Recent gaming news has revealed that id software has been purchased by ZeniMax, this initially caused me to panic and fear for id and Quakecon, however after reading up on things and some googling i thought id share my results.
The company that purchased id Software is ZeniMax, they also own Bethesda Softworks. Which has licensing rights to Startrek, Starwars , and Terminator franchises among many others. so this purchase effectively gives id rights to make games on those subjects (long time hope of a Startrek FPS that’s good). Bethesda is also responsible for The Elder Scrolls series, which could only be made better by using ids RAGE engine. so which this merger as it were we can only expect to have both Awesome game companies improve! And it looks like ZeniMax has gotten Carmack and id as a whole to drop their “1 new game every 4 years” model in favor of “lets make badass games ad well and quickly as possible” model. More id games = good. Not only that but id Staff is largely being left as is!
id Software will continue to operate as a studio under the direction of its founder, John Carmack. No changes will be made in the operations of id Software in the development of its games. All the principals at id Software have signed long-term employment contracts, assuring they will continue in their roles developing games at the studio
Which is music to my ears! John Carmack is the heart and soul of id, i don’t think i would have quite the fanatic love for the company if he was no longer a part of it. that being said there will obviously be a new boss in town for id.Robert Altman is the CEO of ZeniMax, and seems to be built for this job. I cant tell if hes a supervillan of Lex Luthors mental acuity, or an unlucky badass (I’m voting for supervillan) a bit of quick research on Altman shows that he was under suspicion of fraudulent actions involving the sale of a bank, but he was acquitted of all charges and banned from banking….. so i can only assume (hope) he has a boatload of payoff money stashed away somewhere from this whole venture and got off clean. Take this and add that he married WonderWoman, and bam. you’ve got your awesome supervillan game software company owning badass. which can only be a good thing for id. And i have been told by an unconfirmed source that Quakecon is not only still on, but is getting MORE sponsors as a result of this buy!!!
To summarize, this is why i think this deal is good:
- id has access to Startrek licensing (Good Startrek FPS)
- id Now has the funding to increase staff and make games better and faster
- Bethesda has access to much better game engines
- Both companies are being run by a badass
- And id is being pushed to be what they once were in the gaming industry. The best!
Sources: VentureBeat,ids Homepage.
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I have been trying to think of anything else to blog about today but nothing tops this. It’s all I can think about so I figured I’d come here and hassle you about it.
P.S. When are you going to use the Beer graphic I designed for you?
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