ZeniMax Cracking Down on DoomRL – 12 Years After it Was Released!

The creators of DoomRL have been threatened with legal action this week over their free fan made game. The game was based on Doom, and offered a roguelike experience in the Doom universe and released on PC 12-years ago! However, even after all this time, it seems that ZeniMax are not happy about their trademarks being used, and have asked for the game to be changed or taken down, which they’re well within their rights to do so, but why wait so long?

DoomRL creator Kornel Kisielewicz posted the letter from ZeniMax on his Twitter account, where they asked for the removal of all key words, media, meta tags, etc from the game.

So… Zenimax have just written to me demanding I take down the DoomRL site… :-/ pic.twitter.com/tXAwdq59Zz

— Kornel Kisielewicz (@epyoncf) December 2, 2016

Given that changing names, similarities and enemies that are based on content from the Doom universe, it would be a huge undertaking to re-release DoomRL in a legally compliant format, so it’s more than likely that is the end of DoomRL.

What’s really weird is that Brutal Doom 64 was recently honoured at The Game Awards, while DoomRL gets shot down, despite being released 12 years ago, a whole 6 years prior to ZeniMax acquiring id Software! The only reason that seems to be floating around right now is that Jupiter Hell is a spiritual successor to DoomRL, which means there’s now money involved in something that is vaguely tied to what was a fan-made project.

Jupiter Hell, a modern turn-based 3d #roguelike, successor to DoomRL, live on Kickstarter now! PlzRT! https://t.co/aBmhPuw7Md

— Kornel Kisielewicz (@epyoncf) November 15, 2016

What do you think, should DoomRL be left alone this late after its release, or do you agree that ZeniMax has every right to pull the game? (spoiler, they do).