id Software’s John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead have been explaining the studio’s newly announced buyout by Bethesda parent ZeniMax.
In an interview with Kotaku, id founder Carmack said that publishing partner Activision had begun to increasingly throw its support behind internal developers at the expense of his studio.
"Going back to a much earlier time, we were just Activision's shooter shop. We did the FPSes there. There was no conflict, and that was great. But they brought on their own internal studios and there's a very real conflict there between whether they want to put resources behind something they own the IP for and derive all the profit for versus something where they don't own the IP and they might feel like any effort they're putting into it isn't going into their value but somebody else's. That problem has grown over the years as budgets have increased."
Activision’s focus, Carmack appeared to imply, had shifted to internal studios Treyarch and Infinity Ward, developers of the Call Of Duty and Modern Warfare FPS franchises. While Activision will still publish id’s upcoming Wolfenstein and EA will publish the studio’s Rage, Doom 4 and subsequent id releases will be published by ZeniMax/Bethesda.
id CEO Hollenshead added of the deal: “Things aren't really going to be different in terms of what's going on at id. We're not going to change the kinds of games we make… It allows us to accelerate the growth of our internal studios, so we can focus on making all of our internal games as opposed to working with external partners where there has been a step down in quality... There will be more, better games from id."