id Turns Down Activision, Gets Sued

Gamespot is reporting on an article from the WSJ, stating that id software turned down a takeover bid by Activision earlier this year. Former employee Adrian Carmack, who was let go around that time, now states that his termination from the company was the result of a subtle ousting by the other owners. From the article: "... it is Carmack's contention that the other id owners deliberately rejected all of Activision's offers so they could then fire him, thereby acquiring his shares for a fraction of what the publisher would have paid for them. He claims that his fellow co-owners, which control a combined 59 percent of id, began a death-of-a-1,000-cuts-style approach to force him out--closely monitoring his hours, stripping him of privileges, and denying him access to board-related documents. The other board members also ceased redistributing profits as dividends in 2004 (for the five years prior to that, Carmack had received approximately $3.5 million per year)." Coverage also available from Gamasutra.

Comments

Family feud?

[T.Hobbes]

I'm guessing from Adrien's name that he's related to Allah (aka John Carmack). Is all this drama a result of a feud between them?

Re:Family feud?

[DeepEyes78]

They are not related.

Re:Family feud?

[brsmith4]

RTFA. They aren't related. Sheesh!

Re:Family feud?

[OzPhIsH]

If you'd RTFA you'd see that no, they are NOT related.

Re:Family feud?

[ahpx]

Adrian is not related to John.

Re:Family feud?

[YowzaTheYuzzum]

I'm guessing from Adrien's name that he's related to Allah (aka John Carmack). Is all this drama a result of a feud between them?

The two are actually not related at all.

Re:Family feud?

[dusik]

In case no one said it yet, no they are not related.

Hm... can I submit a feature request to /. for a all-together-now chorus post?

Re:Family feud?

[MBCook]

He's not, it is just a bizarre coincidence.

He was forced out for $11 million. There were deals proposed of buying the company for up to nearly $200 million, and since he owned 40% of the stock... he got shortchanged.

RTFA!

[garcia]

You guessed wrong:

According to the financial daily, Carmack--who is not related to id technical director John Carmack--is claiming that he was forced to resign his position as a director of and artist at the studio earlier this year.

No

[Saiyine]

No, according to the wikipedia article on him, he is not related to John.

--
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Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey buddy, how about making your sig into a real sig? I see enough fucking adverts already without dicks like you forcing more on me.

Re:No

[AaronLawrence]

Please move the advertising to your real signature, so we can turn it off.

Re:No

[beluv]

No, according to the wikipedia article on him, he is not related to John.

The article already states this. Guess you just saw a good opportunity to get some of your advertising seen.

Employee? Part-owner is more appropriate!

[hackwrench]

Actually both should have been in the Summary. Also how does the rejection of Activision lead to his firing?

Re:Employee? Part-owner is more appropriate!

[the morgawr]

He's under contract to sell back his shares if he is ever fired. He claims the other owners refused the offer so that they would have time to fire him, forcing him to sell his shares at a lower price to them and netting the remaining owners more money when they sell.

It's equally possible that this is a fued over whether they should sell. After all, activision did low-ball the buy out price of the company. AC may have upset the other owners by being eager to accept the activision offer.

Re:Employee? Part-owner is more appropriate!

[warmgun]

Also how does the rejection of Activision lead to his firing?

RTFA: "The Journal reports that it is [Adrian] Carmack's contention that the other id owners deliberately rejected all of Activision's offers so they could then fire him, thereby acquiring his shares for a fraction of what the publisher would have paid for them. He claims that his fellow co-owners, which control a combined 59 percent of id, began a death-of-a-1,000-cuts-style approach to force him out--closely monitoring his hours, stripping him of privileges, and denying him access to board-related documents. The other board members also ceased redistributing profits as dividends in 2004 (for the five years prior to that, Carmack had received approximately $3.5 million per year)."

Re:Employee? Part-owner is more appropriate!

[zstlaw]

Actually being forced to sell when you leave a company is pretty common. The company I work at has a buyback clause in all employee option agreements. So far only one founder has managed to keep even a miniscule stake in the company after being ousted.

As the most senior employee of the company I am high on the list of people to be canned when the company goes public. I have even heard rumors that there will be a management shakeup primarily to consolidate management owned stock under the boardmember with controlling interest.

Greed is how things work in corperate America. It is basically expected and I never did have the benefit of making millions a year like John. Just wanted to post how these buyback clauses are a nuisance for us working blokes as well.

*goes back into cubicle*

It's quite hard

[FidelCatsro]

To find sympathy for a guy who was making in excess of 3.5 million per year . Though his claims do appear to have some grounding in reality ,I am not sure if they are a legal grounding though (only a moral one) .

Re:It's quite hard

[darkonc]

No matter how much you may make, being stabbed in the back still hurts.

Re:It's quite hard

[Atzanteol]

I should be so hurt...

Re:It's quite hard

[FidelCatsro]

Very True ,ID could manage a 9-11 Million settlement and it wouldn't really hurt that much .
If i were him , I would chalk it up to a bad decision and just get on with a nice relaxing life with my multi millions .
Court cases can go either way , the only real winners are the lawyers . He could save himself months of stress and just walk away . Though if he is telling the truth then ID need a slap .

Q: Was it his decision to sell the shares

Re:It's quite hard

[the morgawr]

I'd like to point out that if he's been getting 3.5 million a year he probably has a high cost of living. As a result the bills he needs to pay are higher, as would be the amount he needs to save for retirement, than for someone making $50-60 thousand a year. Forcing him to sell his assets at a loss could bankrupt him or at least severely reduce his standard of living. You probably wouldn't want to end up in a situation where you had to sell off most of the stuff you own because you got backstabbed.

The real question is whether the contract in question is valid or not, and if it is, is it applicable to this particular series of events. It's likely that AC will contend that he was fired without cause and that the contract was only meant to require him to sell if he did not perform. Id will probably counter by trying to show that he did not perform his job acceptably.

Right now there is no way to tell who is right. The guy could be compleately incompetent. He could have been fired for abusing employees. He could have been fired because he back-stabbed the other owners durring negotiations. It could be that the other owners are greedy bastards. There are plenty of reasonable explainations for both sides. That's why a court is going to have to work it out. If it was clear-cut, it would be settled out of court.

Re:It's quite hard

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between this guy's income and my household income is about a factor of 30. The difference between my household income and the income of families in some of the poorest parts of the world is also a factor of 30.

So because there are people on this planet that make 30 times less than I do, would you also have difficulty feeling sympathy for me if I lost my job? What does the guy's level of income have anything to do with it?

Re:It's quite hard

[AvitarX]

Well he does have 3 years to get a new source of 3.5 million a year too.

If he isn't worth 3.5 million a year well, sucks to be him, if he is then he has a good chance of finding a high paying job in the next 3 years.

It is hard to feel pity for someone that was living on credit with 7 figures of income, but there is every reason to believe he was and it could very well bankrupt him.

Art direction of Doom3 is pretty good proof of non-performance IMHO (I actually think the environment was sufficiently creapy, but the enemies look like shit and would have been just as scary as DOOM1 sprites).

Re:It's quite hard

[FidelCatsro]

This is why the I included the second sentence as the counter to my first . The moral aspect is the important thing which i was trying to highlight

Re:It's quite hard

[Ahaldra]

I'd like to point out that if he's been getting 3.5 million a year he probably has a high cost of living...

I can see your point, but to me it sounds a little like a 35 year old football player complaining he doesn't get ten million dollar contracts any more.
Just because you earn more money doesn't mean you don't have to budget.

Re:It's quite hard

[Medgur]

Like most people who maximize spending to the capacity of their income (or speculative future ability to pay interest), it was his choice to do so. There was no dire necessity for housing, food, clothing, etc which would require him to spend in excess. If he's in dire need of continuation of these funds then he should seriously think about liquidating his assets and clearing his debts, unless, of course, he thinks he can make another 3.5 million a year somewhere else.

Imagine the wealth he would have if he'd spent/saved his money wisely? Or the piece of mind he could have if he let go of the trappings of social pressure to consume? Hell, he could've funded his artistic passion for the rest of his life if he'd been frugal with his money. I suppose, though, if it wasn't his real passion, and greed alone drives his lust for income, then id is better off without him.

Given the history of the situation this situation reads like a self-spoiled over-spender having their gravy train ripped from them after sorrowly disappointing their business partners. He gambled that he could hold out for more, and got bit in the ass as a result. Now he's trying to back out of a contract he agreed to and negotiated himself.

Stabbed in the back? Hardly. He's a greedy disappointment.

Re:It's quite hard

[rollingcalf]

People who earn millions per year and spend as if they will continue to make millions each year forever are fools and deserve the fate they get when that high income level stops.

The majority of people earning $1 million or more per year do not sustain incomes at that level for more than 3-4 years. Eventually their sports career tanks, they're no longer on top of the music charts, or the company's board ousts them from their CxO position. When you make that kind of money, you need to save as if each year is the last year you'll make that much, or eventually you'll end up just like those broke actors and athletes who were once millionaires.

Re:It's quite hard

[Pharmboy]

People who make $40k a year telling people who make $3500k a year how they should act, what they should buy, and how they should live is NO different than a rich guy telling a working guy what to do. It's no one else's business.

You must have no idea of the kinds of personal expenses it takes in order to make 3.5m a year. Even $250k a year, you have to "spend money to make money", including being presentable to those who might trust you with millions of dollars worth of business.

Another thing is taxes. You DO buy the expensive home(s) as a corporate asset to get depreciation, to offset taxes, because at that level, you are paying 38% of your income in taxes, but your capital gains when you sell is 20%. (think 1.25 million in income tax, plus state income tax if you don't) Tax deductions for interest on your home starts to disappear once you get over ~150k, so yes, you do find ways to move your money around and convert income into capital gains.

Anyone who says that if they made 3.5 million, they would live like they made 50k or 100k is either full of crap, or the concept of 3.5 million a year is simply beyond their comprehension. You would get a CPA, he would tell you to do all the deductions you could, which means expenses or it is paid as tax. Its pretty easy to show on paper how it saves you hundred(s) of thousands in tax per year, legally.

So yes, it can bankrupt someone even if their lifestyle is not so extreme.

Re:It's quite hard

[Anonymous Coward]

That entire post can be summed up as "oh noes, I spent all my money so I wouldn't have to give it to the feds", and that too would have been a choice that he made.

Re:It's quite hard

[darkonc]

From the article, his selling the shares was triggered by him leaving the company. From what I can tell, his leaving the company was trigered by the other owners making his life hell.

If the accusations in the article are accurate, he might be well off to include things like cruelty and poisoned work environment in his causes of action, as opposed to just constructive breach of contract.

This is what I'm talking about RE: stabbing in the back... It doesn't matter how much you may be making, if the people that you have to trust (or the people that you have trusted) make your life hell, that hurts. Even if he wins the lawsuit, I expect that he's still going to be rather unhappy.

Re:It's quite hard

[MrResistor]

think 1.25 million in income tax, plus state income tax if you don't

So he's left with a measly $2M per year after taxes. If he put just one years worth of net into an average mutual fund he could easily be looking at $200+k per year in dividends. That's over twice what my family lives on, and we're doing just fine.

And I very much doubt the CPA told him to just piss his money away. It might not be liquid, but it's still there, invested in something that could be liquidated if he needed it.

Sorry, but he's only going to be bankrupted if he's a complete fucking idiot, and that certainly won't get him any sympathy from me.

Re:It's quite hard

[drsmithy]

Anyone who says that if they made 3.5 million, they would live like they made 50k or 100k is either full of crap [...]

While I can agree with this, anyone pulling in US$3.5m for even one year, who hasn't made appropriate arrangements by the end of that year to guarantee a comfortable standard of living for the rest of their life, is either grossly irresponsible or simply stupid. Pulling in that sort of money for any length of time, they should have investments that will nigh-on guarantee a top-tax-bracket income forever.

While it certainly sounds like the bloke got shafted, it's hard to find a great deal of sympathy for someone who /should/ have more than enough wealth in reserve to live luxuriously for the rest of their life.

So yes, it can bankrupt someone even if their lifestyle is not so extreme.

Bollocks. There's no justifiable reason whatsoever for being bankrupt after earning more money in a year (for multiple years) than most people will make their entire working lives. If we were talking about few hundred grand a year, you'd have a good point - but multiple millions/year ? No way.

You see the same thing all the time with lottery winners - they win multi-tens-of-millions but are bankrupt and often homeless only a few years later. The mind boggles at the kind of bahaviour that can produce this result.

Re:It's quite hard

[yoyhed]

I actually think the environment was sufficiently creapy, but the enemies look like shit and would have been just as scary as DOOM1 sprites

I'm pretty sure the normal mapping, bump mapping, good models, good textures, and the fact that enemies actually look great, completely invalidate your statement. A pixelated sprite wouldn't scare me, at least not in 2005. And I'm fairly certain that you could not have done a better job on the monsters.

Oh, and since you were being a dick, I will be too. It's spelled creepy, not creapy. Dumbass.

Re:It's quite hard

[KDR_11k]

He wasn't the Art Director or Lead Artist on Doom 3, that was Kenneth Scott. From what I've heard his style was more colorful while Scott had a tendency towards the monotone. And since the Lead Artist gets to decide that, the game ended up that monochrome.

Re:It's quite hard

[Richard_at_work]

From what I can tell, his leaving the company was trigered by the other owners making his life hell.

In the UK this is called constructive dismissal, and can be taken to a tribuneral for compensation. Businesses cant wipe their hands of you by forcing you to quit by making your worklife hell.

Re:It's quite hard

[Philip K Dickhead]

Bingo. Give the Castro a cigar!

Re:It's quite hard

[the morgawr]

If you plan on retireing at 65 and living to be 75 most financial consultants recommend planning on having $3-5 million saved up for the AVERAGE american family. I'd love to see how you can streach 10 years worth of savings at a typical standard of living into a life time...

You see the same thing all the time with lottery winners - they win multi-tens-of-millions but are bankrupt and often homeless only a few years later. The mind boggles at the kind of bahaviour that can produce this result.

It's not really that surprising. People who don't know how to manage money have to trust someone to do it for them. It's kinda hard to find someone you can trust if you don't even know what they are supposed to do. This is probably why MOST investment funds and professional managers underperform.

The other problem is that as the amount of money you have goes up so do your basic living expenses. Combine that with the government punishing people when they save and rewarding them when they consume and you get a very predictable result.

Re:It's quite hard

[leland242]

"Like most people who maximize spending to the capacity of their income (or speculative future ability to pay interest), it was his choice to do so."

If I were a fortune teller, I would say that you either don't own a home or that you live in an area where housing is cheap.

Summary

[imr]

He tried to sell out the compagny in order to get 40M$ in the process, he didnt succeed, then the others didnt trust him anymore, tried to buy his shares for 20M$, he refused, got spit out and from his contract he just can get 11M$ instead of the proposed 20M$.
He now tries to get the contract broken to get more than 11M$.
Sucker.

Re:Summary

[BrookHarty]

contracts are only as good as your lawyer can argue against them.

Re:Summary

[Pharmboy]

I think the term you are looking for is "sell", not "sell out". He is the largest share holder and has every right to explore any buyout offered to the company.

The previously refused offer of over $100 million indicate his 41% is worth more than 11 or 20 million. Activision offered $90 million for just the distribution rights to Doom 3 as well. We'll let a court decide, but on the surface, those numbers don't add up and seem to support his claim. If they had offered to buy his shares at market value, then there wouldn't be a story. The market already had a buyer for his stock at over 41 million.

The fact that the others didn't trust him because he wanted to sell the company is not legal grounds for termination nor undervalueing his stock. Again, a court will sort it out, but sounds like they are trying to screw him, for whatever reason.

Re:Summary

[imr]

The reason they do not trust him might be that he prefered to cash out the company instead of remaining independant.

id's success and identity is based on being independant.
They are financially independant, they are neutral on the graphic cards issue giving good and bad points whenever it's due, they are vocal on the patent issue whenever it prevents them from working, even their code is portable and proprietary vendor independant. And they do the game they want, good or bad.

So i understand perfectly that there is a problem when you have such a strong commitment to independance and a 41% shareholder don't care anymore and want to get the money instead.

Also, he had every rights to try to sell the company, as you said, and they had every rights, being 59% of the remaining shares, to refuse.
And then, they offered him 20 millions which he turned down, so he will have some hard times proving they are doing him some wrong when they give him 11M as the contract obliges them to.

Re:Summary

[Anita Coney]

"The fact that the others didn't trust him because he wanted to sell the company is not legal grounds for termination"

Where did you go to law school? Moron-U?! A lack of trust in a partner is a perfectly legal reason to kick out a co-owner in a closely held company like id.

Doom3

[AvitarX]

The Doom3 art direction could not have anything to do with this could it?
This sums it up (scroll down).

Re:Doom3

[the morgawr]

Good point. Esp. since they are having another company do that art and game design for Quake4. It may be that they decided to take Gabe's advice and just focus on engine design....

Re:Doom3

[despisethesun]

Months later those guys basically said they were wrong in their criticisms of the game, that while it looked stupid in still images, it was considerably more creepy in motion. If you thought the game was shitty, that's fine, but don't call on these guys to back up your opinion when they don't actually share it.

Re:Doom3

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they weren't creepy even in motion.

At most they were "WTF they spawned behind me *again*?" or "WTF the lights went out and they spawned next to me *again*" or "WTF I turned on something and they spawned next to me *again*".

Once you got into a stand-up fight you couldnt lose.

Democracy at work

[mc6809e]

What is so unusual about 51% of the people screwing the other 49%?

In the board room or at the ballot, you see the same thing.

Re:Democracy at work

[ivan256]

Uh. The 41% was one guy, and the 59% was 5 guys. This one guy was taking home 41% of the cash while the other people (who probably worked just as hard for it) had to split the remaining 59% five ways... And it seems like they didn't even have a problem with it until he tried to cash out at massive profit for himself and massive profit divided by five for everybody else.

Did he think they'd send him a fruit basket for that?

If you started a company with five other guys, and one of them was taking home $3.5 mil in profits every year, while you only got $300k, what would you be thinking?

Re:Democracy at work

[dootbran]

I guess it depends on how much that guy brought to the table on day 1. More money or more sweat, he may have deserved that 41%.

High Life

[lullabud]

High standards of living do not have intrinsic justification. Pointing out that his bills are higher because he lives the high life really underscored the fact that he is living much in excess of the quality of life that the majority of the world enjoys, let alone the majority of the people in his own country. Even so, none of this justifies underhanded tactics take his wealth. I agree that it is hard to sympathize with a man who makes millions of dollars a year who then lost his job, whatever the reason was. I doubt he's suing for sympathy. If he is suing simply to perpetuate his standard of living then that is shameful. If he is suing because he wants to bring retribution to the people who truly conspired against him then that is honorable.

Re:High Life

[the morgawr]

High standards of living do not have intrinsic justification.

Directly, no. Indirectly yes. In order to attain the wealth needed to support a high standard of living you have to provide a product to the consumers that improves their lives in their own estimation by more than the other alternatives. That is to say, when someone becomes wealthy in a competative market (as opposed to a back room government deal) it is because they earned it and deserved it in the minds of the consumers who purchased from them. So it could be said that a high standard of living is an intrinsic justification so long as it is maintained competatively.

fired him OK, but

[Kanasta]

how exactly did they FORCE him to sell his shares for less than their worth? the market wants to know!

Re:fired him OK, but

[Will_Malverson]

how exactly did they FORCE him to sell his shares for less than their worth? the market wants to know!

id Software is a privately traded company -- it's not like he could have taken them and sold them on the market, and it was probably a part of his contract that he had to sell them when he left the company.

Undervalued...

[Mingco]

If Activision offers $200M for your company, and you reject it because you consider it too low of an offer, then buying out Adrian for $11M is clearly underpaying him for his shares if he has anything more than 5% of the shares. If he's been receiving $3M+ in dividends, chances are he owns more than 5%. Note: Just because the rest of the owners have 59% doesn't mean that Adrian has the remaining 41%. Many of the remaining shares can be owned by the company in order to give away as employee stock options, sell to investors, or various other situations.

Re:Undervalued...

[suraklin]

If Activision offers $200M for your company, and you reject it because you consider it too low of an offer

Id could also be telling Activision $200M is too low because they may not want to sell their company for any amount of money. Maybe the still employed carmack and crew like not working for a huge corporation. And maybe adrien wanted to cash out his chips and sellout.

Re:Undervalued...

[nacturation]

Note: Just because the rest of the owners have 59% doesn't mean that Adrian has the remaining 41%.

You're right, but then again reading the article would have made that clear:

"... the onetime Doom 3 designer, who owns 41 percent of id..."

You are WAAAAY jumping to onclusions

[The Optimizer]

I highly doubt that Adrian immediately spends all the money he has cleared after taxes. Not knowing anything about him, you are making the leap from his disagreement as to the fair value of his ownership stake in the company that he help found, to concluding that he is on the verge of going broke and in desperate need of funds. Good grief.

Now, I do know a little about him. He lives just down the street from me -- literally. His home is very nice, but nothing too extravagant -- A 2200sq ft 3/2/2 in soCal costs more. I've also worked with several of his co-workers, and not one has ever described him or his lifestyle in anything but modest terms. Unless he spends a whole lot more than meets the eye on his Halloween parties, he is most likely not concerned about being unemployed for a while. He is however concerned about getting a fair deal. And you would be too, if you were in his place.

Re:You are WAAAAY jumping to onclusions

[BiggerBoat]

Not knowing anything about him,[snip]

How do you know Medgur knows nothing about him? Sounds to me like he might know more about the situation than a neighbor would.

Re:You are WAAAAY jumping to onclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

He is however concerned about getting a fair deal. And you would be too, if you were in his place.

Nobody begrudges him for trying to make sure he gets a fair deal... it is just that most people don't care. I deal with people who have been shafted on a regular basis and there is no recourse for them. I just find it hard to care if somebody only gets 11 million instead of 15 million. Or whatever the numbers are. Deep down I suspect that the majority (but absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably not all) of people in that income range are callous, greedy, selfish, corrupt, self-centered boobs who get to play by different rules than everybody else. When Donald Trump goes bankrupt he remains a millionaire. When I people I work with go bankrupt they lose everything. When an a rich, powerful and/or famous celebrity gets caught drunk behind the wheel he keeps his Ferrari. When somebody else gets caught drunk behind the wheel he loses his car.

Don't get me wrong - I don't begrudge the wealthy their money: differences in wealth is what powers the economy, just as differences in temperature power a heat engine. I think capitalism is the best economic model we've come up with so far, some people are going to get rich, power to 'em and someday I'd like to be able to quietly retire to my dream house and hire an accountant to pay all my bills so I'd never see one again. My point is that while there are decent, human rich folk out there, for every one of the good guys there is probably a Paris Hilton and at least half of a spitting Roberto Alomar.

In the end, I really don't care about the money struggles of Anna Nicole Smith, MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, or, in this case, some rich-enough-to-retire-forever software guy who will never have a legitimate reason to run out of money. I am much more concerned about the woman who lost her house because her son forged her name on a mortgage application and sucked all the equity. I am much more concerned about the people I (frequently!) encounter who were trying to purchase a house on land contract but woke up one morning to find a notice of eviction on their front door because the seller was keeping their payments but not paying the mortgage.

So Mr Adrian, I wish you all the best, keep a stiff upper lip, hip hop cheerio and all that, but I really don't care.

Re:You are WAAAAY jumping to onclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

I am much more concerned about the people I (frequently!) encounter who were trying to purchase a house on land contract but woke up one morning to find a notice of eviction on their front door because the seller was keeping their payments but not paying the mortgage.

Ummmmmm, why are they trusting an idividual seller and not going through a bank to buy property. It is like buying a used car and trusting the guy to mail you the title.

Back to the topic

[billcopc]

While everyone's arguing about the man's speculative spending habits, let's get back to the point: he got fired so the company could screw him out of his shares for cheap, rather than selling out to Activision, seeing a big boost in stock value, and then having to pay full price for Carmack's piece of the property.

Under the terms of his contract, he is forced to sell his shares for 11 million, whereas if the Activision deal had gone through, they would be worth something like 42-43 mil. Fire one person, get 32 million to split with your surviving friends.. yeah, easy decision for an american.

Be careful what you sign

[Lonewolf666]

A contract that forces you to sell your shares when you're fired? That is an invitation to the other owners to fire you under some pretext, when it suits them to push you out.
The same goes for stock options that are somehow cancelled if you leave the company early.
In both cases, I would decline to invest or insist on cash instead.

Off Topic, but...

[Allen Zadr]

Made even better with the referrer id at the link level.

...But Id Didn't Sell Out.

[p_conrad]

Adrian Carmack might have a good case, if Id sold the company soon after his firing, especially if Activision was the buyer. Since that never happened, I don't see how he can get around the "We decided not to sell." argument that Id will certainly be making in court. Last time I checked, there was no such law stating that a company had to accept a buyout offer just because it was a really large offer.

Now, Id isn't even a publicly traded company, right? So, stock price manipulation is not really possible, even on news relating to buyouts. This whole thing sounds like a case of, "Hey lawyer, I've been wronged. Find a way to get me some money." Couldn't you look at any business venture in hindsight and claim that there were missed opportunities to make a killing? Suing over coulda, shoulda, woulda isn't going to bring you the closure you're looking for.

Anybody who embraces the notion that the company is better sold than held and operated strikes me a rather pathetic Willy Lowman.

Re:...But Id Didn't Sell Out.

[Thrymm]

I would assume it would be for shares of Activision the employees, and Carmack would receive in this deal. Not for Id shares which don't exist.

Re:...But Id Didn't Sell Out.

[p_conrad]

Maybe I'm wrong.

To me it looked like they were talking about shares of Id. Just because a company isn't privately traded doesn't mean it isn't divided into shares. Typically there's some silent partners, and the founding employees own various pieces of the pie. Had Id been on the market, it could be argued that the buyout dance with Activision was a tool to manipulate the price. But, when the news watching public can't set the price, that doesn't really apply.

Re:...But Id Didn't Sell Out.

[{tele}machus_*1]

Every corporation has shares; it's a basic requirement of being a corporation. In a "closely held" corporation, the shares aren't traded on a public stock exchange. The law surrounding forcing out minority shareholders of closely held corporations is a little different than the law dealing with publicly traded corporations. Unfortunately for Adrian Carmack, closely held corporations are given a little more leeway where forcing out minority shareholders is concerned, except where the minority shareholder really gets the shaft in terms of return on share value.

MOD PARENT DOWN!!

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD THE ADVERTISER DOWN!

Damn right!

[metamatic]

So he's left with a measly $2M per year after taxes. If he put just one years worth of net into an average mutual fund he could easily be looking at $200+k per year in dividends. That's over twice what my family lives on, and we're doing just fine.

Damn straight. If I made that much for one year, I'd retire and work on open source software. I don't need a million-dollar-a-year lifestyle.

I hope that...

[slapout]

...he saved some of that 17.5 million from the last five years so he'll have something to live on until he can find work....

They did WHAT??

[RapmasterT]

Carmack further claims that towards the end of his time at the company his hours at work were tracked,

How DARE they track how often he comes to work. The unmitigated gall of those people!!

Sorry, but that one statement turned me against this guy.

I read the article

[hackwrench]

Nowhere does it describe the mechanism by which rejecting the Activision offer enables them to fire him, it merely links the two. Correlation is not causation.