software inc. 1991 2009 type subsidiary industry video game industry founded february 1 1991 ; 25 years ago 1991 02 01 in mesquite texas u.s. founders adrian carmack john carmack tom hall john romero headquarters richardson texas u.s. key people tim willits products wolfenstein 1992 doom 1993 quake 1996 rage 2011 number of employees 200 1 2012 parent zenimax media website idsoftware.com id software llc formerly id software inc. d ; see company name is an american video game developer headquartered in dallas texas . the company was founded on february 1 1991 by four members of the computer company softdisk programmers john carmack and john romero game designer tom hall and artist adrian carmack no relation to john carmack . business manager jay wilbur was also involved . 2 id software made important technological developments in video game technologies for the pc running ms dos and windows including work done for the wolfenstein doom and quake franchises . id s work was particularly important in 3d computer graphics technology and in game engines that are heavily used throughout the video game industry . the company was also heavily involved in the creation of the first person shooter genre . wolfenstein 3d is often considered as the first true fps doom was a game that popularized the genre and pc gaming in general and quake is the first shooter to have online multiplayer which is a widespread feature used in today s games of the same genre as well as id s first true 3d first person shooter . on june 24 2009 zenimax media acquired the company . contents 1 history 1.1 company name 1.2 key employees 1.3 former key employees 2 game development 2.1 technology 2.2 linux gaming 3 games 3.1 commander keen 3.2 wolfenstein 3.3 doom 3.4 quake 3.5 rage 3.6 other games 3.7 games developed by id software 3.8 games co developed produced or published 3.8.1 expansion packs 4 other media 5 controversy 5.1 doom 5.2 wolfenstein 3d 6 people 6.1 john carmack 6.2 john romero 6.3 tom hall 6.4 sandy petersen 6.5 american mcgee 7 notes 8 references 9 literature 10 external links history edit the founders of id software met in the offices of softdisk developing multiple games for softdisk s monthly publishing . these included dangerous dave and other titles . in september 1990 john carmack developed an efficient way that would perform rapid side scrolling graphics on the pc . upon making this breakthrough carmack and hall stayed up late into the night making a replica of the first level of the popular 1988 nes game super mario bros. 3 inserting stock graphics of romero s dangerous dave character in lieu of mario . when romero saw the demo entitled dangerous dave in copyright infringement he realized that carmack s breakthrough could have potential . the team that would later form id software immediately began moonlighting going so far as to borrow company computers that were not being used over the weekends and at nights while they designed their own remake of super mario bros. 3 . despite their work nintendo turned them down saying they had no interest in expanding to the pc market and that mario games were to remain exclusive to nintendo consoles . around this time scott miller of apogee software learned of the group and their exceptional talent having played one of john romero s softdisk games dangerous dave and contacted romero under the guise of multiple fan letters that romero came to realize all originated from the same address . 3 4 when he confronted miller miller explained that the deception was necessary since companies at that time were very protective of their talent and it was the only way he could get romero to initiate contact with him . miller suggested that they develop shareware games that he would distribute . as a result the id software team began the development of commander keen a mario style side scrolling game for the pc once again borrowing company computers to work on it at odd hours at the lake house at which they lived in shreveport louisiana . on december 14 1990 the first episode was released as shareware by miller s company apogee and orders began rolling in . shortly after this softdisk management learned of the team s deception and suggested that they form a new company together but the administrative staff at softdisk threatened to resign if such an arrangement were made . in a legal settlement the team was required to provide a game to softdisk every two months for a certain period of time but they would do so on their own . citation needed on february 1 1991 id software was founded . the shareware distribution method was initially employed by id software through apogee software to sell their products such as the commander keen wolfenstein and doom games . they would release the first part of their trilogy as shareware then sell the other two installments by mail order . only later about the time of the release of doom ii did id software release their games via more traditional shrink wrapped boxes in stores through other game publishers . id software moved from the cube shaped mesquite office to a newly built location in richardson texas . on june 24 2009 it was announced that id software had been acquired by zenimax media owner of bethesda softworks . the deal would eventually affect publishing deals id software had before the acquisition namely rage which was being published through electronic arts . 5 on june 26 2013 id software president todd hollenshead quit after 17 years of service . 6 on november 22 2013 it was announced id software co founder and technical director john carmack had fully resigned from the company to work full time at oculus vr which he joined as cto in august 2013 . 7 8 he was the last of the original founders to leave the company . company name edit the company writes its name with a lowercase id which is pronounced as in did or kid and according to the book masters of doom the group identified itself as ideas from the deep in the early days of softdisk but that in the end the name id came from the phrase in demand . 9 it is presented by the company as a reference to the id a psychological concept introduced by sigmund freud . evidence of the reference can be found as early as wolfenstein 3d with the statement that s id as in the id ego and superego in the psyche appearing in the game s documentation . prior to an update to the website id s history page made a direct reference to freud . 10 key employees edit kevin cloud executive producer 1992 present tim willits studio director 1995 present marty stratton executive producer 11 1997 present robert duffy chief technology officer 11 1998 present former key employees edit arranged in chronological order tom hall co founder game designer level designer writer creative director 1991 1993 . after a dispute with john carmack over the designs of doom hall was forced to resign from id software in august 1993 . he joined 3d realms soon afterwards . bobby prince music composer 1991 1994 . a freelance musician who went on to pursue other projects after doom ii . dave taylor programmer 1993 1994 . taylor left id software and co founded crack dot com . john romero co founder game designer programmer 1991 1996 . romero was fired from id software on august 6 1996 after the release of quake for not performing . he established ion storm along with hall on november 15 1996 . shawn green software support 1991 1996 . left id software to join romero at ion storm . mike wilson pr and marketing 1994 1997 . left id software to become ceo of ion storm with romero . left a year later to found gathering of developers and later devolver digital . michael abrash programmer 1995 1996 . returned to microsoft after the release of quake . jay wilbur business manager 1991 1997 . left id software after romero s departure and joined epic games in 1997 . sandy petersen level designer 1993 1997 . left id software for ensemble studios in 1997 . american mcgee level designer 1993 1998 . american was fired after the release of quake ii . he joined electronic arts and created the cult classic american mcgee s alice . adrian carmack co founder artist 1991 2005 . adrian left id software after the release of doom 3 to further pursue his career in arts . it was later revealed he was fired due to legal issues over ownership and sued the company . the lawsuit was eventually dropped after the zenimax media acquisition . todd hollenshead president 1996 2013 left id software on good terms to pursue other personal interests . john carmack co founder technical director 1991 2013 . he joined oculus vr on august 7 2013 as a side project but unable to handle two companies at the same time carmack resigned from id software on november 22 2013 to pursue oculus full time making him the last founding member to leave the company . game development edit technology edit co founder john carmack at the 2010 gdc starting with their first shareware game series commander keen id software has licensed the core source code for the game or what is more commonly known as the engine . brainstormed by john romero id software held a weekend session titled the id summer seminar in the summer of 1991 with prospective buyers including scott miller george broussard ken rogoway jim norwood and todd replogle . one of the nights id software put together an impromptu game known as wac man to demonstrate not only the technical prowess of the keen engine but also how it worked internally . id software has developed their own game engine for each of their titles when moving to the next technological milestone including commander keen wolfenstein 3d shadowcaster 12 doom quake quake ii and quake iii as well as the technology used in making doom 3 . after being used first for id software s in house game the engines are licensed out to other developers . according to eurogamer.net id software has been synonymous with pc game engines since the concept of a detached game engine was first popularised . during the mid to late 1990s the launch of each successive round of technology it s been expected to occupy a headlining position with the quake iii engine being most widely adopted of their engines . however id tech 4 had far fewer licensees than the unreal engine from epic games due to the long development time that went into doom 3 which id software had to release before licensing out that engine to others . in conjunction with his self professed affinity for sharing source code john carmack has open sourced most of the major id software engines under the gnu general public license . historically the source code for each engine has been released once the code base is 5 years old . consequently many home grown projects have sprung up porting the code to different platforms cleaning up the source code or providing major modifications to the core engine . wolfenstein 3d doom and quake engine ports are ubiquitous to nearly all platforms capable of running games such as hand held pcs ipods the psp the nintendo ds and more . impressive core modifications include darkplaces which adds stencil shadow volumes into the original quake engine along with a more efficient network protocol . another such project is ioquake3 which maintains a goal of cleaning up the source code adding features and fixing bugs . even earlier id software code namely for hovertank 3d and catacomb