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I'm taking an indefinite hiatus from Doom. I figured I should at least let some people know, instead of randomly disappearing like I have in the past. I guess it's a little more intentional this time. Long ranty blog post follows.

This is pretty much down to the recent Nightdive release of Doom + Doom II (D+D2 for short), though there's some other things going on in my life that would probably benefit from me taking a Doom break anyhow. People who have seen me on this forum for a while might have seen me make various statements about attempting to create stuff. Well, I've broken through the walls I had, and have actually started both mapping and making midis. However the release of D+D2 has completely evaporated any kind of enthusiasm I have for that right now.

Specifically, two points:

The absolutely insane mod uploader system

Anyone can upload anything unvetted, and the only way to remove it is to report it. There aren't even checks to see if something that has been uploaded already is uploaded again, reported or not. (See the 4 copies of NUTS.wad currently up there.) I can hardly blame the people uploading stuff because there's no real guidance at all with it, certainly nothing to tell you you *shouldn't* upload something that isn't yours, despite the fact that the upload puts the uploader's account name under the by: line. And absolutely no text file information except what the uploader fills out. And so far at least two different Nightdive employees have responded with vague indifference.

You should read this thing by JPL if you haven't seen it already:

https://cohost.org/vectorpoem/post/7228939-okay-i-ve-slept-on

The fact that people involved thought this would be OK, when there are still releases putting the goddamn GothicTX disclaimer in their text files because attribution is still generally valued here, is baffling.

(The multiplayer community apparently doesn't value attribution so much! Boo to that! But I don't have the motivation to help nag them into compliance right now, and as someone that hasn't played multiplayer since the 90s except for like 30 minutes during the pandemic shutdowns I'm pretty out of my depth in that whole scene.)

Development being lead by a major game studio

Legally id (and whoever owns them) have always had the rights to Doom, but since Carmack relesed the source for Doom over two decades ago they basically haven't done anything to steer its direction. This was a good thing and one of the things I liked about Doom as an engine and community. Having them take charge of a new spec, one that includes reserved sections for future products and who's debut is a new closed-source engine, is a massive change in direction. It signals that they want to get "involved," and the only reason for a company to do that is because they think it will be profitable. (Remember how Microsoft, who owns id, just closed a whole bunch of game studios? Including the ones who were running Mighty Doom?) Even the Unity port, which was a major closed-source release, was bad from a free software point of view but was otherwise something you could just ignore.

And I could probably just bite the pillow and deal with all of that if it was still just ZeniMax at the top. But it's fucking Microsoft of all corporate people, a company I've spent a significant part of my life intentionally not using, for numerous reasons including their history of embracing open standards and then making them fundamentally proprietary.

To be clear, this isn't about a lot of what people were freaking out about in the ID24 thread, such as the unclear implementation of the spec, or even that it needs a new commercial product to work fully. And as far as the spec, to give credit where it's due, all the new required code is GPL and the specs are open. (Reading some more into some of the comments it seems like Xaser was fundamental in that happening, and as much as I'm frustrated with everything about D+D2 I'm glad he actually got paid to make some Doom stuff. Consider promoting him to Community Manager too, since he seems to be the only one associated with this project that is answering questions without coming across as dismissive or condescending.) But when I can only describe it to myself as "not as bad as it could have been!" I don't feel very encouraged.

Of course this all ties in to other feelings I have regarding things like increasing commercialization and enshittification of public online spaces, corporate katamaris meant for profit maximization, explotation of workers' enthusiasm in the tech and games industries, etc. So at this point feel like I don't want to engage in anything by any of the companies involved in this, including Nightdive, ever again.

I'm sure I could just sit back away from everything and just play wads on my own, but I am, or was, interested in doing more than that. And on a personal note I'm finding myself Doomworld-doomscrolling, something I'm not usually susceptible to, so even if this all got magically resolved tomorrow I think it's best if I just step away from Doom entirely for a bit. This just doesn't feel like the right place or thing for me to spend my energy on.

For clarity, if there's a project of yours I've helped or contributed to in any way, you still have my full support to do with it whatever you want. Don't think about whether I would approve or not; I have no interest in retroactively making that help conditional.

Anyhow here's a single midi that I'm going to offer up. It's free to use for anyone who wants (even if you're uploading it as part of a wad to the D+D2 mods thing), as long as I'm credited to the best of your ability.

id Software (a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media (a subsidiary of Microsoft Gaming (a division of Microsoft))) can eat my ass.mid
(My email address is in there too, in case anyone wants to say hi sometime. If you're midi-illiterate, it should show if you import and then look at the midi file in SLADE.)

I'll probably check back here in a day or two. Otherwise, bye for now.