id Software has pioneered Graphics Engines licensing with its Quake and Doom engines (renamed later to id Tech engines), but it seems that this has come to an end with the upcoming release of the company's id Tech 5 (RAGE) engine.
The company's boss, Todd Hollenshead, revealed that id Software isn't going to offer id Tech 5 for licensing by third party developers.
"It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties," he affirmed.
"It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish - not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."
Hollenshead then explained that third party licensing has always been a side business for id Software which used to develop its graphics engines solely for use in its own games. "Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them, but I wouldn't change the way we've done things," he said.