Besset grew up in
France, and started programming in the early 1990s. In school he majored in
computer science, as well as pursuing courses in
chemistry,
mechanics, and
fluid mechanics. Through school he was also first introduced to
Linux, originally only for system administration and networking, and eventually adopting it for his main system. His first serious game development project was working on
QERadiant, a free game editor tool for
id Software games. Through his work on the editor he got to know Robert Duffy, who was at that point working as a contractor for id. After he got hired full-time, Duffy managed to secure Timothee a contract to work on the new cross-platform
GtkRadiant editor project in 2000. This eventually led to Timothee being hired to become id's official Linux port maintainer after they took back the support rights to the Linux release of
Quake III Arena from the then floundering
Loki Software. His first actual porting project came with the release of
Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001, with the Linux client being released on March 16, 2002. This was followed about a year later by the release of
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, with the Linux builds sharing the same release date as the
Windows release. His next porting work came with the release of
Doom 3, with him releasing the first Linux builds on October 4, 2004. Around this time he also assumed the responsibility of becoming in charge of network coding for id. This was followed by him releasing the source code for
GtkRadiant under the
GNU General Public License on February 17, 2006. His next porting project was porting
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, with Linux binaries being released on October 19, 2007. He also worked on the
Quake Live project, with the game entering an invitation-based closed beta in 2008 and an open beta on February 24, 2009, with Linux and Macintosh support coming on August 18, 2009. In response to fears by some in the Linux gaming community that id would abandon Linux with its future titles, on September 13, 2009 in a well publicized statement he reaffirmed id's support of Linux, stating in his blog that "Fundamentally nothing has changed with our policy regarding Linux games... I'll be damned if we don't find the time to get Linux builds done". In January 2012, Besset resigned from id Software, ending hope for future Linux builds (though
Doom 3 BFG Edition came to Linux via
source port). A year later
John Carmack revealed that
ZeniMax Media "doesn't have any policy of 'unofficial binaries'", and so prevented
id Software from pursuing any sort of third-party builds as it had in the past, be it Linux ports or experimental releases, and he then suggested the use of
Wine instead. On July 2, 2012, he was announced to have joined Frozen Sand, which was then developing
Urban Terror HD. In September 2016, he ported
Rocket League to SteamOS/Linux with the help of
Ryan C. Gordon As of January 2024 he was reported as working on the Linux
Steam client among other contract work for
Valve Software. == Games credited ==