This is, I suppose, the end of an era. id boss Todd Hollenshead has confirmed that the company won’t be out-sourcing its id Tech 5 engine to third party developers, quite a departure from their history of letting other developers use their engine. Some of gaming’s biggest games and franchises have been built off the back of id Tech engines.
“It’s going to be used within Zenimax, so we’re not going to license it to external parties,†he said of the engine that’s powering Rage and Doom 4.
“It’s like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish – not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you’re going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing.â€
id Tech 1, known as the Doom engine also gave us games like HeXen and Heretic. id Tech 2 was the power behind Quake, Quake 2 – and was licenced to third parties to bring us games like Soldier of Fortune and Half-Life. Their third engine – quite possibly their most prolific to date – was obviously used for Quake 3, but the list of third-party games utilising that engine may surprise you.
Games made using id Tech 3 include Medal of honour, Call of Duty, Jedi Knight and American McGee’s Alice. id Tech 4 is responsible for Doom 3, Quake 4 and third party efforts like Prey, Quake Wars and Brink.
It’s kind of sad to know that their latest engine won’t spawn as many popular franchises as previous iterations.
Source : Vg247
Last Updated: August 13, 2010
