From Keen to Doom: id Software’s Founders Talk 30 Years of Gaming History Feb 1, 2021, 6:40 am EDT | 8 min read On February 1, 1991, John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack officially founded id Software. The group went on to revolutionize the game industry with franchises such as Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake. Here’s a look back at id Software over the last 30 years, with a little help from those legendary developers. id Software: The House That Keen Built The story of id Software began in the late 1980s, when John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack (no relation to John), and Tom Hall developed games for a mail-order disk magazine company called Softdisk, located in Shreveport, Louisiana.