id Acknowledges

Looks like id Software has been updated, giving birthday wishes to our beloved game. It also looks like their store section has been opened where, I hear, you can actually find a reliable source for buying Doom for $25. And apparently if you pre-order Doom 3 you'll get some sort of collectible with it.

Actually, the free stuff w/. preorder is just a link to Doom3.com preorder, which is a link to EB Games, and Gamestop, where you can get the BoH or Mancubus.

Edit: Yay sleep.

This looks like a Win95 version of Doom2?

http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/doom2/index.php?game_section=sysreq&id=55f9d0ce472db478f7bea5fedb204c65

I get contacted now and then by people who buy Doom2 somewhere, thinking they are getting the real thing, and its actually some Windows doom thing. They ask me wtf to do, so I end up sending them the DOS installer for 1.9, which is kind of retarded to have to do when they did just buy it. I am not positive that this is the case with this download-purchase link, but it seems like it is. If ID is not doing it already, I wish they would put the DOS installer somewhere for the download-purchase people. Or on these CDs, wherever people are getting them.

--BahdKo

I'm pretty certain the versions downloadable from id Software include the DOS engines in a subdirectory (I've been told, and they were present in the Final DOOM package I downloaded a few years back from the now defunct GT Interactive.) It's the Collector's Edition that doesn't have them; by the way all the DOS engines are easily accessible from my page for this reason.

The real game is available on the old DOOM95 releases, I don't know about these.
I'm skeptical, because that DOOM trilogy thing didn't have the real game in it! What a complete ripoff! (for those of you who don't think so, imagine paying money for a vintage Corvette and when you get it, it is only a Corvette chassis and body, the engine is a Ford!)
receiving that straight from General Motors is even more of a slap in the face. shame on id.

The DOOM 95 and DOOM2 95 CDs have the original DOS installs (deice) in directories named DOOM and DOOM2. Same with Final Doom and HEXEN 95.

$25, can you say 'rip off' boys and girls?

Id Software said:

For the first time ever, you will be able to order id Software games and merchandise from our website and have them shipped directly to your front door.

Provided your front door is located in the US. Bah.

Cyb said:
$25, can you say 'rip off' boys and girls?

Man... after spending countless hours of your life editing the game and running web sites related to it one would think you'd at least share the makers' pride in the game.

Happy Birthday Doom!

To celebrate please give us your money. You can now preorder Doom III AND buy Doom t-shirts for only $25!!! And remember, if you don't, you AREN'T A TRUE FAN!!!11

That acknowledgement just harms my heart.

Is that a parody of ENDOOM there? id used to say stuff like that back when they made DOOM and Romero was with them.

id Software is probably one of the most decent game companies in relation to their business attitude and practice (not to mention their relation with game editing users,) yet even that doesn't stop some fop from complaining that they are doing business when they make their games. It's not '93 now; the fact that it made sense to release DOOM E1 as shareware and everything went great from there, eventually helping id become an established company, doesn't really entitle someone to be nagging at the id site each time they present a DOOM related commercial offer. I mean, one can go ahead and do so, and at best he'll play the role of an amusing forum clown.

Would it be better if they did not offer the shirts at all? Or should they have produced them when it would have been a economic loss for the company as opposed to doing it in an opportune moment of potential customer interest for a possible non-loss or (optimally) slight gain?

To celebrate please give us your money. You can now preorder Doom III AND buy Doom t-shirts for only $25!!! And remember, if you don't, you AREN'T A TRUE FAN!!!11

so, apart from you, who said that, then?



ooh look quake3 for £15, i might just...

I'm still waiting for Romero to give his assessment, he said he was going to do an update and then post something new Doom related (maybe he finally ported DoomEd?) Sure is taking his pretty time about it though.

one thing i didnt notice on doom3.com's preorder section was best buys pre-order :\ i got one from them and it came w/ a poster and a mancubus, gamespot & eb come w/ no poster but have a demon (pinky) and hellknight.

I think I'll pass on the "T-shits". (Damn! Rellik beat me to that one.)

I'm with Cyb about $25 being a rip-off for a 10-year old game. At least if they were shipping the game in the original box, with the original 5-floppy disk set (which, btw, I own, and which I hope will eventually be worth a few bucks more than I paid for it. Heh) it could have some collectible value. But 25 bucks for a download? At least no one can accuse id Software of not having cojones for the business.

Another thing about which I was somewhat disappointed, was the complete absence of a celebratory tone on id's web page:

"Happy Birthday, DooM. And by the way, head on over to the pre-order page to get your own copy of DooM3. And while you're at it, give us some of your (or your parents') hard-earned bucks for anything else that strikes your fancy on this page."

DooM World is having a 4-day featured celebration of this ground-breaking game, and all id Software can do is throw out a casual mention and use it as a launching pad to peddle more stuff?

[Now I have nothing against id Software or any other company making reasonable bucks from willing buyers. However, one would expect a company such as id to show a little less crass commercialism.]

I'll shut up now.

Hmmm. Should we sell this old game and t-shirts for dirt cheap or should we crank up the prices so we can all get another Ferrari? Hmmmm....

heh I agree with you completely Rex (as might be evident from my post above :P) but really this is the kind of thing i'd expect from id these days. They abandoned their nostalgic ways right about the time Romero left.

I don't feel like $25.00 for doom2 is excessive. It is, after all, the best deathmatch game in existence. It being 10 years old doesn't mean shit to us in terms of our still playing it, so I'm imagining it shouldn't mean much in terms of the game's price.

$14.00 or more is what you see T-shirts go for in those mall specialty shops such as Spencers.

i wanna t shirt

--BahdKo

I'm with ReX.

They probably did some math on the cost to get the pay per download implementation to work divided by the number of downloads per year + the desired profit = USD 25. "They will pay..They will pay"

Whatever... I got the Collector's Edition for $15. Now explain how $25 for part of it is reasonable? It doesn't make any sense at all. Heck, buying Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom from idsoftware.com looks like it'll cost... $75. Let's see, now that's a $60 price difference. What the heck? Oh well, whatever, I'm happy, I've got all the Doom I need (until Doom 3 comes out).

Zoost said:

They probably did some math on the cost to get the pay per download implementation to work divided by the number of downloads per year + the desired profit = USD 25.

It is indeed truly shocking to think that a company might set the price of a product/service so as to make it commercially viable for them to sell it.

Heh, $25 is just a tad steep for a 10 year old game, regardless of how good it is.

Grazza said:

It is indeed truly shocking to think that a company might set the price of a product/service so as to make it commercially viable for them to sell it.

While your gentle sarcasm is duly noted, one can't help but wonder where "commercial viability" is involved when a 10-year old game is concerned. It is probably quite safe to assume that, by now, they have recovered all of the development and other costs associated with the game. Therefore, any revenues they obtain from the sale of DooM is almost pure gravy (see caveats below).

Granted they have overhead costs for the company as a whole, but DooM is hardly their only product. And yes, they have some costs associated with operating their server for the downloads. And they probably have some administrative expenses relating to their accounting procedures. But these are typically insignificant for an established software company that has many viable products.

In other words, "commercial viability" does not seem to be driving id Software's decision to price DooM at $25.00. Other people might find a different word for it.

Having said that, I should point out that I think the biz folk at id Software are shrewd and savvy. If they're pricing a 10-year old game at or above the levels of newer games available on the market, they must have a damn good reason for it. Maybe they're not particularly concerned about whether people will buy DooM from them or not. Maybe they are deliberately pricing it higher so that they will not undercut or compete with their retail brethren (although the FTC might call that price-fixing!) Or maybe they think that DooM3 is creating such a buzz that newbies to the DooM franchise will flock to their site and gobble up their offerings, even at a hefty $25 a pop.

Either way, the guys at id Software are nobody's fools.

Cyb said:

$25, can you say 'rip off' boys and girls?

http://www.topiashop.com/buy-item_id-B00005OBQB-search_type-AsinSearch.html

yeah really

Wow, what a shameless plug...and a totally under-done happy b-day to Doom. id fails it for that.

id software said:

T-shits

ROFL!

myk said:

Man... after spending countless hours of your life editing the game and running web sites related to it one would think you'd at least share the makers' pride in the game.

I bought Ultimate Doom, with a box and disks, around 7 years ago at KB toys for $15. That's $10 less SEVEN YEARS AGO, plus I got a box, manual and disks.

I bought Doom2 with a jewel case at EB for $5. I got a jewel case, and a CD and I paid $20 less around two years ago (I lost my original disks which I got as a present from someone, I don't remember their original price).

$25 for a download of a 10 year old game is a ripoff no matter how you slice pride, how good the game is or anything else, because the hard fact, as much as it may annoy some here, is that it's all about money in this case. If I had to buy copies of Doom, Doom2 and Final Doom and my only option was to pay $25 for a download, I would not do so just on the principle of it. Sorry.

I think the Doom community itself (a defined team, mind you, but with members from the Doom community) should enter an agreement with id software to design a re-packaged version of all the Doom games on a single CD along with what are considered many of the best levels and add-ons... perhaps those mentioned here on DW's 10years page, even. For legal reasons, the source ports couldn't be packaged with it, but we could provide homepage-links and usage instructions, objective source-port descriptions and comparisons, and so on. What I'm thinking right now is all of the aforementioned plus a lot of new artwork, a "history of Doom" thing (with information from the 5 years of Doom page and 10years page on DW) containing information for nostalgics and newbies alike, reasonable facsimiles of the old posters (note the plurality) and/or poster-versions of all the box art from all of the games, maybe even images of all sides of all the known versions of all the old boxes thrown in some 3d viewer with a zoom and camera rotation feature and so on so people can see how everything was done...

Now, we would of course be working for free, but to design such a product is its own reward. Before we start working on it, id could set the price, and then it would be our job to bring the product's value up to that price.

Implementation is up for debate. In order to get in such an agreement with id, we'd of course have to show them a preliminary version or a hefty description document with requests for resources we still need and how we plan to implement them.

I am NOT offering to be project leader. :P Such a thing would probably require a somewhat decentralized peer-leadership, anyway.

Oh, I know the Collector's Doom thing was already done, but this would just be soooo much better, as I'm seeing it... perhaps there could even be several different versions (same CD content, different box/cover/CD-label art and perhaps different additional contents like different posters and so on). Considering with even one CD we'd have 600-800 megabytes of space to work with, I think a LOT can be done.

Discuss!

Never going to happen.

EDIT: Seems this was post number 1000 for me.