Back in November, we informed you about John Carmack leaving id Software. Since Zenimax Media (the company that owns id Software) and Carmack did not reveal the real reasons of his departure, we were wondering why the big daddy of FPS has left the company he co-founded. Until now. Speaking with USA Today, Carmack unveiled why he left id Software.
As Carmack told USA Today, the negotiations between Oculus VR and Zenimax Media fell apart, thus Carmack was not able to use – as tech demos – Wolfenstein: The New Order or Doom 4 for the headset of the Oculus Rift. Given the fact that this deal was off, Carmack was somehow forced to leave id Software in order to continue his work with the Oculus VR.
“I would have been content probably staying there working with the people and technology that I know and the work we were doing. But they couldn’t come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract.”
And that is that. If id Software was still an independent studio, Carmack would be still working on both companies. And that’s basically what most of us feared the moment Zenimax Media announced its acquisition of id Software.
This also gives us an idea of what this new ‘id Software’ is. In short – and that’s just us speculating on this – the id Software you knew is long gone. As with most classic studios, all that remains is the name and a history of great titles. Its soul, however, is simply not there anymore.
In other news, Carmack has already offered to give his traditional talk at this year’s Quakecon. According to Carmack, it’s up to Zenimax to accept it or not.
Quakecon 2014 will take place Thursday, July 17 – Sunday, July 20 in Dallas.
Here is hoping that Doom 4 will be worth the wait, whenever it gets released, and that Zenimax won’t do anything stupid with Carmack’s speech!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Not a huge surprise. Can definetly undersdtand why he wanted to work on VR, and we should be glad that he decided the way he did. His input will be valuable for the technology that is probably gonna be strapped to most of our heads within the next couple of years.
Carmack will make Oculus amazing! And its true, the real spirit of iD software is gone….anytime a big published buys out anything awesome, that awesome thing goes to $#!7…
And, if Zenimax doesn’t keep Carmack around for Quakecon, very soon that awesome event will lost alot of publicity and all the hardcore PC FPS gamers will never return there!
the id i knew died with doom3. while not a terrible game, it just wasnt a “doom game” despite having the name in the title.
I loved DOOM 3 for its tech and also as a game, though it was not really a “DOOM” game! To this day, I am interested in what kinda mods are being developed for it.
iD Software really died after being acquired by Zenimax!
It appeared as if Carmack lost his relevance in games development long before his separation from Id. He is well suited for his new endeavor as that is where his strengths lie. He is a hell of an engineer and places technology and academia above all else. He is the foundation upon which Id is built but I believe he lost interest in creating games a long time ago. The end product was never paramount to the underlying tech and that is why the Id Tech engine was only utilized once last gen. He over engineered at the detriment of productivity.
ET- Quake Wars used mega texture. I think part of the reason is OpenGL, maybe Carmack can prove something with in for mainstream games or go with Mantle or maybe help push Linux gaming. He gave us he source code for his engines, big thumbs up for that and releasing id Games on Linux.
He allways loves OpenGL and as StemOS will use it Carmac must be jumping like a little schoolgirl for what to come and about time, f*ck em dipshits Microsoft heh D
oh man , I hope it doesn’t regret it later on. He already made a big mistake on investing on rockets !!lol, and he lost millions and millions of dollars.
Between this and screwing up ESO, Zenimax is definitely off my list.
Interesting thingy, there is no one left in id from the old team. They basicly got nothing to do with the old team anymore.
As errant signal said in his doom and quake reviews, those games showed who the people who made them were, what things they liked, what kind of music and ideas, it told something about the developers. Nowdays dev teams are so large and so many people touch the game that the development isnt that focused as it was in the past, so it feels pretty generic.
Id games as we knew it no longer exists, just the name.
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