Steve and Marty both recognized the growing importance of digital distribution, but have no plans of putting the publisher out of the equation any time soon. "The retail channel isn't going away," Marty said, and while a company such as id has the financial means to finance their own projects, they don't have the human resources to manage a retail relationship like a big publisher does. The publisher still adds a ton of value, especially in the marketing of games. "We take a development risk, we fund our own title, and take a financial risk there, and we expect the publisher to come to the table with the marketing risk," Marty said. He believes there is still a tremendous need for publishers and that the biggest misconception with digital distribution is that the publisher can be dropped. "They need someone to at least pay for marketing if they want to have a triple-A title", Marty added. "Most companies still need someone to fund the game's development, and that's a huge role publishers still need to play."

When asked about solutions to combat piracy, they didn't have much to say in terms of new technology. While there isn't a sound technical solution yet to eliminate piracy completely, id will continue to look at the technology available for new solutions. Marty noted that id Software's online CD key authorization system, that has been in use since the inception of QuakeIII, has been a very effective method of stopping piracy. "Despite what people think about it being cracked and there being key generators that work, it hasn't." Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will also contain several other layers of security that will be very beneficial to cut down on piracy. You will have to be online and logged into a system that will track your stats while playing online.