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Comment by djloche | Hacker News Reader

They sold the company, and now Carmack at Oculus. It makes sense that the values of the company have changed.

Too bad how Carmack was unable to shape the culture in the company he co-created in the first place. Seems like he remained always an outsider.

Masters of Doom makes Carmack sound as responsible for ID's culture problems as anyone else. (Mind you, I'm not sure how reliable that impression is: in some places the author gives the impression that he'd pencilled in Carmack as the designated baddie of the story.)

I've read the book as well. I'm not sure what to make of it in terms of why id went the way it did. Anyway, Carmack remained, and after Romero left I believe he had a leading role in id. Yet he seemed to remain isolated in his principle of opening up his code now and then. Since Carmack has left id has been a fully closed house of software. Pretty sad. At the same time, I dont care since they did not make any notable game recently anyway.

"...the values of the company have changed..." - a polite way of saying "the founders sold out".

Carmack didn't "sell out", he spent decades at id and was responsible for vast swathes of 3D technology and the open-sourcing of multiple cutting edge game engines.

He went above and beyond what you could expect of anyone who cofounds a game development house and he is treated like a literal programming icon for good reason.

"On June 24, 2009, ZeniMax Media acquired the company."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software

=> sell out

The selling of the company that you don't outright 100% own doesn't equate to the traditional meaning of "selling out".

In this case it's more a polite way of saying "the founders got forced out" - or more bluntly: the idiots in charge managed to get rid of id's greatest asset.

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