"It is very funny that people are now saying "Creative blackmails id". You only have to think about this for a nanosecond to realise that Creative was in no position to blackmail anyone. Yes, we had to take a stance to protect our patent, but had we resolutely demanded what most companies in this situation would have, what do you think would have happened? It's very simple, id would have been forced to either pay a huge amount of cash or develop a less optimized method for shadowing that would have impacted performance and this may have caused the game to be delayed. On all counts Creative would have been publically vilified in the press. So blackmail, when id customers are our customers too?? I don't think so".

He concluded: " So we come to John Carmack's comments on Beyond3D. It seems to be his philosophy that patents should not exist. Certainly id are altruistic in making their game engines public (crucially after a certain period of time has elapsed), but that is a unique stance and frankly outside the scope of this discussion. However, as can be seen from this example Creative created a graphics technique in 1999 and despite the pace of graphics development it is still applicable 5 years later. The same cannot be said for game engines - no matter how good they are when they first launch".