John Carmack, former Oculus CTO and co-founder of id Software, announced he’s still willing to put up $1 million of his personal money to help make VR versions of Id’s most famous retro titles—especially now that Microsoft has laid off a bulk of the studio’s employees.
Having left id Software in 2013 to join Oculus as CTO and help kickstart the VR consumer revolution, Carmack is still one of the industry’s most vocal advocates. Even after stepping down as CTO in 2019 and leaving Meta in 2022, he’s continued to push for open platforms and wider adoption of XR.
Last February, Carmack announced he would lend support to VR modding group Team Beef, noting he was lobbying for the team to have the ability to sell “full versions of the classic titles officially on the store.”
“I had some hope, but that was still too small potatoes to make anything happen in a Microsoft company,” Carmack said at the time. Notably, Team Beef has released a number of unofficial VR mods, including much of Id Software’s back catalogue, as well as official VR ports WRATH: Aeon of Ruin VR (2025) and soon-to-release Postal 2 VR (2026).
Now that Microsoft has essentially pared down Id Software though, resulting in what laid-off VFX artist Derek Best calls the size of “support studio”, Carmack is again reiterating the offer, hoping to make officially-sanctioned Id Software VR games a possibility.
“BTW, if the XBOX division is scrounging for loose change under the sofa cushions, I’m still willing to put up a $1M guarantee to allow TeamBeefVR to commercialize the legacy open source games on VR,” Carmack says.
By “legacy open source games,” Carmack is referring to classic Id Software titles whose game engines were released under open source licenses, such as the original DOOM (1993), Quake (1996), and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001). While the underlying code is freely available, the games’ assets, including levels, textures, audio, and other copyrighted content, are still owned wholly by Microsoft.
Acquired by Microsoft in 2009, Id Software has been relatively insulated from Microsoft’s repeated gaming layoffs, which included Activision Blizzard in 2024, and the closure of several ZeniMax-owned studios like Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, making recent cuts at the legendary developer unfortunate, but not all together surprising.
“My ‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month,” Carmack says. “I’m saddened, but I can’t muster anger or outrage over it. I don’t have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft’s perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved.”
Whether Microsoft will actually bite remains to be seen. VR games already make less relative to flatscreen games, which makes it less attractive from a revenue perspective. Still, the company could do a lot more right now to sow good will, as its competitor Sony is taking the brunt of gamer frustration right now with its recent decision to end physical disc production before 2028.
