By Chris Kerr
Senior Editor, News
September 10, 2026
Executive Overview
As major game studios continue to jettison workers like a falling dirigible ditching ballast, an existential quandary faces the thousands of developers still trapped under the crushing weight of the AAA monolith: stick or twist?
In the contemporary video game industry, the word "job security" feels like a distant fever dream. Even if a displaced developer manages to secure a new gig in an increasingly hostile job market, the looming question remains: how long until the budget cycle runs dry, leadership panics, and the layoff notifications arrive? It is a daunting, terrifying loop.
Increasingly, industry veterans are looking for a way to swerve the cycle entirely. When Tony Garza, the former art director of Doom Eternal, looked around id Software and saw the writing on the wall, he chose to jump. Alongside his cousin and fellow id Software alum Richard O’Neal, Garza co-founded the independent studio Turnkey Games. Their timing proved prophetic: shortly after their departure, Microsoft decimated the historic studio behind Doom as part of a sweeping corporate consolidation that saw thousands of jobs cut across Xbox subsidiaries.
Turnkey Games represents a growing faction of AAA refugees who are trading the gilded cages of massive publishers for the high-wire act of indie development. In Dallas, Texas, Garza and O’Neal are crafting Apart, a bizarre third-person horror adventure where players traverse a post-apocalyptic world in the guise of a nimble severed arm and a modular zombie child. Yet, bringing any project to market is a miracle in itself, forcing these industry veterans to fundamentally rewire how they think about budgets, scope, and game design.
This is the story of how two veterans traded corporate stability for creative freedom, mastering the art of survival in an industry tearing itself apart at the seams.
Detailed Chronology: The Anatomy of a Corporate Exodus
The warning signs at id Software were not subtle to those working on the inside. For years, the studio had operated under the protective umbrella of ZeniMax Media, eventually being absorbed by Microsoft following its massive $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax in 2021. For a time, it business as usual. But as the macroeconomic climate shifted and tech giants began demanding impossible profit margins, the culture inside these corporate-owned developers began to curdle.
"We felt increasingly disconnected from some of the values and decisions we were seeing around us," Garza reflected in an interview with Game Developer, detailing the atmosphere that preceded his departure. "The direction of the industry in general prompted us to build something on our own."
That sentiment was prophetic. Earlier this year, Microsoft enacted sweeping reductions across its gaming division, confirming plans to make 3,200 people redundant before the end of the fiscal year. Among the casualties was the core team at id Software, with reports indicating that roughly half of the historic studio’s workforce was let go in a single stroke.
Before the axe fell, Garza and O’Neal had already made their exit. Recognizing that the corporate safety net was becoming an illusion, they laid the groundwork for Turnkey Games. Establishing a lean, independent studio in Dallas, they sought to strip away the bloated infrastructure that plagues modern game development. They weren’t running away from work; they were running toward autonomy.
However, escaping the corporate machine meant trading one set of monumental challenges for another. Without a publisher footing the bill or an HR department handling benefits, Garza and O’Neal had to learn the realities of running a business from scratch—all while conceptualizing a deeply idiosyncratic horror title.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Scale of the AAA Crisis
To understand why studios like Turnkey Games are popping up across the globe, one must examine the staggering macroeconomic pressures currently dismantling the AAA games sector.
The industry is caught in a multi-pronged crisis characterized by:
- Exploding Budgets: Modern AAA titles routinely cost upwards of $200 million to $400 million to develop, requiring millions of sales just to break even.
- Unprecedented Layoffs: Over the past three years, tens of thousands of developers have lost their jobs across companies like Microsoft, Sony, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Embracer Group.
- Corporate Risk Aversion: As development costs skyrocket, publishers become increasingly terrified of taking creative risks, leading to a relentless cycle of sequels, remakes, and live-service gambles that frequently fail.
- Unionization and Labor Backlash: Displaced and overworked developers are increasingly pushing back, organizing historic union contracts—such as the recent landmark agreement ratified by 1,900 Blizzard workers—and filing union-busting lawsuits, as seen with Rockstar workers rallying in Glasgow.
Against this turbulent backdrop, the indie sector has transformed from a quirky alternative into a vital sanctuary for displaced talent. Yet, launching an indie studio in a saturated market requires ruthless financial discipline.
Turnkey Games chose to bootstrap their operations entirely to keep overhead costs as low as humanly possible. "We built the team gradually and planned development so we could sustain progress without taking on unnecessary risk," Garza explained. By funding the early stages themselves, O’Neal noted that the fledgling company avoided the trap of immediately having to pitch publishers just to survive the prototyping phase.
"Smart spending can buy you time—and that’s a hugely valuable commodity," O’Neal said. "Most of the money went directly into making the game, development equipment, software, contractors where we needed specialized help, business and legal expenses, and eventually marketing. We have tried to keep the company lean. We are not spending money on an office or building a huge team before the game can support it. The goal has always been to put as much of the budget on the screen as possible."
Official Statements & Industry Philosophy: Unlearning AAA
Transitioning from a massive, resource-heavy environment like id Software to a lean two-person operation requires a psychological transformation. For Garza and O’Neal, it meant unlearning decades of institutional habits designed for multi-year, multi-hundred-person productions.
"At a large studio, you often build tools and systems that need to support many developers, multiple platforms, and years of production," O’Neal explained. "That makes sense in that environment. On an indie game, that same approach can become unnecessary engineering work. I had to become much more comfortable with finding the simplest solution that delivers the intended player experience. It still needs to be reliable, but it does not always need to be a universal framework."
O’Neal noted that AAA production frequently operates under the assumption that every game system must support every possible gameplay scenario. In short: bigger is better. But that philosophy, he warns, will completely bury an indie studio. Instead, indie developers must focus entirely on what makes their project uniquely compelling.
Garza faced a similar psychological hurdle regarding his own perfectionism. In indie production, he realized, momentum is everything.
"Not everything needs to be perfect, and sometimes ‘good enough’ is ideal if it allows you to keep moving forward. Work fast and iterate," he stressed.
At the same time, their decade-plus tenure at id Software imparted invaluable lessons in craftsmanship and focus. Garza noted that his time in leadership instilled a relentless questioning of design decisions: Is the game better for it? Will the player notice? Will they care?
"If the answer is no, then it’s worth questioning if that feature, system, or polish pass is really the best use of time," Garza said. "Development taught me the value of craftsmanship. While an indie team doesn’t have those same resources, that mindset of making sure every decision serves the player carries over."
Furthermore, O’Neal emphasized that franchises like Doom achieve legendary status precisely because they do not try to appeal to everyone. Finding a distinct niche and leaning into it with absolute conviction is a lesson both founders carried into the development of Apart.
Future Outlook: The Rewards and Perils of Going Indie
As Turnkey Games marches toward the eventual release of Apart, the founders are under no illusions that the indie path is a frictionless paradise. While they have escaped the perpetual anxiety of corporate downsizing, the nature of the risk has simply shifted.
"At a large company, even when development is difficult, there is an established structure around you," O’Neal reflected. "Going indie means the creative, technical, and financial risks become much more personal. You are also responsible for far more than making the game. You have to think about contracts, marketing, trailers, platform requirements, budgets, hiring, and whether the decisions you are making today will still make sense a year from now."
Yet, the trade-off is deeply fulfilling. "The most rewarding part is the ownership," O’Neal continued. "We can make decisions quickly, follow ideas we believe in, and build a game that feels personal to us. There is a direct connection between the work we do and what players eventually see. Seeing Apart develop from an unusual idea into a real game with its own identity has been incredibly rewarding. Every milestone feels meaningful because we know exactly what it took to reach it."
For Garza, the relentless wave of layoffs at Microsoft and other tech giants serves as a daily reminder that they made the correct choice, harrowing though the journey may be.
"After seeing so many people I worked with laid off at id Software, it reinforced that we made the right decision to start something on our own," Garza concluded. "We’re honestly still learning about indie development everyday as we move towards ship, and I will say going indie isn’t the right path for everyone. It comes with a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and you have to be comfortable wearing a lot of different hats."
"That said, if you’ve always wanted to build something of your own, it can also be incredibly rewarding. My advice would be to start small, scope realistically while assuming feature growth, and focus on actually finishing. Don’t spend years chasing perfection or you will run out of budget. Ship a good game, learn from it, and build from there. This has been our approach."
As the AAA industry continues its erratic dance of expansion and contraction, the blueprint laid down by Turnkey Games may well become the survival guide for a generation of developers eager to reclaim their craft.
About the Author
Chris Kerr is a Senior Editor of News for GameDeveloper.com and an award-winning reporter with over a decade of experience covering the video game industry. His work has appeared in publications including Edge, Stuff, Wireframe, International Business Times, and PocketGamer.biz. He has reported live from major industry conventions worldwide, including GDC, Gamescom, PAX, and Develop:Brighton.
