ID Software Moving Further Away From Linux, QuakeLive Going Native

Quake blew me away at the time and is still one of my all time favourite games. Admittedly I've not played that many FPS as I've only been a sporadic Windows user but it was about the only one I can remember where I thought the music added to the experience, superbly atmospheric. Without wanting to sound patronising, unless you lived through these changes in computing it might be hard to imagine how exciting something like Quake was! Super graphical games are the norm, run-of-the-mill now. That's for another thread though!

ID innovated at that time but since have stagnated somewhat. I really enjoyed Doom and Quake 4 also. Thanks for the memories ID.

Feel this is pretty spot on with what i feel about ID. I love thier innovations but not their games if you follow. The quake engine and doom where marvels of the technology at the time but i think others put it to better use. These days you don't see ID trying as hard and its a shame.

I concur with a lot of the sentiment already expressed, so I won't repeat it.

Quake blew me away at the time and is still one of my all time favourite games. Admittedly I've not played that many FPS as I've only been a sporadic Windows user but it was about the only one I can remember where I thought the music added to the experience, superbly atmospheric. Without wanting to sound patronising, unless you lived through these changes in computing it might be hard to imagine how exciting something like Quake was! Super graphical games are the norm, run-of-the-mill now. That's for another thread though!

ID innovated at that time but since have stagnated somewhat. I really enjoyed Doom and Quake 4 also. Thanks for the memories ID.

You can thank Trent Reznor for that. 

I think this is the key here:

Zenimax doesn't have any policy of 'unofficial binaries' like Id used to have, I have argued for their value (mostly in the context of experimental Windows features, but Linux would also benefit), but my forceful internal pushes have been for the continuation of Id Software's open source code releases, which I feel have broader benefits than unsupported Linux binaries.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121945-John-Carmack-Argues-Against-Native-Linux-Games

And Carmack is right - objectively source code releases are more important. But Zenimax should never have been around to bully id in the first place.

Whenever I hear Carmack speak it is like a captive man, forced to say things and bend his own thoughts to accept a paradigm he would never have assented to even ten years ago. I do not know what catastrophe occurred to make id willingly be forced under their thumb, but the fact that it has left a hollow shell of a developer is probably the saddest part of all of this.

At least we have still gotten the source code to Doom 3 and Doom 3: BFG. Hopefully Rage as well somewhere down the line.

To the people who hope to one day play Rage: don't bother. I finished it on PS3 and it was terrible. Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Borderlands (original) are far superior games. Rage was one of the biggest gaming disappointments I've had.

Now, I do hope we get the engine code some day, as I'm sure someone could make something much better with it.

Pretty unfortunate but what I'm more suprised about is that Quake Live is still going to exist in the first place. It's a really big shame that the game is as low in popularity as it is because I love the game as an esport, these days it still has tournaments and some of the stars have kept playing but it's in a place that is as bad or worse as Starcraft: Brood War. These days I mostly follow SC2 (as it's also an awesome game that is fit for competetive play) but Dreamhack and Quakecon occasionally throws together a bigger QL tourney and I like watching those. I wish QL could have been as big as SC2 or LoL (which I haven't found enjoyable to watch so far...)

As someone who played id games before doom was released and still plays the original id games weekly I really could care less. Doom 1 2 3 and quake 1 2 3 4 still work, as well as several of the wolfenstein games. Never even tried quake live. I do want rage though.

Whenever I hear Carmack speak it is like a captive man, forced to say things and bend his own thoughts to accept a paradigm he would never have assented to even ten years ago.

Naw. He's just gone completely batty.

Stinks of them being caught up in the proprietary directx api or even being blackmailed by microsoft. either way they dont get my money

Quite sad but it's time to move on there are plenty of games on STEAM, Desura and more to enjoy.

Whenever I hear Carmack speak it is like a captive man, forced to say things and bend his own thoughts to accept a paradigm he would never have assented to even ten years ago.

Naw. He's just gone completely batty.

I feel like Hamish. Maybe it's just that he's moved on from what he enjoyed in the past. I remember reading he was all for multi-platform programming since it would make code much better and better tested, now it seems he's a Windows/DirectX sales rep. It feels like that pragmatic approach to game development has been replaced by some company's greed.

Anyway, ID's best legacy is the engine source releases above everything else. They've done a lot more for open source gaming than almost any other company.

Whenever I hear Carmack speak it is like a captive man, forced to say things and bend his own thoughts to accept a paradigm he would never have assented to even ten years ago.

Naw. He's just gone completely batty.

I feel like Hamish. Maybe it's just that he's moved on from what he enjoyed in the past. I remember reading he was all for multi-platform programming since it would make code much better and better tested, now it seems he's a Windows/DirectX sales rep.

Has he ever said he is for directX? I have only ever heard him talk about how he likes opengl.
If anyone is interested in his opinion of the steam machine and steamos that can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH2hjhcfWic&t=29m49s also if you notice the guy on the left mentions linux being the number one consumer operating system in terms of sales month to month and John nods his head in agreement. So we will see what really happens when steamos starts taking off. I bet they will port the games then.

To hell with ID then.

I'd thank Timothee Besset far more for that than iD as a whole.

So true!

Whenever I hear Carmack speak it is like a captive man, forced to say things and bend his own thoughts to accept a paradigm he would never have assented to even ten years ago.

Naw. He's just gone completely batty.

I feel like Hamish. Maybe it's just that he's moved on from what he enjoyed in the past. I remember reading he was all for multi-platform programming since it would make code much better and better tested, now it seems he's a Windows/DirectX sales rep.

Has he ever said he is for directX? I have only ever heard him talk about how he likes opengl.
If anyone is interested in his opinion of the steam machine and steamos that can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH2hjhcfWic&t=29m49s also if you notice the guy on the left mentions linux being the number one consumer operating system in terms of sales month to month and John nods his head in agreement. So we will see what really happens when steamos starts taking off. I bet they will port the games then.

I'm sure everyone will port their games when there's lots of money to reap. In the past, he didn't seem so much after the money, instead he took pride on the technical merits of having their games running on different platforms even when it didn't earn him any. I'm more and more aware that he's were the money is.

As mentioned: It's not id Software, it's their new owners. Apparently the management at Zenimax has something against Linux and OS X -- they're the ones who blocked a Rage port, and although John Carmack is obligated to not publicly criticize his employer, he has given some strong hints about what he thinks of the company.

So don't blame him for cutting off Linux. Blame him for selling to Zenimax, the rotting skin suit of a video game studio wrapped around a private equity firm, run by an ex-banker who plea bargained his way out of eight felony insider trading charges.

Has he ever said he is for directX? I have only ever heard him talk about how he likes opengl.

Well there was time ( while developing Rage I think ) when John said they would use DX but changing all in house software would need to much time & money.

As mentioned: It's not id Software, it's their new owners. Apparently the management at Zenimax has something against Linux and OS X -- they're the ones who blocked a Rage port, and although John Carmack is obligated to not publicly criticize his employer, he has given some strong hints about what he thinks of the company.

So don't blame him for cutting off Linux. Blame him for selling to Zenimax, the rotting skin suit of a video game studio wrapped around a private equity firm, run by an ex-banker who plea bargained his way out of eight felony insider trading charges.

In his defence, at the time they probably didn't seem quite as bad as the alternatives (Activision or EA or Ubi); they did at that point assent to the release of id Tech 4. It's only been in the last few years (and especially with Skyrim and beyond) that Zenimax has become much more like them.

Has he ever said he is for directX? I have only ever heard him talk about how he likes opengl.

Well there was time ( while developing Rage I think ) when John said they would use DX but changing all in house software would need to much time & money.

I think it was on Twitter that he was praising DirectX11 around that time IIRC.

As mentioned: It's not id Software, it's their new owners. Apparently the management at Zenimax has something against Linux and OS X -- they're the ones who blocked a Rage port, and although John Carmack is obligated to not publicly criticize his employer, he has given some strong hints about what he thinks of the company.

So don't blame him for cutting off Linux. Blame him for selling to Zenimax, the rotting skin suit of a video game studio wrapped around a private equity firm, run by an ex-banker who plea bargained his way out of eight felony insider trading charges.

In his defence, at the time they probably didn't seem quite as bad as the alternatives (Activision or EA or Ubi); they did at that point assent to the release of id Tech 4. It's only been in the last few years (and especially with Skyrim and beyond) that Zenimax has become much more like them.

It's just not selling ID, it's like he's sold his soul too. Maybe it's more healthy for his bank account but we miss the old John Carmack, the indie developer.

I'm not surprised that they dropped support for Quake live, but they didn't port any games to Linux since many years.
I think that Aspyr probably is going to port Quake Live to Mac. Unfortunately we don't have linux game porters and publishers, so this decision isn't surprising for me. 

I read some comments on this website and i just want to mention that id software and ported and published only 3 games to Linux:

Quake 1 Macmillan Computer Publishing USA
Quake 2 Macmillan Computer Publishing USA
Quake 3 Loki software

These were games that people could buy a linux version, but the rest rest were unofficial versions for Linux e.g. Quake 4 , Doom 3. How you could pay for Linux version of Quake 4 or Doom 3? They didn't expect any money from linux users, and i can't blame them. Loki software don't exist, and Macmillan Computer Publishing USA
stopped investing money in publishing games for Linux.