Doom creator bought by Bethesda

Id Software, the famed independent game developer behind Doom and Quake, has been sold to ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. The acquisition marks the end of id's existence as one of the game industry's few remaining large, successful indie dev houses. Both companies, however, promise to keep the status …

[Brian 29]

quake engine for new fallout/elder scrolls?

Maybe they'll use one of the quake engines for the new elder scrolls/fallout games? Maybe then they would be so buggy...

[Anonymous Coward]

@brian 29

So buggy?

you mean you want to play a game with more bugs in it? eldeer scrolls 4 was fairly polished but fallout was really buggy as it is, why would making it worse be a good thing?

[MeRp]

And the award...

for Highest Ratio of buzzwords to content for a single statement goes to....

John Carmack, with an infinite ratio, having not said anything of meaning in several sentences.

[Ron 9]

Carmack to focus on Armadillo Aerospace?

I've been wondering for a while now when John Carmack would officially change his focus from id Software to Armadillo Aerospace. That's where all his passion's been in the past decade.

[Chris Hedley]

TES V with a decent engine...? Doom 4 with decent levels?

Heaven: id writes the engine, Beth do the levels.

Hell: Beth writes the engine, id do the levels.

[Inachu]

Wooo Hoooo!

I live near Bethesda Md

I should drop by and get a grand tour. :-)

[James 55]

Busy-ness talk

"This puts id Software in a wonderful position going forward," said id co-founder John Carmack

OMG he said "going forward" shoot him!

[Gilbert Wham]

@brian 29

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of it THAT way round. You know, Bethesda actually making something that, you know, *works*. Interesting...

[Horridbloke]

So what?

When did id last produce a title of consequence? Really?

Their game engines have been important but the titles? I think the last cool thing was Quake 2 and that's a long time ago.

[Annihilator]

@Horridbloke

Quake 3. Nuff said

[Will 28]

while enabling forward looking research?

is there much backward looking research? while history has its place, I'd hope we aren't trying to document our fps chronicles quite yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

PR Shills

That was not a John Carmack quote. People who write nazi killer ego shooters and drive fast cars and rocket vehicles in their free time don't talk like that. John, fire that talentless hack of a PR shill and do your own quotes in press releases!

[Andy 97]

He said going forward

"This puts id Software in a wonderful position going forward,"

I always cringe when anyone actually says this.

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail the great myth that is Carmack

Maybe the guys at id have realised that there's only so many times you can release the SAME GAME with a different engine before people get wise to it.

I remember talking to one of the nVidia engineers who were helping the guys at id to get Carmack's normal mapping working before E3 in 2003 and the decided to pull the demo because he (Carmack) couldn't get it to work fast enough. Some less that complementary things were being said about the so called "great man" in that discussion, as I remember.

I also remember the public dissing he gave multi-core processor technologies when the Cell processor was announced, and guess who was on the 360 design advisory board. That's right, Carmack....and oh look, the xbox 360 has multiple processor cores which are completely crippled.

Yay...all hail John Carmack...a dinosaur from a soon to be extinct age.

[dunncha]

Quake, Quake2, Quake3, QuakeLive

Ahh Quake. I nearly failed my degree because of Quake.

Quake2 a little wobbly

Quake3 Outstanding

And now QuakeLive. A full version of Quake3 available online for free. Fantastic

Suck on this.... because that is what you will get if you turn up to QuakeLive.

Oh yes there was a story attached to this: Anything which make id more secure: Good! Interfere: BAD.

That's all

[Peter Kay]

Excellent

id have decent tech at times. Bethesda have great environments and famously stodgy (and buggy) game engines.

Given that id haven't created anything decent since Quake 2, even if technically their game engines were up to scratch, this could well be an excellent merger.

[Not That Andrew]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bethesda ruins everything it touches.

[Ed Blackshaw]

Ooh, ooh, ooh!

"We will now be able to grow and extend all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done in the service of all of them"

Bingo!

[yossarianuk]

linux support?

I wonder how this will effect ID's Linux support?

They are one of the few companies that pretty much always support linux...

I wonder if Bethesda will give them the freedom to do this now.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Not that Andrew

Bethesda ruin everything? You should talk to my Missus! After nearly 6 months of playing Fallout 3, she is just about ready to put my clothes in bin bags and dump them on the front lawn! Bethesda certainly have a lot to answer for in our house!

[Yorkshirepudding]

IDDQD?

sadly god mode couldnt save ID

RIP guys for one of the best games i ever played bar none, ill raise a pint to shitting myself in the dark for running into cacodemons

[Peter Kay]

'bethesda ruins everything it touches'

Can't agree. Whilst some people slate them for dumbing down between Morrowind and Oblivion, it was generally to create a better game. The interface is vastly improved, travelling is much easier, there's much more co-operation from NPCs, the quests are genuinely inventive and experimental and I can see where they're going with the scaling combat even if I personally think it's a bad idea.

That's even before you start on using horses and the major graphical upgrades.

Not even started Fallout 3 yet. Have to finish Oblivion and Fallout 1/2 first (yes, I don't play games all the time. Oblivion to me is ultra modern.).