Epic creative director Cliff Bleszinski has described the competition between the developer and John Carmack's id Software as 'legendary'.

“id was always the studio I had my eyes on in the early days as far as wondering if we could be as good as them if not better,” Bleszinski told develop. “When we had Unreal Tournament they had Quake 3, which is one of those legendary showdowns between two games.”

The Gears of War designer also admitted his surprise at the recent decline experienced by the old guard of PC FPS developers. “To see the old standbys go through these kinds of changes – like with 3D Realms closing up Duke Nukem – it’s really shocking. We all came from the same mould from the shareware days; these studios have been around forever, and to see them acquired like that is a surprise.”

Despite the demise of 3D Realms however, Bleszinski feels that id’s acquisition by Zenimax could be a positive development for the software company: “I think in the long term it will probably be a good thing for id. It will add stability, it will help them leverage their properties more.”