It's not Bethesda, even the top line says so. I'd like to call you something, and although not that bad, it would most likely get me banned (and I wouldn't be too surprised if even this would :P). Thus I will not say it. Also, though not directly related to this: Bethesda is not making BRINK, Splash Damage is. Saying that Bethesda is acquiring id is like saying that... umm, a different scale but anyway, EA is acquiring Activision (both are publishers, even pretty equal size to most people). Or Crytek acquiring Free Radical Design (both are developers). This is more like EA acquiring Crytek (ie. a publishes acquiring a developer). Is ZeniMax a developer?

Anyway, didn't Take Two release Oblivion? What's ZeniMax's role in Bethesda's games? Is ZeniMax a developer and Bethesda just one of their dev teams?

As long as Bethesda, or anything else, doesn't influence id's games in a negative way (ie. anything gameplay-related from Bethesda), I'm fine with this.

I think this can actually work.

iD to help work on BRINK?

im hoping that elder scrolls 5 uses the RAGE engine- how amazing would that be?

I was getting tired of the engine used in Fallout (semi-upgraded ElderScrolls engine)

From the Bethesda/Zenimax website, it seems like Zenimax is some kind of a marketing company.  I have never really been able to understand what role they really have with games because they don't publish anything.

Woah. I never saw this coming. Amazing. Not sure what to think about this yet.

Interesting, this was completely unexpected! I never though ID would get aquired...

This is great.

Bethesda= best game developer
Splash damage=top 3 game developer
id=top 10 game developer

This combo will be superb.

As for game engines, Bethesda don't make their own engines, they license them (as does Splash Damage), but so far never from id, but for Oblivion and Fallout 3 they've used the slightly old Gamebryo engine.

So this is great news even from a Bethesda fan's perspective. There's a big chance that future Elder Scrolls and Fallout's will be run on better engines.
(even though when Oblivion came out in 2006 it was the most beautiful thing ever witnessed in gaming)

So many fantastic AAA games are coming from this developer within just two years:

Wolfenstein
Brink
Rage
The Elder Scrolls 5
Doom 4
The Elder Scrolls Online
Fallout 4

Wow. This is pretty surprising.

I could be wrong, but I think Bethesda set up Zenimax themselves as an unbrella within which they could aquire other companies more easily.  I'm sure I read that somewhere when Zenimax first appeared.  I'm sure it explicitly exists to make it easy for Bethesda to merge/buy companies.

Interesting news.  Looking at sales/games I'd hope to see some cool stuff coming out of this merger (I note the wording in the press release implies more of a merger vs a buy out).