THE SHORT VERSION
- John Romero told VGC at Gamescom Asia that the shooter Xbox dropped now has a new publisher, which he will not name, and that 10 of the studio's leads have been rehired.John Romero 在 Gamescom Asia 对 VGC 确认，被 Xbox 取消的射击游戏已找到新发行商，但他不便透露是哪一家，并已回聘 10 位原小组负责人。
- Romero Games went from 110 people to five after Microsoft pulled its publishing deal. It now has around 15 to 16 staff and a redesigned shooter that reuses art, characters and code the studio owns outright.微软撤出发行协议后，Romero Games 从 110 人缩到 5 人，目前约 15 至 16 人；新项目是重新设计的射击游戏，复用了工作室完全自有的美术、角色与代码。
- Romero says the new publisher has no creative goals for the game. Neither the game, the publisher, the platforms nor a date has been announced, and PC Gamer puts the number of developers affected by the cuts at 95.Romero 称新发行商对这款游戏“没有任何创作目标”。游戏名称、发行商、平台与发售日均未公布，PC Gamer 称此次裁员影响约 95 名开发者。
What Romero confirmedRomero 确认了什么
John Romero has a new publisher for the shooter Xbox dropped, and he will not say who it is. Speaking to VGC at Gamescom Asia, the id Software co-founder said the deal is done and the announcement is not. "I just contacted somebody that I knew, and we basically did a deal, and so we have a new publisher," he said. "Can't say anything about who it is, or when the announce is, or any of that stuff."John Romero 那款被 Xbox 砍掉的射击游戏有了新发行商，但他不肯说是谁。在 Gamescom Asia 接受 VGC 采访时，这位 id Software 联合创始人表示协议已经签好，公布还没有。“我联系了一个我认识的人，我们基本上就把这笔交易做成了，所以我们有了新的发行商，”他说。“具体是谁、什么时候公布，这些都还不能说。”
PC Gamer reports the same interview and sets out the shape of the deal. Romero Games owns the name, the IP, the art and the code outright, and the new project was designed around reusing as much of that material as possible. The studio is not finishing the game Xbox funded. It is building a smaller one out of the parts. Ten of the old jobs came back after the deal; the rest did not.PC Gamer报道了同一场采访，并勾勒出这笔交易的结构。Romero Games 完全拥有名称、IP、美术与代码，新项目就是围绕着尽量复用这批素材来设计的。工作室不是在把 Xbox 出资的那款游戏做完，而是用现成的零件搭一款更小的游戏。这笔交易带回了原来的十个岗位，其余的没有回来。
From 110 people to five, then back to 16从 110 人到 5 人，再回到 16 人
The headcount explains the redesign. The team was 110 people. It fell to five. VGC reports that Romero has brought 10 people back, the leads of the different sub-teams, which puts the studio at around 15 to 16 staff. "We don't need to be bigger than that," he said. "The game is scoped for a team that's that size and we're just super happy."人数说明了为什么要重新设计。团队原本是 110 人，后来只剩下 5 人。VGC 报道说，Romero 回聘了 10 个人，都是原先各个小组的负责人，工作室因此回到 15 至 16 人左右。“我们不需要比这更大，”他说。“游戏就是按这个规模的团队来定范围的，我们非常满意。”
How it got there is the part he describes without decoration. The project was defunded last year when Microsoft pulled its publishing agreement during a wave of layoffs. VGC notes that former employees said the whole studio had been let go, and that Romero Games denied it was closing and said it still hoped another publisher could take the project on. Staff were kept on as long as the money lasted, and once people left, the old game became impossible to rebuild.走到这一步的过程，他讲得很平实。去年微软在一轮裁员中撤回了发行协议，项目因此断了资金。VGC 提到，有前员工称整个工作室都被裁掉，而 Romero Games 否认将关闭，并表示仍希望有别的发行商接手这个项目。只要钱还够，人就继续留着；等到人走了，那款旧游戏就再也搭不起来了。
What survived the cuts削减之后留下了什么
What the studio kept is unusually complete. "We 100% own everything," Romero told VGC. "We own the name, we own all the IP, all the art, all the graphics, the code and everything." That ownership is what makes the redesign possible: characters, weapons and shooter code carry over, which is the head start he describes. What does not carry over is the scale. A 110-person game cannot be finished by 16 people, and Romero says so plainly: "the complexity is too much."工作室留下的东西完整得罕见。“我们百分之百拥有这一切，”Romero 对 VGC 说。“我们拥有名称，拥有全部 IP、全部美术、全部图形、代码，所有东西。”正是这种所有权让重新设计成为可能：角色、武器和射击游戏的代码可以搬过来，这就是他说的“抢跑”。搬不过来的是规模。110 人的游戏没法由 16 个人做完，Romero 说得很直接：“复杂度太高了。”
"It's a shooter, that part totally makes sense, but everything else around it is really new," he told VGC, describing the result as a complete redesign of a different game rather than a rescue of the old one. He lists characters, art and code among the parts that moved, and notes that shooters share a lot of common code, which is what made the transfer worth doing. Epic's turn toward AI-assisted tooling in Unreal Engine is the setting that redesign is being built in, and Romero says he is in Unreal Editor himself, making assets and directing the team.“它是个射击游戏，这部分完全说得通，但围绕它的一切都是全新的，”他告诉 VGC，并把成果描述为另一款游戏的彻底重做，而不是对旧作的抢救。他列出搬过来的部分包括角色、美术与代码，并指出射击游戏有大量共通代码，这正是这次搬运值得做的原因。Epic 在虚幻引擎中转向 AI 辅助工具正是这场重做所处的环境，而 Romero 说自己就在虚幻编辑器里做素材、带团队。
The publisher with no creative goals没有创作目标的发行商
The terms are why he sounds relaxed. "The publisher we're with right now has zero creative goals for this game," Romero said. "They're like 'you make what you want, we're publishing it, we're not going to tell you what to make.' That's the perfect deal." He contrasts that with the usual arrangement, where a publisher steers a project toward what it believes will sell, often because it has a specialisation or knows something the studio does not.合同条款是他说得轻松的原因。“我们现在这家发行商对这款游戏没有任何创作目标，”Romero 说。“他们的态度是‘你想做什么就做什么，我们负责发行，不会告诉你该做什么’。那是最理想的交易。”他把它与通常的安排作对比：发行商会把项目推向自己认为能卖钱的方向，常常是因为它有专长，或知道工作室不知道的事。
That contrast deserves care. A publisher with no creative goals is also a publisher with no creative stake, and the deal has not been announced, so the terms are Romero's account of them. Publishers do make those calls in public: Ubisoft said this week that no further Assassin's Creed remake is in production even after a successful one, which is a decision a publisher makes and a studio does not.这个对比值得谨慎对待。没有创作目标的发行商，也是没有创作投入的发行商；而且这笔交易尚未公布，条款只是 Romero 的说法。发行商确实会公开做这类决定：育碧本周表示没有其他《刺客信条》重制版在开发中，即便上一款是成功的——这是发行商做、工作室做不了的决定。
Why he wants the smaller team他为什么要小团队
Romero's argument for the small team is about the work, not the money. "I've had teams of that size [100+ staff] before, but I don't like it when I'm just in meetings all day," he told VGC. "I like to make the game, designing by hand." There is no producer on the project and he does not want one: "as soon as you need a producer, you're too big." The team is flat, and the people on it are the leads who already know what the game is. He says they are self-driven for that reason, and that decisions move quickly because there is no layer between him and them.Romero 为小团队给出的理由关乎工作本身，而不是钱。“我以前也带过那种规模的团队[100 多名员工]，但我不喜欢整天泡在会议里，”他对 VGC 说。“我喜欢做游戏，亲手做设计。”这个项目没有制作人，他也不想要：“一旦你需要制作人，你就太大了。”团队是平的，里面的人都是已经知道这款游戏是什么的主创。他说正因如此，这些人都很自驱，决策也快，因为他和他们之间没有中间层。
PC Gamer's read is that this fits his record. His best-known work, from Commander Keen through Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Sigil, came from small teams, while Quake strained id Software and Daikatana had the largest team and the most resources he ever had. That is an argument about how he works. It does not make the layoffs a happy ending, and PC Gamer puts the number of developers affected at 95.PC Gamer 认为这符合他的履历。他最知名的作品，从《指挥官基恩》到《德军总部 3D》《毁灭战士》和《Sigil》，都出自小团队；而《雷神之锤》把 id Software 逼到极限，《大刀》则拥有他历来最大的人手与资源。这是关于他工作方式的论证，并不能让裁员变成好结局——PC Gamer 称受影响的开发者约有 95 人。
What is still missing仍然缺失的部分
Most of what a reader wants next is absent: the name of the game, the publisher, the platforms, a date, and whether the 10 rehires are permanent. Romero rules out none of it and confirms none of it. Gears of War: E-Day's reported 400,000 sales is the kind of figure that decides how much room a publisher has for a project this size.读者接下来最想知道的东西大多还没有：游戏名称、发行商、平台、发售日，以及回聘的 10 人是否为长期职位。Romero 一项都没有排除，也一项都没有确认。《战争机器：E-Day》据报售出 40 万份，这类数字决定的正是发行商能给这种规模的项目留出多少空间。
The confirmed facts are narrow and worth stating plainly: a new publisher exists, the team is around 15 to 16 people, the studio owns its assets outright, and the game is a redesigned shooter rather than the one that was cancelled. Everything else, including whether it ships, is still a plan. The announcement, whenever it comes, is the next thing that can actually be checked. No date for it has been given, and Romero said he could not give one.已确认的事实很窄，也值得直说：新发行商存在，团队约 15 至 16 人，工作室完全拥有自己的素材，游戏是重新设计的射击游戏，而不是被取消的那一款。其余一切，包括它最终会不会发售，都还只是计划。等公布真的到来，那才是下一件可以核对的事。公布日期尚未给出，Romero 说他也给不了。
Sources & reporting limits来源与核查范围
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