id Tech 5 only for Bethesda titles

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 August, 2010

id Software no longer licensing engine.

id Software boss Todd Hollenshead has told Eurogamer that id Tech 5 will not be licensed out to third party developers and publishers.

Launched with great fanfare at QuakeCon 2007, id Tech 5 forms the basis of the studio's flagship Rage title and had been billed as a competitor in the middleware business to the likes of Unreal Engine 3.

Following id Software's acquisition by ZeniMax Media in 2009, however, Hollenshead said that the technology would be reserved for games published by ZeniMax and Bethesda Softworks.

"It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead told Eurogamer at QuakeCon 2010 in Dallas today.

"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."

Hollenshead said he could imagine the technology being used by third-party developers, but only if their games were published by Bethesda, under which circumstances id would withhold nothing.

Asked whether he regretted not being able to scale the same heights of middleware success as Epic Games, whose Unreal Engine 3 technology is virtually ubiquitous in this generation, Hollenshead paid tribute to his rival.

"I think that [Epic] made a strategic choice to focus on the middleware service stuff, and we never pretended to be focused on technology licensing.

"It was that we made the technology for our games, and the philosophy was that with the one team the technology was wasted if you're just using it on one game, so we wanted to be able to license it out to a small number of developers.

"Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them, but I wouldn't change the way we've done things."

Look out for the full Todd Hollenshead interview in the near future.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 1 month ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Mike1980 #1 2 years ago

    Bethesda must have paid a shit-ton for that. Didn't know Fallout and Elder Scrolls sold that well.

  • Optimaximal #2 2 years ago

    Good call... A good proportion of the current 'generation' of games are all identikit plastic messes thanks to UE3.

  • oceanmotion #3 2 years ago

    More like late to the game so why bother.

  • Pirotic #4 2 years ago

    What a load of rubbish, the games they used to make were little more than tech demos (albeit great ones) and they used to make the vast majority of their money from licensees. The problem was they didn't think anybody could catch up with them technologically, so when underdog Epic came out of nowhere with the unreal engine (remember before this they made what, 2D rabbit platform games?) it caught them by surprise, and they didn't react quick enough. I remember many developers switching to the slightly inferior Unreal engines simply because id refused to price competitively, it's the same reason people stuck with the Duke3D engine for so long due to id's expensive monopoly on cutting edge software.

    Now unreal engine is pretty kick ass, relatively cheap to licence and is very well known by most programmers in the business. I doubt they'd be looking to switch for a Doom 3 engine with fancy texture streaming. Id are currently only living off what little money they still make from their previous engine licences (Call of Duty sales etc).
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/10 @ 21:56

  • yoomazir #5 2 years ago

    Can't wait to see an new Elder Scroll/ Fallout running on Id5.

  • Haloboy #6 2 years ago

    I'm less inclined to buy games if they are in fact UE3 based than I would be buying games prepared on alternate engines.

    A sorry sad fact I know but UE3 has stripped something from games the last few years. Mirrors Edge is the only UE3 game that comes instantly to mind as being both UE3 and completely unique in both artistic merit and approach.

    Long since gone are the days when the likes of the Quake II and III engines could craft very different looking games at every turn.

  • rock27gr #7 2 years ago

    @ Pirotic

    Interesting stuff you said there. I'd like to hear more about it.

  • Jonathan_Fakenham #8 2 years ago

    Sounds like Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls V will potentially continue this thing that started with Mass Effect 2, with RPG's being built from cutting edge tech for once, and not the usual 3rd rate tech with slower framerates and washed out texture bullshit.
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/10 @ 22:54

  • Edawan #9 2 years ago

    Wasn't the Quake3 engine the most widespread in the past generation ? So they did do quite a bit of licensing in the past...

  • peak_performance #10 2 years ago

    Well Hollenshead didn't say they never licensed their previous engines, just that they didn't build them with licensability in mind -- their own games came first, licensing was a bonus. Hence D3E, perfectly suited for dark corridor shooters like D3.

    I do seem to remember that they did pitch licensing Tech 5 a lot back in 07 though ...


    (Mind you I was growing up when all that happened so I've only read stories)

  • Bleemo #11 2 years ago

    "Wasn't the Quake3 engine the most widespread in the past generation ? So they did do quite a bit of licensing in the past..."

    Hmm not sure about that I still think it would be unreal engine but you never know.

    "Bethesda must have paid a shit-ton for that. Didn't know Fallout and Elder Scrolls sold that well."

    Fallout 3 and the elder scrolls games did sell well but that is not where they got their money from they got it from venture capitalists . They paid $105m for id.

    http://pa idcontent.org/article/419-zenim...
    Edited by 1 at 12/08/10 @ 23:20

  • subtlesnake #12 2 years ago

    "What a load of rubbish, the games they used to make were little more than tech demos (albeit great ones) and they used to make the vast majority of their money from licensees. The problem was they didn't think anybody could catch up with them technologically, so when underdog Epic came out of nowhere with the unreal engine (remember before this they made what, 2D rabbit platform games?) it caught them by surprise, and they didn't react quick enough. I remember many developers switching to the slightly inferior Unreal engines simply because id refused to price competitively, it's the same reason people stuck with the Duke3D engine for so long due to id's expensive monopoly on cutting edge software."

    When did they make the vast majority of their money from licenses? They've always licensed their technology to a select handful of partners, like Raven, and the number of games that used id engines is probably less than you think. Even during the heyday of the Quake 3 engine, only about 10 third party games were based on it (and a large proportion of those were Raven titles).

    UE3 is on a whole other league altogether: it's powering an entire industry practically. It's understandable that id don't want to get into a business of that size, and now Raven is attached to Activision, they likely won't be licensing id tech any more. Id's other big partner, Splash Damage, is already publishing under Bethesda.

    "Now unreal engine is pretty kick ass, relatively cheap to licence and is very well known by most programmers in the business. I doubt they'd be looking to switch for a Doom 3 engine with fancy texture streaming. Id are currently only living off what little money they still make from their previous engine licences (Call of Duty sales etc)."

    Id are currently part of Zenimax Media (who also own Bethesda), so aren't wanting for funds.

  • JensonJet #13 2 years ago

    In a way this is bad news. It's id tech that makes the Call of Duty games run so smoothly. I hate the Unreal engine. It's cheap to llicence for a reason! You get what you pay for. Has any game based on it ever run more than 30 frames a second on a console? I'm sure any programmer can make a game engine, but it takes the boys at id to make one that runs amazingly on all systems, now including the iPhone. I can imagine the Unreal engine in all it's sh*ttiness would probably run at about 2 frames a minute on an iPhone. With any luck the Crysis engine will become more popular.

  • Phishfood #14 2 years ago

    Good business strategy.

  • polymorph #15 2 years ago

    Wow, was it really 07 when they anounced tech 5? from the E3 2010 vids i have seen Rage looks lovely even now. So safe to assume tech 6 is coming then? And will be lincensed like a mofo?

  • Collymilad #16 2 years ago

    "Don't hate on an engine if developers come with boring games that all look alike (keywords: gritty, apocalyptic & 'mature')."

    Exactly, the fact that Mirrors Edge looks unique proves the engine can do other things. It's the devs fault if their games come out looking similiar. They all tend to target one look.

  • Harmonica #17 2 years ago

    Yeah agree about that. Blame the devs not the middleman.. ware.

  • mkreku #18 2 years ago

    Half-Life was Quake engine based, and that was way back in 1998. Id used to license their engines out to more third party developers than just Raven, but after Unreal entered the market they were simply outmanoeuvred. It wasn't a conscious choice to limit their outsourcing to only ten or so titles.

  • ignatiusjreilly #19 2 years ago

    Call of Duty's engine is Quake-based.

  • JahB #20 2 years ago

    Sounds great.

    I loved Fallout3, but Fallout4 in an id engine with id FPS mechanics? That's GOTY material

  • CatWeazle #21 2 years ago

    To license an engine successfully you need superb tools & support team. ID never had either, and that was a big contribution to their failure in the middleware business as compared to Epic.

  • NunianVonFuch #22 2 years ago

    Soon as I saw this headline I reserved the wallet space for an id 5 powered Fallout and Elder Scrolls! Only weaknesses those games have imo is the relatively poor tech and a slightly lacking combat engine. :-D

  • shawnlee100 #23 1 year ago

    What a load of rubbish, the games they used to make were little more than tech demos (albeit great ones) and they used to make the vast majority of their money from licensees. The problem was they didn't think anybody could catch up with them technologically, so when underdog Epic came out of nowhere with the unreal engine (remember before this they made what, 2D rabbit platform games?) it caught them by surprise, and they didn't react quick enough. I remember many developers switching to the slightly inferior Unreal engines simply because id refused to price competitively, it's the same reason people stuck with the Duke3D engine for so long due to id's expensive monopoly on cutting edge software.

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  • Roberto229 #24 1 year ago

    I dont think they are late. The id Engines are just too expensive. idTech 3 (Q3) was a best seller and still today we see it very, very tunned in games like Modern Warfare 2. testking SY0-201

    id Engines cost about 3 times the Unreal ones. They are not late tough... remember idTech 4? Not late at all. It was mind-blowing when it cames out, even more than Far Cry wich was awesome too.

    I would spect to see what idTech 5 is capable of before jumping to conclusions. The id Engines were always amazing stuff and I think Bethesda is going to have a vantage point here. Maybe we are not going to see some mind-blowing graphics, maybe something of what we are now seeing in the best titles out there, but with with a great performance. Remeber their promess: 60 FPS across all platforms with the same quality for both consoles and even more in PC testking 70-680.

    Just take a look at the id Engines trought the history (not updated). Have in mind that for the time that a new version cames out, the old becomes open source so everyone can take benefits from it.
    testking 70-640

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