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Doom modders are annoyed at the “chum-bucket” of wrongly credited mods in the latest Doom remasterCan I see your id?
Can I see your id?
Image credit:id Software / Bethesda
Image credit:id Software / Bethesda
Last week, Bethesda released a remastered edition ofDoomandDoom IIon Steam, with lots of extra episodes and improvements. One of these new features is a built-in browser for mods, and support for many existing mods that previously required a different version of the game. Basically, lots of good fan-made mods are now playable onthe Steam versionof ye olde Doom. That’s neat! Ah, but there is some demon excrement on the health pack, so to speak. The mod browser lacks moderation and lets people upload the work of others with their own name pinned as the author. That’s prompted one level designer to call it “a massive breach of trust and violation of norms the Doom community has done its best to hold to for those 30 years.”
“This is a massive breach of trust and a shitty thing for [id Software and Zenimax] to do to a community that created the phenomenon they are now monetising,” said game designer JP LeBreton ina post on cohost. LeBreton is known for his work on theBioShockseries as a level designer, plus his more recent work onPsychonauts 2. But he’s also a regularcreator of Doom mods. He explains the problem with the recent Doom remaster in that post, but let me break it down.
“[You] can pretty much just… upload whatever files you feel like with it?” says LeBreton. “And put whatever text you want to go with it? And it goes through an approval process of some sort, but given how quickly stuff has gone up in the past couple hours, there’s clearly pretty much zero vetting going on…”
Aside from the possible appearance of copyright-protected stuff, or (knock wood) some “hentai-strewn school shooting simulator WAD from 1999”, this opens up the basic problem of people taking credit for another’s work.
“I don’t particularly care about the copyright concerns of Nintendo or whoever, though,” says LeBreton. “What I immediately saw and hated was random shithead’s names beneath community works, clearly uploaded without anyone’s permission.”
There is a “report mod” button, but this simply offloads the responsibility for moderating content onto original creators, says LeBreton, which in some cases is impossible in a modding culture that has been going for three decades, as some popular Doom modders have since died. Others may simply not want to play whack-a-mole to ensure their mod is properly credited.
It’s not clear how Zenimax will address the issue. The company has a rocky track record with modders. Much of the Bethesda library is open to modding, for instance, and they seem to understand that a lot of good things result from this. At the same time, they have been known tobreak things modders have been working on, and a"paid mods" fiascosome years ago understandably caused mixed emotions among modders. My own feeling is that if your multi-million dollar company is going to use “look at all these mods!” as a marketing point, you could at least do some moderating and ensure those mods creators are credited correctly.
