S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Didn't Steal Textures

THQ’s awesome first person shooter released last month, and garnered quite a lot of praise from the community, along with some criticism. There were strong rumors suggesting that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had stolen textures from Valve’s Half-Life 2 and ID Software’s Doom 3. Shacknews made an inquiry with id Software’s CEO Todd Hollshead, and this is what he had to say:

“I’ve seen a post on a web forum that claims DOOM3 assets are used in another game, but we’ve been working hard on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as our own internal project and have not had the time to fully investigate or otherwise verify that the claim is true. Only from what I’ve seen on the Web, it’s concerning. However, it may turn out to be nothing. Nevertheless, it would be improper to make any decision about a course of action until we find out whether the claim is true, and what assets from DOOM3, if any, have potentially been used.”

Thankfully, the claims were false according to Shacknews’ investigation. It seems that all three companies utilized texture packs provided by Marlin Studios, whose sole purpose is to produce high quality texture packs that are bought by many top game developers, along with a few Hollywood production houses.