ZeniMax, Parent Company of Bethesda, Buys id Software

CelticLo writes "ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has completed the acquisition of legendary game studio id Software, creators of world-renowned games such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and its upcoming title, Rage. In an interview with Kotaku, John Carmack said, 'We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured. And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.' The press release confirmed that id's projects will remain under Carmack's control."

Comments

Competition.

[Jaysyn]

Looks like they might have a bonafide Atari stomping machine.

Re:Competition.

[Heed00]

Looks like they might have a bonafide Atari stomping machine.

That job is already filled by Atari themsleves.

Re:Competition.

[andy9701]

The name is still around, but it's definitely not the same company. See Wikipedia for the full history.

Linux native games

[zebslash]

I hope they will carry on using OpenGL and providing Linux native binaries.

Re:Linux native games

[zebslash]

I am surprised. Wolfenstein is based on Doom 3 engine, which is OpenGL. Isn't the alledged switch for the future engines ?

Also, I wonder if Doom 3 engine will be GPLed. id always GPLed their code after a while.

Re:Linux native games

[Unending]

I saw Carmack give a talk a couple weeks ago and OpenGL came up in the Q&A session.
Carmack's take on it was that OpenGL had not continued to be update to take advantage of newer technology and had therefore largely fallen into disuse, though he also said that the graphics code was not that large a portion of their codebase so they could fairly easily write OpenGL and Direct3D versions of their engines with minimal effort.

Re:Linux native games

[sznupi]

Around one year ago Carmack said Doom 3 will GPLed right about now. Few months away at most, supposedly.

Re:Linux native games

[rsmith-mac]

I doubt it will be GPLed that soon given that Wolfenstein is just coming out. If it's anything like how Q3 was handled, they're going to wait until some time after the last commercial game is released. Carmack had to wait for nearly a year to release the Q3 source code since someone new had licensed it shortly before he wanted to release it in 2004 (I think it was for the video game tie-in for UPN's abysmal Game Over)

I intended to release the Q3 source under the GPL by the end of 2004, but we had another large technology licensing deal go through, and it would be poor form to make the source public a few months after a company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for full rights to it. True, being public under the GPL isn't the same as having a royalty free license without the need to disclose the source, but I'm pretty sure there would be some hard feelings.

Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably won't be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before. I am still committed to making as much source public as I can, and I won't wait until the titles from the latest deal have actually shipped, but it is still going to be a little while before I feel comfortable doing the release.

Re:Linux native games

[LoRdTAW]

Do you have any more specific information on the talk he gave? Is there an online translation, audio or video version of the talk? OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows. Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.

I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems. Concider that the Intel laurabee is a bunch of stripped down x86 cpu's, it is nothing more then a cluster of x86's on one die. OpenGL, ray tracing and direct3d drivers will be nothing more than software render engines running on the multitude of laurabee cores with an added raster pipeline. And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written. Pair that with OpenCL and you are really cooking with gas.

Re:Linux native games

[TheRaven64]

That is problematic since it means multiple code paths for different cards

As opposed to DirectX where you have capability bits and have to test whether a card supports a given capability, and have multiple code paths for the cases where it doesn't? Or with DirectX 10 where you have a feature set equivalent to OpenGL 3 but no support for cards that don't support all of this feature set and no way of supporting features on cards that aren't part of this?

You'll see some OpenGL developers deride GL 3 as "OpenGL 1.6" because it was not the truly new redesign promised, but rather some stuff hacked on the old GL

And, mostly, these developers are idiots. There is a subset of OpenGL 3 which is forward-compatible. This is a very modern API. There is a subset of OpenGL 3 which is backwards compatible. This is a legacy API and is deprecated (i.e. all of the fixed-function pipeline stuff, and a load of other things). OpenGL 3.1 dropped it entirely. If you want a modern API, just use the forward-compatible subset, or use OpenGL 3.1 (more or less the same). Or would you prefer the DirectX model where each release comes with a completely new API?

Re:Linux native games

[mdwh2]

OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows.

I think it's fair to say it's fallen behind. I say this as someone who used (and still uses) OpenGL for years. OpenGL is still being developed, but features seem to be coming available on DirectX first, and driver support is more likely to be poorer for OpenGL in my experience.

I thought consoles used their own custom APIs?

I hardly think that games developers are worried about "limiting" themselves to all Windows PCs, and the XBox - just think, they could be writing for Macs!

Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in software if desired. Direct 3D is hardware only.

There are software implementations, but I forget if it's available in drivers by default? Are there any platforms that actually use software OpenGL?

I am fully aware of the fact that yes hardware rendering is the way to go but with today's multicore and specialized CPU's and GPU's we might find ourselves using software rendering systems running on gp-gpu or super multicore systems.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "software" system running on a GPU - that's what we have today. GPUs are already using multiprocessing (far more so than CPUs). For years, 3D programmers have been writing software to run on the GPU ("shaders"). The only thing missing from the old traditional software renderers is writing the code to do things like the rasterization, but why reinvent the wheel doing the boring stuff? Even if rendering moves back to the CPU, it'll be easier to use libraries to do this work.

Fixed function pipeline "hardware" went out of fashion years ago (in fact DirectX 10 has dropped support for it AIUI). Usually when people talk about "hardware" vs "software" renderering these days, they mean using the GPU versus CPU. I'm not sure how you are distinguishing between them, if you are talking about running "software" on the GPU?

And OpenGL has the advantage of being open source so drivers can be open source or developed to take advantage of certain features. Optimizations can easily be made to the driver and open source 3D drivers can be easily written.

OpenGL is not open source (though there exist some open source implementations), you probably mean it's an open API.

You might think so, but that's not what's happened. OpenGL 3 seems to demonstrate the inefficiency of "run by committee" - there's no evidence of features coming on OpenGL first, rather we have to wait ages for them to be approved by the committee. As I say above, my experience is that OpenGL drivers are more likely to be inefficient.

E.g., if someone wants to take advantage of OpenGL's open nature and write OpenGL drivers for my Intel graphics card that runs as well as Direct3D, please do so. But I don't see it happening.

Re:Linux native games

[aztektum]

From QuakeWorld 2008

Carmack also reiterated that the current plan is to open source Doom 3's engine sometime next year.

Carmack: "What we can't do is we can't take time away from [other projects]... it does take effort to get these things together. If we are still heads down trying to get Rage out the door, I'm not going to task somebody with putting together the Doom 3 source distribution. But when Rage ships, you can expect the Doom 3 source code to be coming out."

Sounds like they're waiting to get Rage finalized rather than on any licensees to finish shipping Doom 3-based projects.

Could this...

[Darkness404]

Could this mean that ID is now going to become less OSS/Linux friendly?

Re:Could this...

[westlake]

Could this mean that ID is now going to become less OSS/Linux friendly?

Carmack has said before that the Linux port did not make much sense from a business point of view.

[The port to the Wii almost certainly does make sense. The cell phone. The portable media player.]

He has waffled now and then on DX vs OGL.

iD released game engines that were well past their commercial prime.

Never the games themselves.

The IP that makes a Commander Keen or Doom or Wolfenstein a unique and valuable property.

Bethesda's focus is on the sale of its games - and not on the sale of its game engines.

I can't see any very compelling reason for it to open source anything.

No FPS competition?

[Viewsonic]

Terminator: Future Shock and Skynet would like to have a word with you! Two of my favorite FPSs that most games still can't compare to. They paved a lot of the way for vehicles in a FPS, great depressing storylines, it was 100% pure awesomeness.

I was kind of hoping a new one would come out with the arrival of the new movie.

Chris Weaver

[BrookHarty]

So after reading about Zenimax on wikipedia, it said that Dr. Chris Weaver was forced out of the company. (Dual Doctorates at MIT). And zenimax didn't pay its 1.2 million severance in the contract.

Kinda interesting, Weaver broke into Zenimax's email server and used the copies in court. So the appeals court dismissed his case due prejudice. The other interesting thing is the CEO of Zenimax was in a banking fraud scandal and banned from banking industry by the feds.

Doesnt sound like a great team heading it up. I bet this comes back to bite Carmack in the ass down the road.

Re:Chris Weaver

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet this comes back to bite Carmack in the ass down the road.

As one of id's owners, Carmack has just become a very rich man at a point in time where id's flagship titles are fading from the limelight. Doom 3 is largely considered a disappointment.

He's been tinkering on rocketry and iPhone development rather than pushing the state of the art (megatexture?)

Despite the press release stating that all the key players have signed long term contracts, I suspect Carmack is angling to retire from the games biz in the next few years.

Posting anonymously because I am still a big fan but see the writing on the wall.

Re:Chris Weaver

[verbalcontract]

First, let me just say that I love John Carmack.

The reason I love him is because in the TFA he explains why they did this:

"We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured... They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes."

They didn't sell because of Zenimax's leadership. They sold so they don't have to worry about the publishing end of the business. Zenimax now distributes id and Bethesda games, and since they don't compete in the market, id doesn't have to worry about Zenimax giving them the shaft. Meanwhile, id stays independent and keeps doing what its doing.

Sound familiar?

Re:Chris Weaver

[bronney]

I agree, on a lot of things. Doom 3 wasn't the great "game" everyone hoped for, but the "give me back my baby" part did have me jumped off the chair and turned off the game for a while, and only a while. I jumped back into the game even though it's somewhat boring, it's a piece of John that we can all enjoy. How often you get that from a fellow slashdotter?

Even though the game wasn't that great, it certainly gave me the ooo wow feeling playing on the 6800gt at the time. And understandably but acceptably slow frame rate that's still enjoyable. If anyone followed just a part of what John was trying to do with Doom 3 and the heart he put into it, one would drool on the multi shadows, dynamic lighting and stuff on the screen.

I admit, HL2 was a kick ass game, it was fun, it was fast, and the sunlight was cool. But there's a certain kickassism when you play John's game. To me it's like a "connection" to another nerd that I have absolutely no idea what he talks about 99.9% of the time. And Doom was the only way I can understand a part of him that made the genre. So here's to John, no matter what you do in the future, god bless and good luck.

No Overlap?

[Hatta]

They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.'

What about Fallout 3?

Re:No Overlap?

[larry bagina]

Reconsider with an emphasis on "top-of-the-line" part, not the "RPGs" part.

Re:No Overlap?

[DavidTC]

Seriously, Bethesda has been doing FPS/RPGs with both Oblivion and Fallout 3, which use the same engine.

I don't have any idea how relevant that is to the Quake engine, but to pretend it's totally irrelevant is a bit silly.

Considering that the Bethesda engine is somewhat buggy, what with people falling through to the void and glitching through walls, what would be nice is if future Bethesda FPS/RPGs used the Quake engine for their graphics and rendering.

If I understand correctly, the Quake engine is already packaged for third parties to purchase and use, and other people have used it, so it shouldn't be incredibly hard. And it would let the Bethesda people concentrate on the RPG part.

OTOH, the Bethesda people have gotten Obsidian (Of KOTOR and NWN2 fame) to do Fallout 3: New Vegas, so apparently they don't want to do RPGs either!

Does anyone else find the game industry very confusing? We've got developers and publishers, but they're often the same company, but they'll do things like develop one game and have someone else publish it, and then publish another game that someone else develops, and then develop and publish a game...it's chaos.

And that's not counting all the 'sub' brands that companies like Atari and EA own. And the actual owners of the property the game is developed from.

Someone should make a 'mindmap' java program online showing all game companies, their relationship with other companies, and all games that have been worked on and by whom.

Re:No Overlap?

[maglor_83]

iD Tech 5 is is supposed to be able to do large outdoor spaces just fine.

Re:No Overlap?

[therufus]

It seems like the Quake engines are mostly optimized for indoors rendering, and anything in a Bethesda-style RPG would need to be optimized for large outdoor spaces, with trees, times of day/night, weather, etc.

The first Bethesda game I ever played was The Elder Scrolls - Chapter 1: The Arena. "Arena" was built on the iD Wolfenstein 3D game engine, however they did adapt that engine to include all kinds of really cool, ahead-of-its-time features. Reflective puddles, fog and rain effects, outdoors that synced night/dawn/day/dusk skymaps with lighting conditions, perspective rolling when being damaged, a 400+ city world. All this on the Wolf3D engine!!!!

I find it ironic that Bethesda's biggest cumulative game (The Elder Scrolls, pick your chapter) started off with an iD software engine, and now they bought iD.

Carmack's condition

[Anonymous Coward]

Doctor Carmack's condition is irreversible. Because Carmack's condition is that... he sold out.

Valve and iD, twin snakes

[SixGame]

Their situation was very similar to Valve's before Steam became a viable platform. (ie: struggles with EA/Sierra) But the two roads diverged: We see that Valve's initially puzzling move of developing their own distribution channels has lead to a period of unbridled growth and creativity. iD's decision to innovate only on their core competencies (graphics,graphics,graphics) has lead to the events of today.

Re:Valve and iD, twin snakes

[dunezone]

Wasn't the core income of iD software from developing game engines and licensing them to other companies?

I might be wrong but the last major engine they built and sold was the one for Doom 3, and I don't remember many games that used that engine after that except Quake 4? And that title was repackaged garbage.

Valve on the other hand...well they haven't made a many mistakes, they built a complete distribution system that is the best around by far, they release amazing development tools for their games, and they still release new content for older games like Team Fortress 2 and that was released back in October of 2007, might I add they just released the source files for their official TF2 maps allowing anyone to view how they made them.

iD software has gone stale, they stuck with what worked for them, being the leading developer of game engines and graphics, and that worked when they were the only competitor back in 1993(Doom), 1996(Quake), 1997(Quake 2), and 1999(Quake 3), no game engines could compete with those. The biggest competitor between 1997 and 1999 was the Lithtech engine or the original Unreal, and post 1999, Lithtech didn't power much, and the Unreal was just beginning to shape up to what it has turned into today.

Now in 2009 we have the Unreal Engines which are cross platform compatible and easy to develop for, the Source Engine which anyone can mod with the help of the Valve SDK's, multiple open-source engines, and enough tools, online knowledge, and resources for a company to develop their own engine if they want to go down that path. The Doom 3 Engine is not as appealing, iD was the leader because there was no one else to go to for a quick pre-built game engine, today that isnt true.

I don't think iD software is in financial trouble but they definitely don't have the income like they used to have.

Re:Valve and iD, twin snakes

[SixGame]

I agree. They can't compete in their traditional market due to capital. Look at the kind of money Activison can put behind a Call of Duty production, let alone the marketing. iD, being a fairly independent developer and thus capable of paying for their own development, doesn't really stand a chance when it's competing against a publisher funded project where the publishers have a vested financial interest in the title's success. iD didn't leverage their projects enough so competing with the likes of Inifinity Ward, who used the traditional "publisher funded" approach, just isn't possible. Their publishers simply didn't make enough money off iD's "niche" titles and self-funded approach. iD's previous organic growth provided immense stability and financial independence, but it severely limited how quickly they could expand and thus compete in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Re:Valve and iD, twin snakes

[johncandale]

id has made nothing except tech demos for years and years. Valve has made actual full good games. Being owned by a publisher is not likely to improve Id's games much.

Valve build on what 3d realms did with duke3d, and just went from there, making more and more fleshed out worlds, and encounters, more and more interactive environments. Id just remade Doom 2/quake 1 over and over with better graphics. They don't oven make the best engines anymore (CryEngine 3).

Graphics hardly make a game good, and we are not seeing the huge leaps in graphics we used to.

Re:Valve and iD, twin snakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve on the other hand...well they haven't made a many mistakes, they built a complete distribution system that is the best around by far

Which is really sad, considering how crap Steam is.

Sorry, what?

Having a copy of all my games online, whenever I need them, is an absolute godsend.
And they were one of the first ones to do it! (online content distribution which actually worked)

They've already said that they would release all the games if they ever went out of business (from DRM).

The application doesn't take up much RAM, each game starts up within seconds, and hell, it has a built in instant messenger too?

It's still possible to crack all their games that they release fairly easily.

They are hardly going out of business.

So what don't you like?

Re:Valve and iD, twin snakes

[Blakey Rat]

Where to begin. The UI sucks, with unreadable text in many places. It constantly tells me my video card drivers are out of date when they aren't. Ditto with DirectX versions (it's upgraded my DirectX three times this week alone!) Half the time when you start it up, it just shows a blank white screen and you have to close and restart it to see your games list. The pricing in the store is frequently wrong, and they don't respond to tickets when you ask to buy a product at it's advertised price. In fact, support is non-existant. There is no quality control for games, meaning they'll gladly list games that are ridiculously broken (like Americas Army 3.) There is no auto-installer for mods that I've discovered- you just have to copy the files manually.

Valve gets away with all this because PC gamers generally assign very little value to software quality. Although I don't get wh nobody calls them out on the lack of customer service. I've seen a lot more bugs then the ones listed, BTW.

Perfect Marriage

[kenp2002]

Zenimax with Bethesda makes great games with crappy software.

ID makes crappy games with great software.

Either this is going to be GREAT GAMES WITH GREAT SOFTWARE or CRAPPY GAMES WITH CRAPPY SOFTWARE.

I honestly can't think of a good ID game in the sense of a contemporary game. BRILLIANT technology. Great game engines, but the games themselves were always lack luster. In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

Doom series was nearly devoid of any literary content. It was literally just shoot stuff. Fun mind you but nothing to write home about.

Fallout 3 shows you can have an excellent game structured around bug ridden crap code.

Imagine ID's team doing the coding with the BETTER half doing the rest. Pure magic.

OR A COMPLETE DISASTER AS THEY BRING OUT THE WORST IN ONE ANOTHER.

Re:Perfect Marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of game. Some of the best games have been exactly this. Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Unreal, Halo, Serious Sam, Far Cry, etc. were all "shoot anything that moves" games that only had the most superficial of stories. They are proof that games don't need strong storylines and can rely purely on gameplay.

Re:Perfect Marriage

[Hatta]

Great game engines, but the games themselves were always lack luster. In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

What more do you want from a game?

Doom series was nearly devoid of any literary content. It was literally just shoot stuff. Fun mind you but nothing to write home about.

It's a game, the fun stuff is the point. Literary content is superfluous. If you want literary content, read a book. If you want to have fun and shoot stuff, play a game.

Re:Perfect Marriage

[Pharmboy]

You obviously have never played "Redneck Rampage". I am still disappointed that there isn't a current sequel out. There is something about using a crossbow, with a stick of TNT tied to the bolt, and blowing up a cow, that is entirely gratifying. The pigs that attack you if you pop them with bullet were pretty cool as well. And don't get me started on the bra machine guns...

Re:Perfect Marriage

[Hatta]

I love reading a good book. But all the books I'd describe as "good" are non-fiction. But that's beside the point. Looking to games for "literary content" is like looking to Saturday morning cartoons for great visual art.

Personally, I love RPG and adventure games. Both genres with strong stories. There's nothing wrong with putting a story in a game, but the game mechanics are the point of playing, not the story. You can have a great game without any story at all. You can't have a great game without great game play.

Re:Sooo...

[tnk1]

Actually, if you compare Doom and Quake to Oblivion and Fallout3, you basically have two companies that have really made their names on two franchises. You might think that id is in a better position because they made the Classics, but "classic" is also just another word for "old", or in this case, "not generating revenue any more".

Honestly, Bethesda may not be the industry pioneer that id was, but they're certainly just as successful, or perhaps, even more successful than id in the present time. That's all that matters for a business decision.

Hey, whatever.

[FlyByPC]

As long as I get my next Elder Scrolls fix (and it's still single-player and anywhere near as good as Oblivion), Bethesda can do no wrong.

In the meantime, howsabout an official version of Morroblivion? I'd pay good money for that!

Carmack's Plan

[nevhan]

Sounds like Carmack may be setting things in motion to shift his attention to Armadillo Aerospace.

Next thing we know, he'll be performing secret experiments with teleportation... we all know how that story turns out.

Re:Carmack's Plan

[darkjedi521]

Which story? Quake, Doom, or Half-life (not iD, but originally an iD engine)

Re:Carmack's Plan

[DigiShaman]

The one where both him and his funding get telefragged out of existence. I would recommend he experiment with kittens first.

Re:Id IP and Quake Live

[sanosuke001]

The company is still going to be run by John Carmack. It looks like it's more of a business decision to make publishing/marketing easier and to get a hold of new tech than to merge IPs.

What happened to iD's licensing

[WiiVault]

Perhaps this is OT, but I think it is likely the primary reason for this deal- What happened to iD's engine licensing? Before D3 it seemed 80% of games were iD based, the rest being Unreal. What happened to make iD's engines so unappealing today?

TES 5 on id Tech 5

[DeathCarrot]

They're Raging on about how Tech 5 megatextures can render vast landscapes without compromising performance. I think an Elder Scrolls game would be a perfect showcase for this in action. *fingers crossed*

Eh, not so much

[Sycraft-fu]

Personally, I've been real unimpressed with iD's engine offerings. When Doom 3 came out I was extremely underwhelmed. It was a great example of something that was maybe more technically correct, but didn't look as good. I felt UT2004 looked better, despite being an older engine. I mean the lighting in Doom 3 was a neat technology, but didn't work well in game. You ended up with extremely dark corners because the shadows were all hard and light bounced only once. Also it required some heavy hitting hardware in relation to how good it looked.

UE3 just totally annihilates it and that is still the engine they are using, with minor updates. The sales numbers back it up too. IdTech 4, which is what Doom 3 uses, has been used in like 8 games, a number of them iD's own. UE3 has been used in like 50 games, and UE2 in like 70.

Epic has really out done iD in the engine area in my opinion.

Does id even exist nowadays?

[Xest]

Yes, I know the company is still there, but is the team really still relevant? The company that's there now just doesn't seem to have much in common the id we always knew and loved, largely because of talent drain.

id lost a lot of it's best people years ago, Carmack is still there but hardly any of the greats from the Wolf/Doom/Quake days are still there. Romero? McGee? Petersen? Carmack (Adrian)? Steed?

It seems they lost their key people in various areas, sure people like Romero became laughing stocks when they left because the guy clearly wasn't a CEO when it came to, that doesn't mean of course he wasn't a great designer and developer when working at id. McGee and Petersen - almost certainly their greatest level builders. Steed, their best 3D artist. Even people like David Kirsch who did the Quakeworld netcode that is still the foundation of the netcode in many modern FPS such as HL2.

Carmack was always id's best programmer when it came to visualisation, but the loss of other key characters seems to sum up what id Software has become - a developer of games that are graphically impressive, but hollow beyond that. With the rise of the newer versions of the Unreal engine and developers like Crytek even Carmack's prowess in the graphics world seems to be lagging a bit.

It's sad in a way, I'll always respect id for what they were, but I think the loss of so many key figures was a big deal. I don't mean to detract from the staff working there now, id still has some brilliant people but I think what id doesn't have anymore is a dream team which I think it did have back in the old Wolf/Doom/Quake days.

I'd love to see that team reunite for one more game but that's little more than a dream.

Re:Id IP and Quake Live

[MindKata]

"The company is still going to be run by John Carmack"

Everyone company that gets sold to another company says things like this. My question is, "The company is still going to be run by John Carmack" ... yes, but for how long? ... I've lost count of the number of companies who say this sort of thing and then a year or two later their founders leave saying they are going to pursue new business avenues and new opportunities etc..

Which leaves ID high speed easy to control style of games and ID's attitude to open software exactly where? ... Somehow I don't see their new owners being so open with source code and as for game designs, its easy to make yet another FPS but its hard for the bosses of games companies to see what makes a good FPS more like a sport than a game. The way Quake 3 and 4 games play online are effectively more like sporting games than just FPS games. How many other companies have failed to create such successful online FPS games ... far more fail than succeed. So any company change which risks new management forcing their ideas into games is a bad thing.

Press Escape One More Time

[C4st13v4n14]

Great, I look forward to seeing an extra ZeniMax screen every time I fire up an ID game.