With the release of the Doom trilogy (1-3) on the Nintendo Switch earlier this week, you would’ve been forgiven for thinking that this was a great exercise in giving fans what they want and, for Bethesda, how to print money with very little effort. The launch, however, has been nothing short of a disaster as it was revealed that the game required the creation of a Bethesda.net to log in and play. Yes, somehow they had conspired to make the original Doom trilogy require an online connection.
Well, in a report via Engadget, it appears that Bethesda has acknowledged the complaints. Better still, in an upcoming patch, they have promised to make this an optional requirement.
Bethesda Backpeddles on Doom Trilogy Online Requirements
In a Twitter post, Bethesda claims that the online requirement was only introduced as part of their ‘Slayers Club’ as a means of giving players rewards. Based on the feedback, however, they have promised to shortly patch this out to make it an ‘optional’ feature.
Update on our new classic DOOM releases:
— Bethesda (@bethesda) July 27, 2019
The BethesdaNet login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic DOOM games.
The login should be optional, and we are working on changing the requirement to optional now.
This ‘Slayers Club’ acts as a tie-in to the more modern Doom releases. Most specifically the upcoming release of Doom Eternal. It was, however, deeply frustrating for those who simply wanted some good old fashioned ‘drop-in/drop-out’ retro gaming fun. What no one wanted, or expected, was an online requirement.
What Do We Think?
This was, quite frankly, a colossal cock-up by Bethesda. If you’re going to re-release a gaming classic, then while it’s perfectly fine to add some modern conveniences to it, it’s frustrating when developers also choose to include modern inconveniences as well. Bethesda made a huge error in judgment here and for what? Just to get a few more people on their mailing list?
Fortunately, Bethesda has seen the error of their ways and the Doom Trilogy on Nintendo Switch will return to how it should be played. It does again, however, highlight just how badly this developer can treat (deliberately or not) their most loyal fans.
What do you think? Do you own the Doom Trilogy? What did you think about the online requirements? – Let us know in the comments!
