The Id Tech 5 engine that will be running id’s upcoming release, Rage, will be restricted to games that are published by Bethesda (id’s parent company). In the past, id licensed use of their Tech 3 engine for use in other games such as Call of Duty and American McGee’s Alice. When asked about the decision to keep Id Tech 5 in-house, Todd Hollenshead said that “…this [Id Tech 5] is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish.” While companies like Epic have made piles of money by licensing their Unreal engine, Bethesda seems to think they can do better by steering clear of licensing Id Tech 5 as middleware. Instead, it will be used as an incentive to let Bethesda publish developers’ games.
via Eurogamer