[the_mat]

This is the end for id.

The only thing id has had going for it are Carmack's engines. In recent years his stuff has been as amazing as ever, but so many commercial engines are only a fraction of a step behind, and the difference hardly matters.

Design-wise id is a complete mess. They're stuck back in the 1990s. RAGE appears to have had no leadership and no vision, and the actual design work that shipped is amateur-hour at best.

[adventured]

ZeniMax will fold the id software llc, keep anybody worth keeping, and work on making money with the intellectual property (either internally or farming it out). There's nothing else left at id that's worth what ZeniMax paid for the company other than the IP and the game engine. I'm sure they knew the day would come sooner than later that they'd lose the Carmack value factor in id.