id Software

USA · Founded 1991 · Developer

id Software created the first-person shooter genre with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, then redefined it with Quake. John Carmack's engine technology was licensed across the industry, making id the technical engine of 1990s PC gaming.

id Software was founded in Mesquite, Texas in February 1991 by John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack (no relation), departing from Softdisk where they had been making games under contract. The company's founding was enabled by Commander Keen (1990), a series of shareware platform games that generated immediate revenue. Wolfenstein 3D (1992) established the first-person shooter genre's commercial viability; Doom (1993) redefined it entirely, becoming the most widely installed software on personal computers worldwide and generating an estimated $100 million in shareware registrations and retail sales by 1995. John Carmack's rendering engines — the Doom engine, then the Quake engine — were licensed to dozens of other developers, making id's technology the infrastructure on which Half-Life, Quake III Arena, and many other landmark games were built. The id Tech lineage remains active through Doom (2016) and its sequels, though the company was acquired by ZeniMax Media in 2009.