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- Comment on "You Can't Rule Out The Possibility That Executives Are Idiots" - John Carmack On Microsoft's Gutting Of id Software 2 days ago:
quick copy paste from firefox reader mode:
www.timeextension.com “You Can’t Rule Out The Possibility That Executives Are Idiots” - John Carmack On Microsoft’s Gutting Of id Software Time Extension 3 - 4 minutes
“The game isn’t over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through” “You Can’t Rule Out The Possibility That Executives Are Idiots” - John Carmack On Microsoft’s Gutting Of id Software 1 Image: id Software / Xbox Game Studios
While we predominantly cover retro gaming here at Time Extension, we often cast our gaze across other sectors of the industry – especially when news impacts long-standing studios with amazing legacies, like id Software.
I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that Microsoft, which acquired the legendary DOOM and Quake creator when it purchased ZeniMax Media in 2021, has gutted the studio as part of its recent layoff campaign.
According to reports, id Software has effectively been reduced to a support studio following the release of DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations.
id Software co-founder John Carmack – who was previously quite vocal about the advantages afforded by the company being Microsoft-owned – has taken to social media to give his take on the whole sorry affair.
“I have been trying to find something meaningful to say about the Id Software layoffs,” says Carmack, who founded id Software in 1991 alongside Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall and John Romero. “My ‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t aging well, and this is certainly going to dampen the mood of the founder reunion at QuakeCon next month.”
Carmack adds that he’s “saddened, but I can’t muster anger or outrage over it. I don’t have access to the books, but I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft’s perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved.”
He continues:
“You can’t rule out the possibility that executives are idiots, but that shouldn’t be your default belief. I don’t think there is any obvious path that would have doubled the revenue from Id games.
Could they have gotten more with a different pricing strategy? Could they have created more things for fans to buy? Could they have cost-effectively marketed in a way that reached more players who would have loved and bought the games? Could they have changed the game designs and broadened the appeal to more players without alienating existing ones? Could they have produced the games at a lower cost, faster or cheaper? I really don’t know.”
Despite the pretty dire state of affairs, Carmack ends on a semi-positive note. “The game isn’t over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through.”
I can’t imagine any of the remaining id Software staffers share his optimism right now.
Damien McFerran
Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories.
- Comment on Single player games 2 weeks ago:
and not what i’d want from the game ;)
it’s either a 5vs5 in a serious setting or in service of getting better at that, otherwise it’s not the game i miss.
- Comment on Single player games 2 weeks ago:
I sometimes miss counter-strike, but i lack atleast the time and the people to play it on a level where that game is fun and probably the reflexes.
- Comment on Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 2 weeks ago:
archive.today/is/ph/fo/… utilized it’s users to ddos atleast one other site earlier this year, not a cool thing.
- Comment on Fallout lead Tim Cain argues games industry crisis hasn't reached the level of the 1983 crash: 'I don't think there's ever been a worse time in the games industry' 1 month ago:
lots of growth during covid that could not be sustained => many, many layoffs to prop up earning statistics in the following years.
- Comment on Fallout lead Tim Cain argues games industry crisis hasn't reached the level of the 1983 crash: 'I don't think there's ever been a worse time in the games industry' 1 month ago:
the 1983 crash was mostly a home console crash, which was a bigger market in the US than in europe, but i guess it really sucked for console devs there, and the famicom took two years to be released outside of japan as the NES.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
the difference is that wotc won’t give you anything for your magic cards, but you can directly sell skins on steam and actually buy something with it, which from my understanding gives the skins direct, and sometimes really high value, which might make this actual gambling, simmiliar to how you exchange your chetons in a casino.
wotc and other simmiliar companies skirt around that by not acknowledging that a second marekt exists and not participating in it.
but i am not a lawyer obviously.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
it’s the only difference i see to other loot boxes or trading card games.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
thats my understanding of it and if valve loses this, they’ll introduce gabe bucks to buy boxes and keys with and nothing meaningful will change.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
only on a secondary market in which those companies don’t participate. it’s a paper thin line which keeps trading card game booster packs from beeing gambling in a legal sense
- Comment on 1 month ago:
valve has a way to transfer money in your steam wallet into something with real world value: hatdware.
you can not trade pokemon cards with nintendo for game cartridges or money, that is the whole distinction, no secondary market required.
- Comment on Valve Uploads Steam Controller Unboxing Video, Launch Imminent 2 months ago:
UWP games should work with this.
- Comment on What are the best solo, free, PnP table games for someone coming from dnd burnout? 4 months ago:
the youtube channel “me myself and die” used ironsworn for season 2 or 3. it’s a good showcase for how to soloplay an rpg.
- Comment on close to finishing Super Mario Odyssey and was wondering which games are similar 5 months ago:
what about the other hat based platformer: “a hat in time” ? lots of fun.
- Comment on Hideo Kojima says MGS2 was never about AI 'but rather a future I didn't desire' of data gaining a will of its own and 'unfortunately we're heading there' 6 months ago:
Keanu Reeves looks like a canadian Hideo Kojima, can confirm.
- Comment on DAE name their characters by their official name? 7 months ago:
L’orm Ipsu’mlies is a well respected librarian and only got mininal eye rolls. He claims his name is old elvish, but he made it up.
- Comment on DAE name their characters by their official name? 7 months ago:
i am stealing this to use it as a name of a fiend or something in my ttrpg campaign, thank you :D
- Comment on DAE name their characters by their official name? 7 months ago:
I am using a german keyboard layout and if i have to name a character and dont have a name in mind they’ll become Qwert Zuiopü.
it was the nerevarines name, it was the name of the hero of kvatch and it is the name of every Dragonborn that’ll never finish skyrims main quest.
- Comment on Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get [Eurogamer] 8 months ago:
CS has a healthy playerbase, dont know if it has it because or despite it’s slow changing nature but the game is still doing well in every sense of the word. what i dont get is: why does a specific game has to change if there are shiny new ones released everyday? CS existing does not take away your ability to try the new hotness, but changing CS into something new would take the ability away to enjoy CS as it was.
- Comment on Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get [Eurogamer] 8 months ago:
i understand your point, i just don’t agree with it. I don’t need Counter-Strike to change the sameway i don’t need a specific boardgame to change. the fact that counter-strike is pretty much unchaged for over 20 years is what allowed it to develop the depth it has as a competitive game, that’s what makes solid tactics and individual skill important because i can’t abuse a new poorly understood mechanic, that only exists for a month. CS core is so solid that we could even play the same unchaged maps for another 20 years and would gradually play them differently year over year. i know this, because we did.
change for the sake of change is the biggest issue of live service games, if you ignore the stupid monetization schemes, sooner or later they all devolve into a barely recognizable mess.
- Comment on Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get [Eurogamer] 8 months ago:
counter-strike at this point is pretty much it’s very own thing, if you change the game to much it won’t be counter-strike and a lot of people don’t play counter-strike to play a multiplayer shooter, they play it because its counter-strike, this makes it a pretty much ideal candidate to “just sell mtx with” and change the map pool a bit to keep the casual crowd happy.
cs itself evolved for a long time without any input by valve at all, the same way chess or modern soccer evolved without drastic changes.
- Comment on Path of Exile 2 is free to play this weekend (Aug 29 - Sept 01) 10 months ago:
no extra manager, EA in this case is early access and you redeem the code on pathofexile2.com
- Comment on Path of Exile 2 is free to play this weekend (Aug 29 - Sept 01) 10 months ago:
it will be free to play, when it leaves early access. during early access you’d have to buy a supporter pack.
- Comment on Path of Exile 2 is free to play this weekend (Aug 29 - Sept 01) 10 months ago:
got 3 EA Keys lying around, whoever sends me a message with a joke gets one. if i get a lot of messages your joke better be funny :)
memes are also acceptable ;)
- Comment on What are your experiences using Linux for gaming? 11 months ago:
I am playing almost exclusively in linux since 2012 (diablo3 came out, it worked on Linux, i sank an ungodly amount of hours into it.) the only thing that made me reinstall windows was to play counter-strike go on faceit, because their client did not work on linux.
proton made so much, so much easier that it almost became frictionless to play on linux. wine made huge strides before, but it never was so smooth before proton.
what often was a problem where laptops with dedicated and integraded graphics cards, or nvidia cards on rolling release distribution often having issues after kernel updates, which is why i was on fedora for a long time, because there the akmod stuff worked better in my experience.
overall: when it works on the deck its almost guranteed that it runs just as easy on other linux distributions, maybe don’t pick a rolling release distro if you have an nvidia card, and most of the time you can forget about the fact, that you are gaming on linux.
- Comment on [Update: Valve Responds] Mastercard Denies Pressuring Steam To Censor 'NSFW' Games 11 months ago:
or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark
which could be just anything.
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 11 months ago:
yes, arcade stuff is lacking on my list. The few i have played where mostly on an atari 2600 and simmiliar home consoles way after the fact and the only arcade i’ve ever seen was in a holiday resort thingy :D
Zelda: yep, was surprised there was no mention of it after i looked over my “finished” list, original Zelda and ocarina of time should probably be there, maybe a link to the past. did not play breath of the wild, so don’t have an opinion on it. But zelda -> atlp -> ocarina of time is a nice showcase of 2d games transitioning to 3d, and the item based exploration and progression is found in a lot of games.
halo: i am not a console shooter guy and on pc it felt like a very good game, but atleast to me not ground breaking. through the lense of console shooters it’s probably a huge milestone.
unreal tournament: if i’d be listing my favourite games it would be there. but it did not have the impact on e-sport cs or the quakes had so it would be another technical showcase. the unreal engines became very important however.
sonic: yes, at the very least to show another take on plattformers.
gta: yeah, 3 onwards as blockbuster movie equivalents. don’t ask me why they are not on the list, no idea.
gran turismo: if we include simulators, we should also list a bunch of microprose work, richard burns rally, the microsoft flight simulators and so on. Definitely an interesting section of gaming, but not one iam part of so hard to tell what to include for it.
chrono trigger: yeah, my list lacks non western games and chrono trigger deserves to be there simply because of its ambitious scale and the fact that its one of the greatest games i’ve ever played, what was i thinking?
earthbound: never played it :(
castlevania: the early metroids and later castlevanias for what we know as “metroidvanias” today. I’ve played castlevania 1 and 2 and there is not much of what makes metroidvanias in them. fun games though.
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 11 months ago:
the full book in pdf is linked on the page for free , it’s very much worth the price for a paper coppy however.
the blog is also a treasure trove of techincal details for various games :)
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 11 months ago:
i think that honour might go to total annihilation.
i also remember the final fantasies on the psx having an orchestral pieces jn their soundtrack, but those might have not been performed by an actual orchestra originally.
- Comment on what video game deserves to be in a museum? 11 months ago:
a more tech oriented book about doom.
great read for anyone who is into programming.