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id Software leaves Activision, joins EA
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 15th July 2008
John Carmack announced that id Software had entered new publishing deal with EA.
John Carmack himself took to the stage during EA's E3 opening address and announced that id Software had broken away from games publisher Activision, who had previously published many of id's games, and formed a new publishing partnership with EA.
Carmack was keen to stress however that the relationship between EA and id Software is only a publishing deal - the company has not been bought out by EA as BioWare and Pandemic were.
EA is now the official publisher for id's new racer-cum-shooter, Rage - and possibly Doom 4 if the new deal lasts long enough.
"This will give us full access to EA's worldwide marketing muscle without taking away our ability to build games the way it should be done," Carmack explained.
"Rage represents a new direction for our games," id CEO Todd Hollenshead said in a statement. "Rage is a shooter unlike any other, developed on our cutting edge new technology, and built to the exacting standards id is famous for. We're excited to have the support of EA Partners to launch Rage on the world."
What do you think of the new deal? Let us know in the forums.
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Comments (41)Stats: 0.031 seconds
Nothing like me!
Also.. Ive read many times that its the publisher who control's funding for patches and the distribution of patches. Looking at EA's track record with games like 2142 and BF2 this doesnt bode well for future patches to ID's games.
My source for the above statement is Supreme Commander for example, which is published by THQ but built by Gas powered Games. Its THQ that decides on the patching and QA of the builds for Supreme Commander, at their cost. (Which is why the game has hardly been patched since Forged Alliance came out.... THQ are tight money grabbing jesters). There is much angst on the forums about THQ's total lack of dedication to the patching of some of their games. Gas Powered Games have said they would love to release more updates to the game, but THQ wont pony up the money, and they arent allowed to go it alone.
I very much doubt that Carmack would sell, tbh.
Not quite, IIRC he shares it with Hollenshead. Either way, id are WAY too proud to ever sell up, and with good reason, they're one of the most famous devs on the planet and they feel it's the publishers who bow to their wishes, not the other way around.
It would be so good if EA just licenced steam from Valve and put thier own frontend on it, that would be so much better, but they are EA and think that they are the best.
That'll be exciting.
Activision bigger than EA?
Are you sure?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts Revenue $4b
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision Revenue $2.9b
That's old, I think. Activision is much bigger. Don't forget that they merged with Blizzard recently...
No. The developers make good games. I don't like EA and the way they shoot out game after game on the same franchise (battlefield and the like).
Meh.
I miss the days when there were a large number of publishers available.
i don't think it'll be an entirely bad thing that iD goes with EA. confused as to why he dropped out with activision in the first place though, they've grown massively and can easily compete with EA. (though i don't think they're nearly as big though) i think EA publishes something like 40% of mainstream games or something silly
They've distributed the console versions, they didn't publish the original PC version, nor do they have anything to do with Steam. The original was published by Vivendi, and Valve do Steam all by themselves.
ID haven't made a great game in a decade, yawn. They have fallen big time from near the top of the development tree.
I thought EA ported and distributed the PS3 version.. Which Valve had almost nothing to do with.
thats true, because gabe thinks the ps3 is a waste of time
I don't know why he thinks that... It's not much different to the 360 really...
even the PS3 BF badcompany (dice agane) is extra annoying when forming an team as it some times works and even then after the round ends you not 100% likey to end up on the same side, pressing X starts the join game instead of Asking you to confirm (faster to just reboot the PS3 then wait to quit the online game join that you cant stop)
Ah come on, id have always been about the engines anyway, and on that respect they're almost single handedly responsbile for driving computer game graphics.
Only re-rendering what needs to be re-rendered, instead of the whole screen? id first.
Texture mapping? id first.
Light mapping? id first.
Moving lights? id first.
Coloured lights? id first.
Formula based curves? id first.
Per-pixel lighting? id first.
Unique texturing? id first.
And that's just off the top of my head.
There goes another one...:|
With some luck, the current id projects wont be too affected.
And he sounds like one too. But that's why we love him: he's insanely good at what he does, i.e. refer to Bauul's list.. And then add a decade or two of development firsts.
When Crytek moved to EA they rewrote the engine and named it CryEngine2 funnily enough.
Does this mean that we loose the Doom name Franchise and Quake franchise or do they take the names with them. I can't find any documentation that states this.
s just a publisher contract. It means that EA will publish their games, nothing more.
No no, id own everything they've ever done, people don't seem to realise just how autonomos id actually are. All the publsiher does with id games is stick them in the shops, do some advertising and take a little cut of the profit, that's all.
You have no damn clue what you are talking about, it was called cryengine 2 ALWAYS, EA had nothing to do with Crysis other then publishing, just like Valve games and now ID.
Ubi owns Far Cry, not Cryengine. far Cry 2 is not based on the engine from Far Cry either.
1) id Software has always been strong on the tech and weak on the game play. Their close partner Raven Software, for instance, has always been *much* better at making games "work" gameplay-wise. Or look at what VALVe did with the old Quake2 (I believe) engine. Half-Life got its spot in the sun because of great gameplay.
2) I still remember the EA from old. Way back when they started out in 1982 or so, using the old EOA logo. At that time they still made games themselves. I remember them saying that they aimed at being the biggest games company around. You really can't argue that they seem to have achieved just that. It's just sad that they apparently sacrificed everything decent to get there. It would be nice if they would refocus, but that'll probably never happen since they way they run things makes them money. It may suck for us, but it certainly works for them (and their shareholders).
3) While I have never used the EA download service I'm in contact with STEAM on almost a daily basis. It ususally works OK, but there've definitely been many times when I cursed whoever is/was responsible for STEAM at VALVe. There's nothing quite as moodkilling as getting kicked out of a STEAM-based game due to some weird STEAM error like "invalid user ticket" or an apparent loss of a STEAM connection, to name but two examples.