Carmack welcomes Doom firm’s Xbox sale: ‘Maybe I’ll be able to re-engage with my old titles’

John Carmack has welcomed Microsoft’s acquisition of Id Software parent Zenimax and suggested it could see him once again work with the studio he co-founded.

Carmack, who programmed Id’s classic games including Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake, has been involved in multiple legal battles with his former employer since he departed in 2013.

On Monday, following news that Microsoft has agreed to purchase Bethesda Softworks’ parent for $7.5m, Carmack tweeted:

“Great! I think Microsoft has been a good parent company for gaming IPs, and they don’t have a grudge against me, so maybe I will be able to re engage with some of my old titles.”

Carmack quit Id Software to join Oculus VR in 2013, claiming that his depature was because Bethesda parent Zenimax Media would not agree to let games he was working on appear on the virtual reality headset.

The programmer later became the center of a lawsuit between Zenimax and Oculus parent Facebook, with the former claiming that Oculus stole its virtual reality intellectual property.

The trial jury eventually absolved Carmack of liability. However, he then sued Zenimax himself in 2017, claiming his former employer owed him some $22 million from their purchase of id Software.

The following year the pair reached an agreement that “satisfied their obligations” to Carmack.

The Doom programmer announced he was stepping down from his role at Oculus CTO last year, to become a “Consulting CTO”.