Bethesda removing mandatory login from Doom re-releases after fan backlash | Hacker News Reader

Bethesda removing mandatory login from Doom re-releases after fan backlash

gamasutra.com

165 pointssmacktoward116 comments

This is great news, and I'm happy that the backlash worked. I was furious to find out a 20+ year old game was implemented with DRM.

So much so that I requested a refund from Nintendo who notoriously does not do refunds on eShop purchases. It actually worked, and I was refunded my $5 yesterday. Couldn't be happier to have voted with my wallet. Hopefully others did that too. I won't be re-purchasing DOOM either because I no longer want my money in Bethesda's pockets.

I _will_ however continue playing my $2 copy from GOG that I grabbed shortly after requesting the refund.

They claim it's not DRM, but a way to participate in their Slayers Club promotion. That being said, Bethesda has pretty much spent any goodwill they may have had lately, so maybe you can't take them at their word.

Doesn't Switch provide its own DRM?

Yes, you cannot easily side-load your own code onto the Switch. It's definitely a locked-down platform.

This isn't true. The original Switch release can sideload apps. Currently, firmware restrictions exist but it's still doable.

https://nh-server.github.io/switch-guide/

And of course, DOOM was ported: https://github.com/lantus/chocolate-doom-nx

Ok, but it's not easy, just as the OP said, and it's extremely risky. If you forget to turn off your wifi, that's a perma-ban from all Nintendo online services.

It is an extremely locked down platform. Nintendo does not want you sideloading stuff onto it. Your OP didn't say it's impossible, they said it's hard, and they said it's locked down. Both things are true.

Nintendo is infamous for battling side-loading harder than anybody else. This has been a battle for ages, one I've been following since at least the DSPhat. And look through their history - a big reason they were so successful in the second resurgence of gaming (after the failure of the Atari era) is possibly because of how locked-down their platform was, how stringent their requirements were when it came to games. Game developers hated it because Nintendo would go so far as to control how many cartridges could be on a given store's shelves (stores hated it too, because money was being left on the table every time they sold out, which was almost always).

Long story short, just cause hackers keep winning the fight against Nintendo, doesn't mean their platforms aren't locked down.

Although I think Bethesda was wrong to do what they did, and they're rightfully being taken to task for it, your response is raising my eyebrow.

You seem to care so much about DRM that you'll demand a refund and use a DRM-free service instead, and yet you own a Switch which is itself a closed platform heavily laden with DRM?

Of course I care about DRM, but there's not a console that exists that doesn't have a locked-down platform. I take the good with the bad - I buy very little digital games (my games are 99% physical), and when I do, they are <$10 or DRM-free on PC from GOG.

Of course the Switch has DRM, but it's also the only device I own that can play portable games and is not my phone, which I have no interest on playing games on. $5 to relive childhood memories on my bus ride to work is well worth it, but not if it's a crippled version of a re-released game that won't work in a few years.

Perhaps the OP has made the decision to accept Nintendo's control of the Switch in exchange for playing Switch games, but is upset about additional unexpected requirements being added to the mix by individual publishers.

This is exactly correct. Nintendo is the only company who I support with the current generation of consoles, and on the exceedingly rare occasion that I buy a digital game (indies, or a re-release like DOOM), I accept the DRM terms.

If you avoid DRM 100% of the time without exception, then video games become just about impossible to play, with the exception of GOG releases.

> seem to care so much about DRM

I'm not sure "didn't want to create another account just to play a game" fits under this umbrella, but I'm more curious what exactly you're trying to prove here. If one DRM implementation is distasteful to me, then I should avoid all implementations of DRM? I don't want my PC rooted by a music CD with poor DRM on it, but I still watch DVDs and Blu-Rays and download streaming content through a closed-source plugin.

Perhaps DRM isn't the issue. Perhaps the issue is DRM on a legacy game.

I care about the environment but haven't killed myself yet.

People have many interests that are often at direct odds with each other. You do what you can to find a balance and live according to some sort of principles even if sometimes engaging in extreme flexibility. Nothing unique about that to DRM or consoles.

It is pretty easy to run homebrew on older Switches now.

Unfortunately you’re one of the very few that is willing to vote with your dollar and actually signal to Bethesda that being shitty can affect their bottom line (versus people who bought the game, become salty about it on Twitter but don’t ask for a refund because they need their Doom fix).

5 dollars? Last I looked it wa 50 dollars. I wanted it, but couldn't fathom spending 50 dollars on a game that was developed decades ago

This is about a re-release of the first Doom game from 1993, not the recent reboot from 2016 with the same name.

I know.

> Bethesda suggested there had actually been a slip-up when implementing BethesdaNet support, and that logging in should have been an optional step from the get-go.

Also, prior to the re-release, Bethesda accidentally removed Doom and Doom II from the libraries of people who had purchased the games previously on Xbox 360.

1. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/07/27/bethesda-is-fixing-t...

Bethesda seem very accident prone.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/bethesdas-attempt-to-...

https://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-76-players-finally-got-their...

Bethesda seem very 'shitty' i think is the word you're looking for

While others will be sarcastic (perhaps rightfully so), I think it's fair to actually point this out. Bethesda clearly doesn't do a lot of checks. Consider some of their Fallout 76 gaffes - including have no public test server.

One does not launch an online game with an expected massive audience and just "forget" that step (which has hurt them several times already) unless utterly lack any processes and any culture that would have caught it.

Now, I know Bethesda is multiple studios and I know nothing about their operations beyond that, but when the reputation is of a company that delivers great story in notoriously buggy products, and trends don't seem to be improving, that says SOMETHING about priorities, right?

After Oblivion, I'm not sure why we give Bethesda any credit. Even Oblivion was a stretch, it was incredible for the time period but still comically buggy.

Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, and Fallout 4 were tremendously buggy, and if you take a step back from the "whee immersion" aspect, aren't that good RPGs. The choices are extremely limited and by the time you get to Fallout 4 insultingly so. They all pushed the envelope for explorable area, but you really had to make your own game out of it, and you really have to work at it. Skyrim is only fun for me if I load it up with hella survival mods.

To be honest, I'm still having a lot of fun with Skyrim, and it was released in 2011.

It is buggy, they don't really update it anymore, but the modding community kept it alive and well and the way Bethesda treats their customers doesn't make me optimistic about the future.

This is like an A/B test to optimize what kind of shitty behaviour they can get away with for their backcatalogue games.

https://www.pcgamer.com/skyrim-special-editions-audio-is-not...

Bethesda also shipped the Skyrim remake without replacing the compressed development sound files, making the game's audio worse quality than the 5-year-older original until they patched it decently later.

yeah, "accident"

Are they going to explain why they butchered Doom with the Unity engine? It's not like there is any shortage of programmers eager and able to create yet another proper Doom port.

It really feels like Bethesda threw some young intern at the project who lacked cultural context for Doom and therefore didn't treat it with respect.

Edit for source: https://mobile.twitter.com/noteinso/status/11548092916411514...

Either way, they definitely managed to somehow _decrease_ the graphical fidelity of a 25+-year-old game -- the original featured some basic lighting effects (notably, the floor and ceiling would shade further from the player) that have been removed in this remake.

Wait, what? Where do you see that Doom was ported to Unity for this?

Switch games have been dumpable for a while and it's immediately apparent when looking at the internals: https://twitter.com/noteinso/status/1154809291641151488?s=09

Yuck. This is more egregious than requiring the login, imo.

https://twitter.com/BasedDrWorm/status/1155153230038540293

I don't see the inherent issue with using Unity to create another Doom port. As long as you get everything right, it's cross-platform and should play identically.

In theory they could get everything right I suppose, but in practice? They didn't even manage to get the audio right, lots of people report performance issues, and the lighting has been botched. What are the chances they got the rest of it right? I suspect more discrepancies will be uncovered as people dig deeper.

What's the big uproar about using unity for this?

Doom has its own characteristic 2.5D rendering engine, which may be difficult to replicate in Unity unless you write it as a two-triangle shader.

Yes, that seems to be the main reason

Though I would be tempted to think the original sw renderer would run just fine on Switch hardware with minor fixes (it worked in PCs much slower than the Switch). Now I don't know if the hardware (video) would behave well with that. No reason in principle why it wouldn't, but who knows...

It does run fine on the switch hardware a homebrew port has been out for quite a while. Chocolate Doom was ported last year.

I'll bite - is there some reason you're calling the switch the "stitch?"

It was Experiment #626 inside Nintendo.

It was a mistake - thanks for pointing it out

Oh ok sorry didn't mean to come off like jerk, I thought this might be one of those "micro$oft" things

Wait, that really happened? I saw a YouTube video crop up and immediately laughed thinking it was satire. You really can’t make this stuff up. That really destroys any goodwill that people may have felt with this release.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but I really doubt they “accidentally“ made it mandatory to sign up for their new service. That would’ve been really annoying for development/testing.

What goodwill? You might want to look up owner of Bethesda, a copyright trading company run by a lawyer.

For what it's worth, the port also runs really poorly on the Switch. It feels like there's a lot of input lag and the frame rate is all over the place. It's not unplayable but it required me to spend the first 30 minutes just learning to compensate for the poor performance and lag. You'd probably get a better experience actually playing it back in the mid-90s.

That's because it's very likely using the software renderer:

https://twitter.com/fabynou/status/1155042578544263168?s=20

As the copyright holder, Bethesda could have shipped one of the vastly improved open source versions such as the ones used for iOS, so it's puzzling why they're (apparently) using the software renderer.

Apparently the iOS version has been updated to the Unity port too.

Fascinating speculation in that thread:

...running DOOM engine inside Unity, render to a 320x200 texture and make Unity render that texture to the screen with orthogonal projection?

Given that Carmack and most of the original personnel left, I suppose it's unsurprising.

Barbaric..

They aren't using the original DOOM engine, they ported the entire game to Unity.

The soundtrack has also been slowed down for some reason.

We really need to get to a point where companies see holding identifiable data as a big risk that they only want to undertake if absolutely needed

I agree. I recall Reddit would just require a user id and a password to use their site. I liked that model. I guess they eventually goaded you into giving their email, but there are alternatives to password recovery than a forget my email link.

Giving an email on reddit is still technically optional, but they try to make that unclear.

During registration you can just leave the email field blank and click "Next" to skip giving one, even though there's no indication at all that it's optional.

The site also annoys you constantly now to add an email address, but you can ignore or adblock that.

"New Reddit" is basically a primer on UX dark patterns. Its collapse cannot come soon enough.

Old.reddit.com still works until they decide to remove it

Try i.reddit.com for an even more barebones experience

As far as I know, you cannot access quarantined subreddits without an account with a verified email address.

Such as?

storing the password in plain text so you can just find it in a data breach when you loose your password.

On Tildes, I let people add a recovery email address for their account, but I hash it (with Argon2), and if anyone needs to do an account recovery they have to send an email requesting it from that address, including their username. Then I hash the sending email address and only send reset info back if it matches the stored hash for the account.

There are still some minor issues with doing it that way, but it's much, much better than storing plaintext email addresses. I don't know of any other sites doing it this way, but I wouldn't be surprised if others have thought of the same method.

Good. There is absolutely no reason to have a mandatory login on a game you purchase and run locally, especially considering it has no online features.

Especially an open source game which could be had on the same device without mandatory login.

The engine is open source. The levels aren't.

According to MVG on youtube the Doom 1&2 engine is Unity. I have no idea why that is the case though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh7nZ9t2eJA

Also apparently they have slowed down the Midi Soundtrack as well.

Probably to make porting easier. Keep in mind they can't use all the homebrew GPL ports, since they don't own that source code, so can't strip the GPL from them.

What would stop them from releasing a GPLv2 port, with source, other than their own stubbornness? The Switch's DRM would preclude GPLv3, but not v2, no?

Also it would be easy for them to hire somebody to write a new port the right way with whatever license they please. It's freakin Doom!

I know people don't like Bethesda (neither do I) but generally there is normally solid reasons why companies don't do such things.

A lot of the time there is other stuff in that source code or attached to the source code that they can't release. They could have a bunch of internal signing keys etc (which may need to embedded in the source).

Also Nintendo, Sony etc may specifically not allow GPL code on their platform.

There could be a bunch of very good reasons we may never be privy to.

I find these theories difficult to square with previous releases of Doom on locked platforms like iOS apparently being proper source ports. Even if it's not a community engine, they should have access somewhere to code with agreeable licensing. Or at least, they should be capable of hiring a community source-port developer to throw together a new source port based only off the original code (which Bethesda would be free to license as they see fit, on account of owning the copyright.)

My personal theory is Bethesda doesn't respect the franchise and turned over responsibility of it to somebody young who probably had plenty of experience with Unity, but little to no experience working on an engine written in C.

The fact of the matter is that neither of us know.

I don't know, which is why I said I'd like for them to explain it. In the meantime, they will not enjoy the benefit of doubt from me, and I don't think you should give it to them either. We're not operating in a vacuum here, Bethesda already has a well earned negative reputation.

I will be buying Doom Eternal. I've basically built a new pc for it. I won't be buying these ports as I have the originals anyway.

Fair enough, Doom Eternal looks like it should be pretty good, provided Bethesda doesn't fuck up the release with busted DRM, etc.

Porting Doom to Unity on a platform where a perfectly fine port of SDL already exists can't really make it much easier.

OG Doom has online features, though.

Does IPX support count as online features? No TCP/IP in the original Doom/Doom2. Just IPX and Modem/Serial.

Of course that counts. Why wouldn't that count. Not the entire internet is TCP/IP.

Never had as much fun with online gaming as I did over modem direct connection with one other kid!

You can't do broadcast IPX gaming across the Internet.

As long as we are talking doom, what is the most interesting device you've played it on?

I'll start. An early generation Ipod with the 3rd party Rockbox OS had a doom port for it. It also played NES and GB games.

Malice vs. incompetence, and so on. Their excuse is believable - that they had a rewards program and that it wasn't meant to be globally required. Or is it? How did that get through testing? Were all the testers Slayers Club members?

Anyway, I'm glad the backlash worked.

> How did that get through testing?

This is Bethesda we’re talking about, remember. The miracle would be a bug not getting through testing.

Todd Howard is just happy it’s not his fault this time

Todd Howard is probably upset he didn't get a chance to reskin Cacodemons as dragons.

I’m leaning towards malice based on the original error message if you tried to play the game without an account. [1]

> A Bethesda.net account is required to play this title. Please connect to the internet to continue.

[1] https://twitter.com/MoeGamer/status/1154822321586094080/phot...

It reminds me of the old days where certain Xbox Live Arcade games wouldn't work unless you were online and logged in. Back then you didn't always have a WiFi connection or an ethernet hookup, so it prevented you from playing sometimes.

Just reading 'mandatory login' makes me cringe. It's not always possible or sensible but please gamedev companies: - Assume offline first, instead of online first. - Never ever put a mandatory login no matter what, DRM or not.

I am so sick of this “you must be online for this single player game” nonsense.

The number of times I’ve lost a connection while running Hitman and so lost half the game is absurd.

The Hitman reboot and its sequel are great games, but the crap surrounding it is disheartening.

Figuring out which version of Hitman 2 you should buy on Steam when you already own Hitman 1 requires a flow chart just to understand the different packages, expansion passes, gold and silver collections, and what have you.

I wanted to play Hitman on the Xbox recently. It's on Game Pass, so I set it to download and then left for the day expecting to have the game ready to play that night. Nope. The Hitman download only has one level. You need to download every level separately (even though they're all included with Game Pass) and they're all absolutely gigantic. I'm not sure what's up with the file size but it's out of control.

You can buy the complete edition of Hitman, and it clocks in at 172GB. The Halo Master Chief Collection is only 70GB and it includes four full complete games.

Fantastic game, but they really do make it hard to actually play.

Hmm, 130 GB in Steam (running on Linux via Proton). Huh, that is pretty big.

Aren't Doom games available on GOG? Just buy them DRM-free.

I own so many copies of DOOM from the original release in the early 90s to practically every digital storefront out there - but the Switch was the first platform I had where I can play it portably.

I ragequit and requested a refund upon seeing the forced login screen though.

Nintendo actually came through and I received my $5 back yesterday. Couldn't believe it actually worked. And now begins my eternal boycott of Bethesda. Can't support this kind of shit.

See my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20556802

I.e. why would you expect already heavily DRMed platform not to add more DRM? If that is a concern, use DRM-free one to begin with.

The platform you speak of did not add more DRM - the third-party (Bethesda) that developed the software did. I accept Nintendo's DRM because every single console ever within recent times has some form of DRM, be it hardware or software-based.

I play games while on the go and lugging around a gaming PC and only playing GOG games is a little unfeasible, don't you think? Also, the bus driver gets pretty upset when I ask for a plug for my monitor and desktop.

Find consoles that allow DRM-free gaming, I posted one example in this thread. Otherwise I don't see it as consistent, when you are excusing one (Nintendo) and blaming another (Bethesda).

Well, to put it bluntly: I don't need to be consistent. I only want to play my physical Switch games on my Switch. I don't expect to be able to back them up. The fact that it's copy-protected and locked down and all that doesn't change my mind. I should, within reasonable limits (the cartridge being stolen by silverback apes, the Switch cartridge port going bad, etc), be able to play my Switch physical games indefinitely, and for that, I am fine with the DRM implemented on the Switch and my entire collection of handheld devices which have similar policies.

DRM that requires verification to a central server is guaranteed to not function in a few years, and that kind of DRM I am not OK with. Those game will die soon, and tons of games die every year. See these videos for info on them: https://www.accursedfarms.com/videos/dead-game-news

I find it interesting that when someone points out something they do not care for, they have to 100% reject everything under that umbrella in a weird "zero-tolerance policy". I have no clue why, according to every discussion on the Internet, I cannot, for example, dislike sports cars, but think that the Bugatti Veyron is pretty cool. Not everything has to be 0 or 1.

Then again this is hacker news so maybe it's the inner engineer in us all.

Here it's is about DRM, so if you tolerate one (from Nintendo), another (Bethesda) has an excuse to push on you more. Only demanding DRM-free is consistent in this regard. I.e. my personal view - vote with your wallet and don't use Switch, if the issue of DRM bothers you. Not sure what else users can practically do about it. Otherwise, I don't see this improving really.

As mentioned not on the switch.

The PC has better than a DRM free version though, the source code of the original engine was released and there are several updates that keep the game feeling modern. Only the game art must be purchased legally. If interested look up "zdoom", which is the updated engine I used and remember.

Switch is DRMed over the top already, so complaining about more DRM there is kind of futile. Those who prefer DRM-free games should use something else to begin with.

Something like Smach-Z can be interesting for handheld use case. It can run games from GOG, either natively (Linux versions) or in Wine or DosBox.

Re: SMACHZ, it's almost definitely a scam. Here's one of many videos showing how it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d00I_3THLBQ

Some old video, I don't see from it how it's a scam, while it's an active project.

See actually recent one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QclbkG1WnQ

I implore anyone considering the SMACHZ to do your research. This is one of many, many videos from independent journalists showing the company is beyond shady, misrepresents their products, lies about timelines, and throws red flags all over the place.

That's why you shouldn't pre-order anything. Wait for it to come out first, then evaluate it. I'd buy that over Switch and Nintendo any time, if it really comes out.

And once you get bored of plain old DooM maps, there's Oblige:

http://oblige.sourceforge.net/

Not on the Nintendo Switch.

Well if you unlock the switch there is of course a port.

Another nail in the coffin for AAA developers.

When indie developers encourage you to crack their game and make mods you get a different community.

Bethesda is too old, it's become to big and famous, it's yet another soulless game studio.

I'll stick with my sub 10$ indie games. I haven't gotten bored yet.

Bethesda Softworks (the publisher) has been rather lawyer happy over the past few years. They went after Mojang over the word Scrolls.

Bethesda Game Studios (the developer) isn't much better. As if poor writing and re-using a rotten engine isn't bad enough, they've routinely dabbled in paid mods.

It is a real shame because I played the hell out of Skyrim, Oblivion and Doom 2016 (one of the best games to come out in the last 5 years) and own several copies of each.

I actively avoided almost everything from them since and I am just hoping they don't ruin Doom Eternal with the nonsense, Id is developing it and soo far they haven't been affected by much of the usual Bethesda bullshit.

It should probably be noted that Bethesda Softworks is owned by Zenimax. Though Zenimax was founded by the founders of Bethesda. Zenimaxes board concist of a Lawyer, a former baseball player, a real estate manager and a movie producer. They have again and again made poor choices when it comes to drm, but they have removed Denvou from both Doom and Rage 2 some time after release.

> "a former baseball player,"

Now you have me wondering about the "former baseball player joins the corporate world and feels lost in it" subplot of Prey 2017 (published by Bethesda.)

The last game they made for Doom was 2016 right?

So they’re doing this 3 years later??

I’m amazed people haven’t moved on to other games

This is not referring to Doom 2016 (which was a great game). This was a new Doom 25 Year anniversary thing with Doom 1, 2, and 3. The re-release included non-optional requirement to sign into their online service.

Oh had no idea they did that!

So strange they’d make you sign in for Doom...

No, it looks like this is about the re-release that just came out over the weekend of the original games.

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