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Microsoft has bought Bethesda


Carnage

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Just read the news that Microsoft has bought Bethesda and Zenimax (and the subsidiaries like Arkane). I'm not really sure what to think about it. Very likely not much will change, but I just hope that there won't be too much focus on the Xbox now. It would also be nice if the quality of the games will improve as some of the last few games weren't incredible.

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Well that puts the nail in the coffin for id software omg...

We all know microsofts stance on open source right... not that there was much hope that any code after idtech 4 would ever see the light of day after bethesda aquired id software, but with ms at the reins theres is no chance at all.

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8 hours ago, revelator said:

Well that puts the nail in the coffin for id software omg...

We all know microsofts stance on open source right... not that there was much hope that any code after idtech 4 would ever see the light of day after bethesda aquired id software, but with ms at the reins theres is no chance at all.

I don't get the pessimism. Frankly it's Microsoft who's been the one hosting various open-source repositories for various projects (not just Github as a whole but also certain Windows apps), I'm not aware of Bethesda even bothering to do anything like that. The modern Microsoft isn't quite the same as the 90's one, and I'm basing this on their actions and not just feeling, and yes I'm aware of the anti-trust period, I lived through that too. They're bastards in certain areas of course (like any corp) but in this particular situation, it's not really going to change much.

Overall however, it is an example of yet more consolidation and another step towards less competition due to the amalgamation of companies by megacops such as MS. Be thankful Carmack open sourced the iD engines when he did.

A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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4 hours ago, Kurshok said:

Shit. I'm a Playstation fan, grew up playing the PS controller, never got the hang of Xbox when trying it at the store. I hope this doesn't make ES6 xbox exclusive.

I read somewhere that they don't intend to go xbox-exclusive. Whether they will stick to that statement, that's a whole other story.

I for one hope they put some more money into Quake Champions! Such an underrated game! 🙂

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I know bethesda is no saint in that regard i just abhor monopolism and while it may seem like a good thing to some to as you say put all your egg's in one basket im not sure it will be in the long run.

Actually carmack had pretty much promised that idtech 5 would also be opensourced someday before he left id but bethesda reneged on that as they took over, hence why im having a hard time seeing it getting any better.

EDIT: at least we got parts of idtech 5 with BFG (multithreading for instance) would have been cool to get a look at the internals of the new megamap code though.

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I also think that open-sourcing engines should be much easier with Microsoft than with Bethesda.
Both because Microsoft is very open-source-friendly now while for game publisher it is just stupid to give out anything for free. And because for a huge company like Microsoft open-sourcing one game can be a joke (like Nokia open-sourced Qt because it did not care about it much).

However, modern engines are increasingly more complex, so it is questionable how useful it would be if open-sourced. As a consequence of being complex, modern idTech engines are likely to include a lot of code from the previous versions, since rewriting everything is more and more costly. Which means that open-sourcing idTech5 can efficiently open-source a lot of active code which still gives competitive advantage. And also Carmack is not in ID, and I wonder if current ID employees care about open-source and the old tradition of ID.

And yes, I hate the idea that gamedev becomes owned by a few huge corporations.
Perhaps because this business is too risky? No matter what you do, you will have financial problems one day, and someone large than you will buy you, of you just go bankrupt and lose your team.

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Heh yeah thats true.

Also GPL licensing has become a joke, if all code was open companies could use whatever fix some poor slob who happens to have the right solution for something they broke and not pay a dime.

Does this actually happen you might ask, well go through some of the engines that did happen to go opensource after they where no longer viable income sources and have a look :).

Also a lot of corps do in fact use opensource libraries like zlib / png and a whole ballpark of other free code disregarding the GPL rule that once you use these you have to opensource your own code pronto (you could get around that rule by linking to a shared version though they dont even bother to do that).

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59 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

Perhaps because this business is too risky? No matter what you do, you will have financial problems one day, and someone large than you will buy you, of you just go bankrupt and lose your team.

I'm not sure what motivated Microsoft to buy Bethesda/ZeniMax (and likewise for Bethesda/ZeniMax to sell to MS), but I'm sure for smaller developers like Obsidian and InXile, being bought out by a larger corp means there's a certain comfort of not having to deal with the threat of collapse due to barely staying afloat in such a cutthroat business. I was under the impression Bethesda/ZeniMax were doing well with owning popular development houses that create such lucrative IPs, but maybe I was wrong. I do appreciate this kind of chatter though. You try going to reddit for any of the threads about this news and there's almost no talk about the consequences of fewer and fewer individual companies, it's mostly about the potential for games.

Having said that, /r/linux_gaming has gone nuts and think this is a $7.5 billion attempt to squash Vulkan despite Microsoft being on the Khronos contributor members list. But of course, the lack of attention for games on Linux is never due to the incredibly small desktop user base, it's always some conspiracy. I don't like being a Linux user sometimes.

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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15 hours ago, Carnage said:

Just read the news that Microsoft has bought Bethesda and Zenimax (and the subsidiaries like Arkane). I'm not really sure what to think about it. Very likely not much will change, but I just hope that there won't be too much focus on the Xbox now. 

It's likely that they will make Bethesda games exclusive, i.e. Windows and Xbox only. They stated efforts in that regard.

TBH, I don't care much, as I like Microsoft, and I have Windows and a Xbox anyway. If anything, then I consider it a good thing, as Sony is as good as dead anyway.

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Good God, it's like reading a bunch of 90s Microsoft executives discussing open-source in this thread. Open-source developers are idiots giving away valuable IP for free, open source is communist, open source licenses are viral and take ownership of your own code, open sourced code is abandonware which will wither and die, open source will put commercial developers out of business, yada yada. That this is the development forum for an open source game makes it even more bizarre.

Quote

Also a lot of corps do in fact use opensource libraries like zlib / png and a whole ballpark of other free code disregarding the GPL rule that once you use these you have to opensource your own code pronto

Neither ZLib nor PNG are GPL licensed, so that's flat-out misinformation. I suppose companies might be doing this with other libraries which are GPL, but it's very risky because you are likely to get caught and the GPL has been ruled enforceable in court.

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3 minutes ago, chakkman said:

It's likely that they will make Bethesda games exclusive, i.e. Windows and Xbox only. They stated efforts in that regard.

TBH, I don't care much, as I like Microsoft, and I have Windows and a Xbox anyway. If anything, then I consider it a good thing, as Sony is as good as dead anyway.

Sony has been projected to sell twice as many PS5 consoles as Microsoft sells Xboxes. Death is unlikely for Sony.

Sony is the worse company though, and if Xbox 3840 can draw blood, good for them.

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They don't hate Windows. They've just got the B, maybe C level folks working on it now. It's still the best general-purpose OS out there in my opinion, just with flaws.

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A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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Not the best examples with zlib and png agreed though i do seem to remember one of them used to be GPL,

still id call it a valid concern and if you newer see the internals of of a game anyway you would have a hard time convincing any court that they broke the rule.

Personally i have nothing against them using opensourced code, a little thank you to the devs would be much appreciated though ;).

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Heh i find myself in the akward situation that my ass old mainboard asus rampage iv extreme actually works better on win10 than on win7 Oo.

Lots of other bugs with current windows but they do seem to have the driver support down :) with win7 i have to use a really old usb3 driver or the OS would crash to no end when i plugged something into the usb3 ports, with win10 it just works.

Id still prefer the win7 interface though, the weird metro interface has allways struck me as something they should have put back in the drawer.

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There are solutions. I prefer a Windows 7 workflow despite using Windows 10 so I have a start menu replacement, Explorer replacement and make a number of other tweaks to give it a more familiar (and more functional) feel. Win 7 honestly feels garish now despite feeling "fresh" at the time. I guess that's the outcome of sliding expectations and trends.

A word of warning, Agent Denton. This was a simulated experience; real LAMs will not be so forgiving.

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idtech 1: quake / hexen2 / (commercial modified idtech 1) half-life 1 and source engine (yep the original source engine used an enormously modified quake 1 engine).

 idtech 2: quake2 / (commercial modified idtech 2) heretic 2 / Sin / kingpin life of crime / soldier of fortune / daikatana / anachronox / and kingpin reloaded

idtech 3: quake 3 / (commercial modified idtech 3 not open sourced) return to castle wolfenstein / american mc gee's alice / star trek voyager / soldier of fortune 2 / star wars jedi knight / resident evil dead aim / wolfenstein enemy territory. And many many more.  Probably the most used idtech engine out there.

idtech 4: doom3 / (commercial modified idtech4 not open sourced) quake 4 / PREY / enemy territory quake wars / wolfenstein 2009 / brink / (canceled) Prey2 / And (canceled) Sin2

idtech 5: (partial code) Doom3 BFG

Then there are the pre idtech doom engines which used sprite models (wikipedia seems to think this one was idtech 1).

 

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