Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time.

If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

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mortenjorck an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yes. As I suggested in another thread: an open-source, modern IdTech would fill the empty quadrant in the Godot : Unity :: ____ : Unreal matrix.

A few mid-size studios pitching in to fund continued development on a Blender model could turn IdTech into a major competitor to Unreal Engine in a relatively short timeframe, ultimately costing them a lot less than licensing.

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markus_zhang 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

However, is it easy to work with an undocumented IDtech engine? Even a previous generation, say Rage? I think it’s very hard.

	▲	sph 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The entire 2000s FPS scene was built on variations on the Quake Engine. And it got us Half-Life.
	▲	ActionHank 12 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		How many UE5 games run even remotely well? I've not played one. Doom runs like butter on the switch. Might be hard to run, I don't know, but at least it was well made.

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eightysixfour an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think they should have moved Halo onto it instead of Unreal.

	▲	throwaway613746 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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CuriouslyC 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The industry is skewing heavily indie now, and there's no money in the indie game engine segment. Maybe a few AAA titles will be unhappy that Epic can negotiate more aggressively, but mostly this is a nothingburger, particularly given idTech's rep for batteries not included.

	▲	bcjdjsndon an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Among us made $105 million. I'd say there's plenty of money in indie, so long as your not rehashing other people's games yet again.... (Though the FPS industry, a long running doom clone saga, does just fine on this premise)

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TylerE 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What monopoly did they gift? IdTech hasn't been licensed to external companies in over 15 years, and several major versions ago.

The last non-Id release on IdTech was Brink in 2011.

	▲	LarsDu88 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		MSFT could have opened up idTech completely since they make 0 dollars from licensing the engine anyways. Microsoft's game divisions make money through making games, so opening up the engine itself would've been conducive to their goals (cultivating an ecosystem of devs and even contractors familiar with the tooling). idTech rendering is more competitive with Epic's Unreal technology than Unity and Godot. They should simply open source it if they fire the devs. Else the engine and future support for the games built on it are essentially being tossed into the trash.