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In the very short term, sure. All of the discussions of this kind of thing (and of copyrights and patents in general) have this same very-short-term perspective. "Patents SUCK, they're MEANT to encourage innovation but it's been SIX MONTHS and we STILL can't use [technique X]." Sure, but 20 years from now that patent will expire and we'll all be able to use it thanks to the fact that it was patented, and so significant parts of the 'secret sauce' are a matter of public record.

In the case of Doom, the engines being released has lead to an active community developing the engine (eg. GZdoom which can now be played in VR, with ray tracing, fancy shading, etc.) on pretty much any hardware with a processor.



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