way that “simulates, as near as practicable, the conditions encountered during carrier landing operations,” per the Navy . This historically served as a lead-up to full carrier qualifications.

With carrier qualifications already eliminated from the strike pipeline syllabus, this prompts further questions about what will happen to the syllabus for E-2 and foreign student aviators after the T-45s are retired for good. For most prospective strike pilots, the current curriculum already means they will not touch down on a real carrier until after they are winged and flying a front-line aircraft.

“The UJTS system must be capable of training student pilots to land on a carrier,” Navy Capt. Duane Whitmer, head of the UJTS program office at NAVAIR, told TWZ in a statement. “As [the] T-45 is planned to be operational through 2040 and UJTS is currently going through source selection, any discussion regarding CNATRA carrier qualification syllabus requirements once UJTS is fielded would be premature.”

“We are essentially explaining the same requirement from different angles. UJTS is a comprehensive ‘system of systems’ encompassing both the physical aircraft and advanced simulators,” he added. “By design, this approach ensures the FCLP training capability exists within the overall program, even though the RFP [request for proposals for the T-45 replacement] does not explicitly mandate FCLP to touchdown in the aircraft itself. We are currently in source selection to evaluate how industry proposes delivering this capability across the combined system, [but] any discussion regarding future CNATRA syllabus changes remains premature.”

For years now, the Navy has made clear that it sees advances in virtualized training , as well as automated carrier landing capabilities like Magic Carpet and its successors, as having fundamentally altered the training landscape. The service has also said that eliminating FCLP and carrier qualification requirements will help move student aviators through training faster amid chronic pilot shortages . There is a cost-benefit argument to be made, as well.

Despite all this, concerns and criticism have been and continue to be voiced about the broader ramifications of cutting elements long considered critical to naval aviation training. As TWZ regularly noted, virtualized aviation training environments have become very impressive in recent years, but still cannot be expected to truly replicate live training. It’s also worth pointing out here that the Navy’s E-2 fleets also do not currently benefit from automated carrier landing developments, though the Navy is now moving to change that with a Precision Approach Landing Capability (PALC) upgrade .

“Carrier qualifications demand the highest levels of focus, skill, and teamwork,” Navy Capt. Travis Suggs, CNATRA operations officer, was quoted as saying in an official Navy news item about the training conducted on Eisenhower last month. “Watching our future pilots and our international military students successfully catch the wire aboard the Dwight D. Eisenhower is a testament to the quality of our training pipelines, the dedication of our instructors, and the immense capability of the ship’s crew.”

There remains a window for the Navy to potentially adopt something of a different approach as it firms up the rest of its UJTS ‘systems of systems’ plans. The Sierra Nevada Corporation’s (SNC) proposed T-45 replacement, called the Freedom jet , is still being designed to be capable of conducting FCLP training. SNC has also now partnered with Northrop Grumman and General Atomics on this effort.

In addition, the expectation was that removing the FCLP training requirement for the Navy’s next jet trainer would help open the field to more competitors, including ones based on types intended for operation from bases on land. However, this has not come to pass. SNC is one of just two major competitors still in the running after Boeing dropped out last month . Lockheed Martin, which had teamed with Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), bowed out in April . A team led by Leonardo and Textron is still competing with a proposal centered on the M-346N aircraft . Both the Freedom jet and the M-346N are also notable twin-engine designs. The T-45, as well as the proposals from Boeing and Lockheed Martin/KAI, are all single-engine designs.

It is worth noting here that the Navy’s UJTS plans have already been evolving for years amid repeated delays with the program , which first emerged publicly back in 2020. The original goal was to have a T-45 replacement enter operational service in 2028. The Navy is now aiming to just pick a winning design next year, after which it will take some amount of time to complete the aircraft’s development and begin actual deliveries.

In the meantime, the aging T-45s have faced their own struggles in recent years. This includes a spate of reported hypoxia-like physiological episodes among pilots that led to the development of a new oxygen system . Engine issues have also hounded the fleet . In recent years, there have been several Goshawk crashes, some of which have been fatal, due to a variety of factors. The most recent of these came in May , but the individuals on board thankfully survived.

The Navy’s overall vision for training future aviators continues to solidify, with the new jet trainer being just one component. Just how much training ends up moving into virtualized spaces remains to be seen.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Carrier Qualifications Still Happening For A Few Navy Fighter Pilots In Training appeared first on TWZ .

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Microsoft communications lead Frank Shaw says the 1,600 Xbox employees recently cut at the start of a layoff wave which will hit 3,200 jobs by the end of the fiscal year were not laid off to be replaced with H-1B visa foreign workers.

Seemingly heading off reports that falsely conflated plans for Microsoft to hire H-1B visa employees with the Xbox layoffs, Shaw says in a striking Twitter post , "Lots of bad information out there --let's clear it up."

Echoing Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Shaw reiterates, "Recent workforce changes were made to restructure the XBOX business because it is not healthy." He is quick to stress that, "They were not made to replace employees with foreign workers."

Shaw says "the H-1B figures being referenced are Microsoft-wide visa renewals and new hire applications. They are not specific to XBOX and represent a small percentage of Microsoft's overall workforce. And the majority of roles impacted were not American roles."

These initial Xbox layoffs hit multiple teams and studios around the world, with four studios already shed and Dishonored maker Arkane Lyon in talks over divestment options, and the likes of id Software and Bethesda feeling heavy losses of their own.

The H-1B visa program has faced additional scrutiny under the Trump administration, with AP reporting 2025 plans to overhaul the program. Matthew Tragesser, US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said in December that the program had been "exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers."

Shaw insists, "XBOX is the largest employer of American workers in the gaming industry and the largest American gaming company."

Dismissing apparent criticism of Sharma, who was appointed to a new Federal Reserve job task force the very week she oversaw the dissolution of 3,200 jobs, Shaw adds, "And Asha is an American born, raised, and educated CEO, from Wisconsin."

The Elder Scrolls 6 will be hurt and potentially delayed by Xbox layoffs, Bethesda devs expect: "This has had a crushing effect on morale."

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Early Christian communities in Sweden often buried children in the same grave with adults, but archaeologists have found that these individuals rarely shared close biological ties, raising the question of how medieval people interred their dead.

In a new study, researchers analyzed the DNA of 142 skeletons from three cemeteries in Sweden dating to the 10th to 14th centuries, focusing on collective burials in which two or more people were buried in the same tomb.

"We often assume that adults and children sharing a grave were parents and children or other close family members," study first author Maja Krzewińska , a paleogeneticist at Stockholm University, said in a statement . "In most cases, that was not what we found."

The researchers determined that most burials containing multiple individuals held both adults and children and that the people buried together were usually of the same sex — a woman buried with a girl or a man buried with a boy. But the DNA analysis held a surprise: People buried together rarely exhibited close biological kinship, the researchers wrote.

When Christianity spread across Scandinavia starting in the late 10th century, burial practices became more uniform. Graves were oriented east to west, and people were buried in a simple shroud without any grave goods. Baptized individuals were allowed to be interred in consecrated cemetery grounds, while babies who died before they could be baptized were excluded.

"We have previously analyzed a burial containing an adult and the remains of a fetus, which we believe represents an unbaptized individual," Krzewińska told Live Science in an email.

A photograph of the Västerhus church ruin, Frösö parish, in Jämtland, Sweden, before 1951, where archaeologists have found many burials of children who weren't interred with close family members. (Image credit: Riksantikvarieämbetets arkiv ) These unusual burial arrangements likely point to early Christian traditions. For instance, some of the children buried with adults in the new study may have been unbaptized. Normally ineligible for burial in the cemetery, the children may have been opportunistically interred with an adult to get around religious norms. Other burials may reflect unrelated people buried together in the spring after passing away in the winter, when burial in the frozen ground was impossible.

"We also believe, based on more distant genetic affinity, that some co-burials represent more distant family relations, or even non-biological kin group relations," Krzewińska said.

In early medieval Scandinavia, households often included extended relatives, servants, employees and enslaved individuals, the researchers wrote. While biological kinship played a large role in the organization of society, membership in the local Christian community may have been equally important in determining where and with whom to bury a deceased person.

"Archaeologists have debated the relationships between people buried together in this type of grave for a long time," study co-author Anna Kjellström , an archaeologist at Stockholm University, said in the statement. "Ancient DNA has finally given us the tool we have been waiting for to test these interpretations directly."

We are family

In addition to collective burials of unrelated people, the archaeologists discovered evidence that some families were buried within the same cemetery over several generations. One burial, known as Lady 56, was a Christian pilgrim who anchored three generations of relatives.

A photograph of a pilgrim shell found at the Västerhus cemetery. This type of scallop shell is a symbol of Christian pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. (Image credit: Christer Åhlin, Historiska museet, 2012 ( CC BY 4.0 )) Lady 56 died when she was around 30 years old. She was buried with a rare scallop shell, a symbol of the apostle James, that she obtained after completing a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela , a town in northwest Spain on the edge of Christian Europe.

The researchers also identified Lady 56's kin group, which was of particular importance to the community and stretched over generations in the Västerhus cemetery, Krzewińska said. The DNA analysis revealed that Lady 56's parents, brother and daughters were also buried in the same cemetery, but in different places.

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Västerhus was part of a wealthy landowner's farm from the 11th to 14th centuries, and the cemetery contained the remains of more than a dozen members of a biologically related group, many of whom were interred with members of a different kin group.

The DNA connections between the main Västerhus family and other kin groups in the cemetery support the special status of the main family. These close-kin burials highlight the importance of ancient-DNA testing, as different burials from the same time and region can follow very different traditions.

What do you know about Jesus Christ, the man? Test your knowledge of biblical archaeology with our Jesus Christ quiz!

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As Stargate fans continue to mourn the loss of the new Amazon series that never was ( and fight to see it revived somehow ), many have been reflecting on the franchise's history. Indeed, most of us agree that Stargate Atlantis ought to have continued. It was a mistake for Syfy (then Sci-Fi Channel) to axe the series ahead of what could have been a stellar sixth season, but even before the official cancellation, there were plans to possibly continue SGA in a different medium, plans that may have culminated in a straight-to-video feature film titled Stargate: Extinction .