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Bethesda Parent ZeniMax Acquires id Software
by Chris Remo
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June 24, 2009
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id Software, the longstanding independent developer behind Doom and Quake, has been acquired by ZeniMax media, the parent company of developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks.
Bethesda will publish all further unsigned titles from id, likely including its shooter sequel Doom 4. EA Partners has already been announced as the publisher for racing/FPS hybrid Rage.
Creator of the Elder Scrolls series and now owner of the Fallout franchise, Bethesda is one of the industry's best-known RPG developers -- and its profile has been steadily rising in recent years on the back of its enormously successful The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Mesquite, Texas-based id Software was founded in 1991 and largely defined the first-person shooter genre with Wolfenstein 3D. It influenced the genre as well as engine technology across the industry even more greatly with its landmark Doom and Quake series.
Bethesda has long been respected as a developer, but today's move is the latest in a string of actions that has seen Bethesda and ZeniMax step up their efforts in the publishing arena. Bethesda now publishes its own titles, and has been partnering with bigger names in development for third-party publishing.
The company's acquisition of the Fallout franchise from Interplay was also a significant addition to its holdings.
No dollar value was assigned to the id acquisition, but it is likely to be bigger than Bethesda's recent deals.
The move does not affect id's existing publishing agreements, such as the EA Partners deal or Activision's plans to publish the id-produced, Raven-developed Wolfenstein.
Bethesda and id share an interesting link when it comes to partner studios: London-based independent studio Splash Damage was founded by modders of id's Quake III Arena, and id gave the company its big break by contracting it to create the free Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, and later the retail title Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. Now, the company's next big game, the ambitious single-player/multiplayer/cooperative shooter Brink, is being published by Bethesda.
As a subsidiary, id will "continue to operate as a studio under the direction of its founder, John Carmack," Bethesda said in a statement, adding that "no changes will be made in the operations of id Software in the development of its games."
Said id CEO Todd Hollenshead, "This was a unique opportunity to team with a smart, sophisticated publisher like Bethesda Softworks where the interests of the studio and the publisher will be fully aligned in the development and marketing of our titles. In addition, we will now have financial and business resources to support the future growth of id Software, a huge advantage which will result in more and even better games for our fans."
id's principal employees, certain to include Hollenshead and Carmack, have also signed long-term contracts guaranteeing their tenure at the company for an unspecified period of time.
Carmack said, "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. We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future. As trite as it may be for me to say that I am extremely pleased and excited about this deal, I am."
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With them now being owned by someone else, it wouldn't surprise me if people start jumping ship. Maybe not incredibly soon, but.. probably once the new owner gets tired of waiting for a return on their investment and tries to tighten their wallets, then yeah.. sit back 'n' watch.
Lot's of other good developer doing stuff just as good as Id, if not.. in some small cases.. even better and at less cost too. If Id does keep on trucking and making good titles that are cost and time effective.. "Good for them." 4 Years is a long time to wait for a title.
Now Bethesda can bug Carmack do not release its sources when he want to do so :(
This may mean no Doom 3 sourcecode :( No source to its awesome lightning stuff :(
Also, Bethesda may decide to do something bizarre... What will happen if Bethesda forces ID to do non-FPS games? OMG!!! Or if they turn ID into a engine churner to replace the crappy engine that they use since Morrowind? Well... That may mean less buggy bethesda games...
But what totally scares the crap out of me, is if ID become bad programmers like bethesda!!! Or worse, if ID become windows/xbox only and start to use windows game live and release crappy patches!!!
I suppose self-publishing still makes you independent, but the definition is really getting pushed, these days.
(and yes, I AM aware of who's on Zenimax's board... it's anything but indie in that respect, if that's what you mean...)
I have a feeling that QuakeCon is going to start to look and sound much more corporate and will likely be an avenue to push all Bethesda games and not just id Software. JohnC will likely become more tight-lipped in his keynotes; as he is no longer at the top of the totem, and yes the open source movement will likely dwindle. Games will likely have faster turn-around now with larger teams at their disposal, but there may likely be game design decisions that roll down from above now.
Big company business as usual; I kind of always hoped that id Software would stay away from that, but it was inevitable I suppose. Their games always had a certain minimalist garage developer charm to them that was unique. That is very likely to change now.
Doom4 will become an open world, turn-based, MMO, GTA clone, where you ride sidesaddle on a Pinky mount across Azerothoom and farm souls to upgrade your BFG. Okay maybe that's a bit stretched. Here's hoping nothing will change for the worse, cheers.
Couple that with the facat that the Doom and Quake franchises are not the pedigree they once were, and then look at the disaster that was Enemy Territory Quake Wars. So now Spash Damage and id are under the same roof? Scary.
More interesting is that both Activision and EA couldn't come to an agreement with id, and both of them have much deeper pockets than Bethesda. So what gives?
I wish them luck, but they need a lot more than that. I hope that Bethesda has the management skills to handle these guys, they will need every ounce of skill they can find.
And you want Activision or EA with deep pockets, or you want them to stay "indie" ? Gotta make up our minds, here... if anything, being with Bethesda as publishers might give them even MORE creative flexibility than the deals they were signing with Activision and EA...
Carmack said, "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. We will be bigger and stronger, as we recruit the best talent to help us build the landmark games of the future. As trite as it may be for me to say that I am extremely pleased and excited about this deal, I am."
Is attributed to JC of all people. He definitely strikes me as the kind of guy to claim that this would benefit "all of our franchises under one roof, leveraging our capabilities across multiple teams while enabling forward looking research to be done" :P
Still, it this is basically funding more wonderful Carmack science experiments than who can gripe?
Quake Wars is a prime example. It was delayed by 2 years after it was originally announced to ship while id and Splash Damage continued to refine it.
The end result was mediocre gameplay that was supposed to be wrapped in extremely advanced graphics for the time, but a few years late and it was just so-so.
And the sales? Take a look. They were anemic. So no one 'cleaned up' on that one, and neither Doom3 nor Quake 4 were the massive sellers that id used to produce.
Possibly this match with Bethesda is just what they need, but I think it may be Doom
Well, this could certainly wind up being a negative thing for both companies, of course, but that's true no matter where you go or what you do. Both of them certainly have talent of various kinds; it's merely a question of whether or not they can actually match up what they have in a complementary way plus acquire new talent to fix what they don't have (aesthetically pleasing character models, for one thing... humans and humanoid, that is, not the monsters).
Taking an optomistic outlook, meshing one of the best RPG makers with the classic FPS maker might allow them to strengthen the overall efforts in both areas.
I'll add that the GameByro engine that Bethesda used for Morrowind and Oblivion seems to be one of the most robust, flexible engines on the market, at least as far as mainstream releases are concerned. Bethesda's games have bugs simply because they are so incredibly complex. id, on the other hand, tends to have games that are very straightforward and simple in comparison, although that can be said for almost any FPS compared to an RPG, in my view. Bugs in id's games seem to be more on a purely technical level rather than unforeseen interactions of various elements within the games themselves.
In any event, I'd say this is certainly well worth watching, at least as much as the Square-Enix / Eidos merger.
See, if Carmack keeps working on engines, I'd expect him to be heavily involved with creating that next generation of the Gamebryo engine. However, if he ends up focusing all his efforts on mobile platforms (which isn't looking that unlikely), I'd expect Id's first project to be an experimental adaption of whatever the post-Fallout3 Gamebryo engine will be, for FPS games. And maybe, Carmack will just end up doing both. God knows he's more than capable of it.
Wasn't it a merger of sorts?
To guy that said taht bethesda games are buggy because they are complex: That is partially true, but Bethesda is known to have several idiotic bugs, I see sometimes people complaining that they are complaning about some bug since Gamebryo was named Netimmerse, and the bug remains (mainly because some stuff is not fixable by bethesda, and some stuff bethesda suck to code...)