4 ms·
Scorched earth. If id release an engine at a certain tech level, they put serious competition in the way of other would-be licensors of engines at or about that
by regularfry 15y ago
Scorched earth. If id release an engine at a certain tech level, they put serious competition in the way of other would-be licensors of engines at or about that tech level. That stops smaller software houses from breaking through that tech level to compete at the higher level.
I don't know if it's a conscious policy or not, but it's interesting nonetheless.
- jiggy2011 15y agoI see what your saying but I don't think so. They usually dual license the old engines , distribute 1 under GPL and another under a commercial (albeit relatively cheap compared to the newer engines) license. The GPL license can only be used to create games that are also GPL licensed (so stuff like alien arena I think). I suppose this could allow someone to start developing using the GPL'd engine and then switch to the commercial engine later once they had something ready to release. I like to think it is more to do with carmack being curious as to what people will do with his creations.
- derleth 15y agoI disagree: The GPL allows those smaller software houses to use the id engine without giving away their game resources. After all, id doesn't give away Q3 just because it gives away the Q3 engine. As the game resources are what the players mostly associate with the game, you can still make and sell your own game based on a GPL'd engine without the GPL really cutting into your profits.
- regularfry 15y agoThat's exactly my point. You can make and sell your own game, but you can't compete with id by making and licensing your own engine so easily.
- regularfry 15y agoI've found out thanks to other comments here that id don't plan to license their top-end engine outside their own publisher any more. I think that means this argument is moot.