ZeniMax Acquires Rage from Electronic Arts

[Andy Chalk]

ZeniMax Acquires Rage from Electronic Arts

ZeniMax Media has announced that id Software's upcoming shooter Rage [http://www.rage-game.com/] will be published by Bethesda Softworks and not Electronic Arts as had originally been planned.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be shocked or surprised by this announcement, but the truth is that I'm about as unshocked and unsurprised as I could possibly be. As an independent studio Bethesda Softworks [http://www.idsoftware.com], everything changed.

"ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of id Software, announced today that it has picked up the publishing rights for Rage, the video game under development at id Software," the company said in a brief press release. "Rage will be published by Bethesda Softworks, another ZeniMax subsidiary. As a result, Electronic Arts Inc. [http://www.ea.com] will not be involved in the sales and marketing of Rage."

Specifics of the deal, such as how much ZeniMax paid to get the publishing rights away from EA, weren't mentioned, but the company did add that the development of Rage would not be affected by the change. Rage is currently in development for the PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Mac, but no release date has been set.


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[MR T3D]

I hope it went down like this:
id: NO DEDIS!!!!
EA: PUT IN THE FUCKING SERVERS.
id: screw you, we changing publishers, try to force us to do something.

 

[Swaki]

well, lets hope it will be better than the last game bethesda published.

but yea this is no surprise, im most surprised that it actually got announced, i thought it was understood that zenimax would publish its own games.

 

[zombie711]

wait the fallout ripoff will be published by the people who make fallout?

 

[spike0918]

wait the fallout ripoff will be published by the people who make fallout?

For not specifying Fallout 3 your going to get yelled at by all of Interplay's and Obsidian's fans of Fallout 1,2 and Tactics.

I'd edit my post if I were you.

 

[Simalacrum]

erm... is this a good thing or not...? I'm not exactly sure...

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Well I like Bethesda as a company more than I do EA. This might be a good thing because if there's any company that's good at marketing games it's Bethesda.

 

[Lord_Panzer]

I almost feel... bad?.. for EA?

I think I need to go lay down, this moral confusion is exhausting.

 

[Valiance]

This is weird, because I was recently starting to like EA again, but I'm very glad that id is getting their own publisher for it, like, companies that they're affiliated with, because, you know, that's pretty cool, I like it when developers just sorta get to do whatever they want and then put the game out instead of publishers screwing things up (again, like publishers other than EA tried to do for mirror's edge.)

 

[phoenix352]

if this means dedicated servers are back in plan then iam overjoyed if not .... well dont care....

 

[zombie711]

wait the fallout ripoff will be published by the people who make fallout?

For not specifying Fallout 3 your going to get yelled at by all of Interplay's and Obsidian's fans of Fallout 1,2 and Tactics.

I'd edit my post if I were you.

Your right. By fallout I mean the good one not the ones that look like dirt blobs with gun. That that they weren't fun ... oh wait they weren't.

 

[LTK_70]

I can't say I'm thrilled by either publisher. EA has been making improvements to their customer friendliness, or at least it seems so, but the EA Store still rips me off. Nevertheless, lately EA gave us some very good games, among them Dragon Age, NFS: Shift, and in the future Mass Effect 2, while Bethesda only has Fallout 3 to show for it, the rest of the new titles aren't really worth noting. Funnily enough, the Dutch EA store still lists Rage as Coming Soon.

You can't really judge a book by its cover, just like you don't judge a game by its publisher, but the image makes all the difference. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[Jared]

I almost feel... bad?.. for EA?

I think I need to go lay down, this moral confusion is exhausting.

You and me both...crazy stuff...

 

[TOGSolid]

well, lets hope it will be better than the last game bethesda published.

Funny, I was just talking about that with a buddy of mine. Unfortunately for Rage, I now have to assume that their game is going to suck and not purchase it until I hear otherwise. I have a hard and fast rule that everything Bethesda touches, whether via developement or production, is just going to suck. Especially after the last time they tried to publish a game and they absolutely raped it.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

i'm just sad they aren't doing a linux port of the game, they were one of the few companies who would do it and their linux ports were better than the windows ones

 

[fix-the-spade]

Erm... fair enough?

I'm finding it hard to maintain interest in id at the moment, Doom to Quake 3 was fantastic, but since then it's been sort of average. Rage is like Schroedinger's game at the moment too, in a constant states of non/existent, I'd be tempted to get excited but I'm too cynical to believe in anything that hasn't been made available to the public to see.

Maybe there should be a worldwide moratorium on id news until they have something substinsive to say or show about their game?

 

[DayDark]

not particularly bothered by this. It's seems zenimax is growing into a big player lately.

 

[Korey Von Doom]

I almost feel... bad?.. for EA?

I think I need to go lay down, this moral confusion is exhausting.

You and me both...crazy stuff...

Well you know since Dead Space came out EA has been doing alot of changing, I mean it was made entirely by EA, an original title from EA! Yea it was surprising, but they are doing better whereas Activision has become the new bad guys.