id co-founder and all-round industry legend John Carmack has shared a story on his Twitter account that might just restore your faith in humanity.
Carmack's thread of tweets begins with him explaining that, early in his career, he was more than happy to loan people money whenever they were in a tight spot. "Well into six figures went out," he says, with the cash being used for emergencies, starting businesses, making down payments on homes, and so on.
However, Carmack reveals that getting his money back wasn't something that happened all that often. "Most of the people just never spoke of it again," he continues, "and I didn’t press them on it. It was a learning experience for me, calibrating some general people behaviour. I don’t think anyone intended to not pay me back, but things often just don’t work out the way you plan."
He has now revealed that one of those "larger debts" has been paid after a quarter of a century. The person doing the repaying is none other than American McGee, who, as Carmack explains, "was a close friend and co-worker on Quake... I often fronted him 'advances' for various reasons. He wound up doing game development in China, and I wished him well, but I only had sporadic contact with him. I am very much a 'water under the bridge' person, but he reached out and said that it had always weighed on him, his latest business was doing well, and he wanted to pay me back. I found this moving after all this time, and I get to push a nice positive update into my personal 'model of how people behave.'"
McGee worked on Ultimate Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II before being fired from id Software in 1998. He joined Electronic Arts and worked on American McGee's Alice, a title which would spawn a sequel in 2011 under the name Alice: Madness Returns.
Carmack recently parted ways with Facebook parent company Meta, where he was employed as 'executive consultant for VR', citing frustrations with efficiency at the firm.