John and Brenda Romero, the husband-and-wife duo behind Romero Games, gave a bleak assessment of the games industry on March 27, 2026, in an interview with Games Industry published ahead of Game Republic’s Dark and Doomy event. Both have been making games for decades — and neither has seen it this bad.
Worse Than the 1983 Crash
Brenda Romero, CEO of Romero Games and veteran designer whose credits include Wizardry 8 and Jagged Alliance 2, did not mince words. “I feel like the industry’s in a really horrible place,” she told Games Industry. “We were there in the ’80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier.”
The 1983 crash was a two-year industry recession that nearly wiped out the North American console market. Brenda’s point is that this time, the scale of human impact is broader. “There are so few people that have not been affected, or their partner’s affected, or they’re worried about being affected.”
John Romero, co-creator of Doom at id Software, echoed her concerns and pointed to a specific absurdity: Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of 2025, and EA still laid off developers at the studios that built it. “I don’t understand what that’s all about,” he said.
What’s Driving It
The Romeros are not speaking from the sidelines. Romero Games went from around 110 employees to just nine after Microsoft unexpectedly pulled funding from a project the studio had been developing, amid the company’s own mass layoffs. Brenda described the downsizing as devastating. “It was really hard because a lot of us had been working together for ten years,” she said.
Their situation reflects an industry-wide pattern. Since 2023, tens of thousands of game developers have been laid off across studios of all sizes — including at EA, PlayStation, and Epic Games, which cut over 1,000 jobs on March 24, 2026, citing a decline in Fortnite engagement. The pressure of AI adoption, soaring development costs, and weakening consumer spending are all contributing factors.
Still Making Games
Despite everything, neither Romero is walking away. John said there is “too much cool stuff to make,” and Brenda expressed confidence that independent developers will keep the medium alive. “There are people like LocalThunk, there are people like Ed McMillen, there are people who are still going to make games,” she said. “It can’t stay like this forever.”
Both acknowledged they do not know how or when the industry will stabilise. For now, Romero Games is running lean and staying afloat — one of the few studios that can say that much.
