id Tech 5 Will Not Be Licensed Outside ZeniMax

Todd Hollenshead, the chief executive officer of id Software, has declared that id Tech 5 will not be licensed to third party publishers and developers, but that it would only be used in titles distributed by ZeniMax or Bethesda Softworks.

It seems that id Tech 5 will not have the same status as the Unreal Engine 3.0 or CryEngine 3.0, as external outfits will not have access to id's latest technology if they are not published by ZeniMax.

This is quite a surprising turn of events, given the fact that id Tech 5 was announced as one the most important competitors that were to come for Epic's very successful middleware.

Speak to Eurogamer, Todd Hollenshead said that, “It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties.”

He continued to comment that, “It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish - not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing.”

The id exec had something to say about Epic strategy as well. “I think that [Epic] made a strategic choice to focus on the middleware service stuff, and we never pretended to be focused on technology licensing.”

He also continued to say that the reason id Software had allowed other developers to use their technology until now was that the company thought that it would get wasted in only one studio's hands.

The Quake III engine was quite popular when it first appeared, at that time having a similar status with the one the Unreal Engine 3.0 has managed to achieve this generation.

The only serious competitor back was Epic, that company that rules this portion of the video game market today.

“Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them, but I wouldn't change the way we've done things,” Hollenshead concluded.

Rage, id Software's latest first person shooter, is coming sometime in 2011 on the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC.