DOOM: The Dark Ages Has Reportedly Sold Less Than 1 Million Copies

It’s $80
It’s on Gamespass, where I assume a lot of doom fans who might have otherwise purchased are likely to be.
It’s shouldered up against Expedition 33 and Oblivion Remake, both over $20 cheaper and highly acclaimed.
It’s $80
(Edit) shitty DRM
- Oh & denuvo
  
  Mostly this. I’m not paying for something that comes with malware. Not for $80, $20, or $1. Nobody should pay for malware.
  
  Denuvo is the only reason I'm waiting. I'm on Linux, and I'm not risking that Proton change license issue. And also I hate the performance hit that Denuvo causes.
- Where is it $80?
  
  80€ in Steam Spain.
  
  Not in Australia, it's $120 here.
  Todd, Marty, Phil and Satya can suck an egg together.
  
  Steam, the cheapest I see it as is 79,99€ where I am, which is actually US$90. I just assumed the US store did a straight numeral conversion to dollars, but you’re getting a discount too, it seems.
- Also, it reviewed well but with some annoying caveats.
- It's $70
  
  Depends on your location in the world. Which shows just how arbitrary the price actually is.
- up against Expedition 33
  I mean... I don't play Doom due to DRM but also to be fair Expedition 33, which I'm enjoying quite a lot on Linux, is "just" 40ish hours whereas Doom is (check notes) less than 20hrs to complete? WTH. Nope.
  
  20 and 40 hours both sound pretty terrible for such expensive games. Got far more out of games like Factorio and for a lot less.
- Also... I think you missed this one... It's $80.
- Gonna wait for a code and a sale in a year

Seeing how they screwed over Mick Gordon, the composer for the previous two installments, I'll vote with my wallet and skip this one. My backlog is big enough as it is anyway.
- Doom Eternal is a beautiful album that includes a lovely mini-game.
  Edit: a lot of "wooshing" in the replies, but I blame it on myself.
  
  Doom Eternal? The game with a soundtrack that was made up of butchered parts of Gordon’s work, welded together by a novice, at the command of an egotistical dickhead who slandered Gordon after the fact?
  https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce
  Eternals original OST was very poor compared to Doom 2016. Big reason I never bothered with the game.
- Same

meant to mislead potential players into thinking the game is successful when, in fact, it's severely underperforming behind the scenes.
Why would a player in a single-player game give a tiny shit about how popular it is? It's the investor class that cares about that; stop treating their interests as a natural good.
- It's a bad game
- It's old lunacy. Believe it or not we live in a class based society where the vast majority of the people that actually provide value to society have their labor stolen by leeches that make money by having money and that is what that person means by the investor class.
  
  That term is decades old, it's fine if you haven't heard it before but maybe consider that possibility before replying like that and looking like an asshole.
  
  This is Lemmy; everything is politics and it's really fun and mentally healthy

Marty Stratton and his denuvo riddled pos game can kindly get fukt after what he did to Mick Gordon, the composer of the banger soundtrack for Doom 2016.
https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce
- Holy fucking shit! I live under the rock in the middle of nowhere so I've heard only some brief parts of "something wrong with DOOM Eternal music" but nothing factual. Now I gave the time to read the whole article and I'm speechless. 'Cause this is bad, really, really, REALLY bad. I feel sorry for people that have to work and live under such assholes like Marty obviously is...
  
  Yea, I read that a few weeks ago and it convinced to not touch Doom TDA. I mean, maybe pirate it, but certainly not buy it.
- Wow. I already wasn't going to buy any more Bethesda slop, but now I'm not going to buy it twice.

Let's see
The game itself takes away a lot of pieces of the formula that made 2016 and Eternal so good
$80 price tag
BDS boycott
Denuvo
I'm shocked that it's not selling, absolutely shocked.
- And also, for some of us:
  Boycott due to Mick Gordon's treatment.
  
  TRUE, I knew I was forgetting something else
- It's $70 though?
  
  80€ in Steam Spain.
  
  Was thinking of BL4. Still pretty egregious though
- BDS boycott? Can you explain this? I’m not sure what BDS is or what the boycott is lol
  
  https://bdsmovement.net/
  BDS is a global movement calling for boycotts, divestment and ultimately sanctions of Israel and companies complicit in Israels illegal occupation and other crimes against the Palestinian people.
  Microsoft provides AI tools to the Israeli army -IDF- which are used to automatically designate people as targets for bombing. Among other things a particular heinous AI is infamously named "Where's Daddy", where bombings are timed so that the target is killed upon arriving home, so their entire family is also murdered.
  https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
  https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-israel-military-gaza-hamas-artificial-intelligence-20b2adb438b39ee9cb6eb2f52c1ae44a
  Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, iD-Software, Zenimax, Mojang (Minecraft) and others are all owned by Microsoft.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Gaming_studios
  
  Microsoft (and by extension id and Bethesda) are a priority target for the BDS boycotts against Israel
  
  Google says BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (against Isreal.)

It's also 80€ in Europe. Everyone I talked to is waiting for the price to drop, including me.
- It's £70 in the uk, that's $95 while in the us it costs $70, which is £50. Xbox did the same thing with the new call of duty, their regional pricing is so braindead.
  Historically AAA games have been £10 less than the us counter part ($60 games were £50) and making this change is so stupid.
- $130 NZD, I don't want to guess what $80 USD games are going to "convert" too 😮‍💨
- I just aquired a value cap to my interest in digital entertainment. Using the vacation money on living/home improvements and built for life camping gear. €25 indie rpg's and films for the tablet is enough but then again I have no teenage children that demand top shelf brands or else.

I don‘t buy any digital copy of a game for over 45 bucks, doesn‘t matter what it is… I also haven‘t finished DOOM 2016 yet and haven‘t even started Eternal. Not because they‘re bad games or because I don‘t like FPSs, but because I have so much shit to play and so little time.
Competition is fierce and asking 80 bucks when I got the predecessors for less than 5 each is just not happening. Just because games cost more to produce doesn‘t magically make customers have more money and time. It‘ll make release weeks stinkers outside of your GOTYs and makes more people wait or go back to 20+ years worth of other games that aren‘t 80 bucks.
- $20 is the limit for me. I'm perfectly fine waiting a few years to play the game, if it still exists by that point. If it doesn't, then I'm glad I didn't waste my time.
  
  And another plus is that you get to play the games as bug free as they‘ll get AND at higher framerates assuming your hardware improved in the meantime. I certainly wouldn‘t have been able to get the high fidelity DOOM 2016 experience I can get now (at a high framerate) way back when it released.
  Downside is that if there‘s any multiplayer component to a game, it‘s probably pretty damn dead years later. But first, I personally don‘t care much about that anymore and second, games bleed the majority of their playerbase within months anyway so it‘s whatever.
- Games cost more to produce but there's more customers than ever
  
  And its certainly not the developers who are getting all that extra money.
- Amen.

Forcing raytracing is a great way to close off a bunch of customers.
- Not just because some people don't have it either, but for anything with RTX2000/3000 and RDNA2, Forced RT is just forced low framerate.
  I hope making everyone dynamically draw the lights and shadows in realtime for a linear game was worth the 15c it saved on Microsoft's electricity bill for not pre-baking overnight.
- Yep, that and it looks like the base Doom formula has been watered down a lot from the gameplay I've seen.
  The release of new games sometimes makes me play older titles, going through Doom 2 with some tasty mods atm.

Game is 70$ on Steam US and has a very positive review. That is still too much money unless this is a game you were really looking forward to.

I would have bought it if it didn't have denuvo. I'll wait til its stripped out.
- The raytracing requirement is fine but having to deal with denuvo is a bridge too far.
- Why does it need anti cheat? It's a single player game.
  
  Denuvo's DRM instead of anti-cheat.
  Though I also was wondering the same thing. Took me a minute to remember lmao.

Not sure about hardcore Doom fans but the game looks uninteresting to me specifically. It's like a polar opposite from Doom 2016 judging by all the videos I've seen. Don't really care about the higher price, I'd get it if I liked it but it really doesn't click for me.
- Ive really not cared about the direction the story has been taking, and im not a huge fan of the newer atmosphere. 2016 felt like it still had horror elements, the demons felt dangerous and doomguy, while incredibly strong, still felt like vulnerable, especially with the custom death scenes. Now he has like this god aura around him, which is cool i guess, but him battling for survival will always be cooler to me than him being like a living god. Also the zero third person cutscenes will always be superior to me, even though i understand why others may not like it.
- Would have been the perfect doom game if they didnt make it so every bout of combat ended in a whimper. Even the mech fights dont end gloriously.

I'm one of the biggest fans of the DOOM franchise, I've played all the versions since the original one in 1993. But I don't care if I play it now or in half a year. Or a year for that matter. Never really understood why having it first matters to anyone. I'll be here when the prices drop.
I was stupid enough to buy Spacemarine 2, when it came out, at full price (mostly because I loved Boltgun so much) and that was a great lesson about how you should wait around a bit before actually buying a game. It would have been a fun game for 15 or even 20 euro, but it's not worth 70 euro. I Should have bought Helldivers, anyway 😓
- I'm on the same boat, I got 2016 around Eternal release date for like €10 and loved it. Then I bought Eternal just last year for a similar deal and I haven't finished the DLC yet. I am more than happy to wait for DA to go on sale.
- I bought Space Marine 2 at launch, decided it needed more time. So I got Helldivers 2 which I immediately got addicted to and I love it.
- I regretted buying HellDivers. I honestly think that it becoming as popular as it did is a damning indictment of the state of coop shooters.

As much as I love the Doom games I'm not really a fan of the $70 price tag. The Doom games are great games but it's not like they are in my top 5 favorite games or anything like that. I'll wait for a sale.

That price was doomed.

AAA gaming is dead. Indies have been carrying gaming for years now.

I didn't even look at it enough to know if I'd buy it otherwise when I saw it has denuvo. Always online DRM is a hard pass for me. I haven't played the last 3 games Atlus released either and I've been playing almost every one since the ps2 era.
- Bro I played almost everything they released on consoles and just didn't even cross my mind to play it on PC cause , like you, been playing since PS1/2 and the only time I pick one up is if I see it on sale at a brick and mortar store or the marketplace. Shame about this intrusion of denuvo into such great franchises, that would honestly benefit from some privacy considering the SMT current niche audience.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how they want it to be. If they were interested in selling games they wouldn’t put them day one on gamepass.
- We went through this song and dance with Indiana Jones and Avowed, too. If this was a strategy that lost them money, they'd stop doing it. It turns out they're just fine with having tens of millions of subscribers that like the idea of getting access to games like these for, in plenty of cases, cheaper.
  
  They can also probably do some accounting hijinks to write off these “losses” while still profiting on it for a long long time. But this is purely speculative on my part, I’m not an accountant so I’m not sure something like that can be done.

The DRM kept me from buying it

*fewer than
- Pedantic about something even experts argue about. Nice
  
  Oh yes. My pedantry is nearly boundless.
  
  What "experts" argue about that?

I just barely convinced myself to spend €80 on a single game, then noticed Denuvo. Hard pass
- Someone is probably explaining the math to some suits how these are still good numbers because they now charge 80 dollars. In a podcast someone said that the 120 whatever dollar version that lets you play 3 days earlier was so dogshit bad that they had to yank out the power cable out of the wall because it crashed so hard. It's hard to feel bad for these paid beta testers tho

I hope this shows companies that selling their games at 80 Euro is not the way to go.

Honestly, Doom Eternal really soured me on the franchise. I loved the original Doom games, loved 3 and played the absolute shit out of Doom 2016.
Then Eternal turned into a fucking frustration fest with all its platforming. I still haven’t finished it. Now the new one reinvents Doom yet again. And there’s somehow dragons?
Man, I’m fucking done. Give me more of that 2016 Doom or don’t bother.
- I'm on the same page as you re: Eternal. The first hour out so was fun, and the graphics are neat, but it stops feeling like a Doom game pretty quickly. It doesn't even feel like a Quake game, which would at least be tolerable.
  Will probably give this one a shot eventually when it's on discount, but not in a hurry.
  
  God I miss Quake. That was such a great series. Can you imagine what they could do with that on modern tech? I’d love to see a quake reboot a la 2016 Doom. That would be fucking awesome.
- I also liked Doom 2016 and it worked well on Linux. I’m sad to hear that the later ones weren’t as good.
  Do you know of any games similar to Doom 2016 that you’d recommend? I liked how it didn’t waste time trying to tell a story, usually I’d watch a movie or read a book if I want a good story. Doom had enjoyable steady action and I felt like I could enjoy it for half an hour at a time without needing much time to get into it.
  
  I honestly don’t mind some story in games. Heck, I’ve got hundreds of hours in Skyrim and other RPG’s. Doom to me is run & gun. Doom 2016 had the perfect amount of story for a Doom game.
  Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it. If there is, I don’t know it. Most other shooters are either COD, SciFi, retro FPS or stuff like Borderlands that leans into comedy.
  If this was ‘back in the day’, closest recommendation to it would likely be something like the Quake series. That’s id’s own successor to the original Doom. Sadly also long dead.
- Yeah, I'd buy a DLC for 2016 right now but I doubt I'll buy Dark Ages, at least not until it's on sale.
- Good news then because Dark Ages is extremely different than Eternal and a lot of people who didn’t like that game but loved 2016 are happy with it. I’m not saying rush out and spend $70 on it, but give it a go when it’s on sale down the line and you might end up really pleased with it.
  Eternal was too hard for me. Love Dark Ages.
  
  I find TDA too messy compared to 2016 and none of the tight game design of Eternal. It is the worst of both previous games.

I tell ya I se 70 bucks for a game when everything is small and you get no value for your dollar and everything costs more. No thanks.

On GamePass though, isn't it? Only people actually buying would be on PS5 and the neversub gang.
- It’s also the game they’re giving away with purchases of the 50 series Nvidia cards.
- Or Linux 😄 I really liked Game Pass though. Played some great games in there I would either have completely missed or have had to wait years for them to be discounted.

In this economy? I'm sure its worth it but $70 is $70.

Well it has Denuvo... I wasn't buying that shit
- It's ironic that they attach third-party software to prevent piracy out of fear of losing sales, but in the end, it actually causes them to sell fewer copies. lol

Expedition 33 kinda takes all my time.

I paid about £3.50 for Doom 2016 last week and around £12 for eternal, having not played a doom game since Doom 3's launch. I'm enjoying the 2016 one and will look forward to Eternal in a week or 3 once I finish that. what I won't do is pay £70 for a doom game. I might consider a games for windows sub to get it that way, but that remains to be seen.
- Game for windows sub? You mean Gamepass?
  
  That's the one, sorry, shows how much attention I've paid over the years since games for windows was a thing.

For me anyway, my loss of interest in the DOOM franchise began when they started dehumanizing the Doom Marine and started stacking fantasy/medieval elements to the main protagonist and his arsenal. They turned a futuristic space marine who just got punished for punching an officer into some sort of fantastic demigod thing. It got really bad in Doom Eternal already.
I like my DOOM games when it is a battle of sci-fi military forces against demonic forces. Human technology versus the hordes of hell. But now with Dark Ages Bethesda turned the franchise into a more violent and edgy Skyrim.
- from the gameplay I've watched so far it's just been turned into a completely different game now. eternal was barely hanging on to the ethos of it, and now theres throwing blades and maces and shit? that's not doom anymore.
- Honestly I'd have been down for Doomguy turning into a literal demigod of demon murdering but I'd want his look to reflect it. Right now he's in this weird position where he's basically magic but they didn't want to get rid of his look.

there's a gorillion reasons why it isnt doing so hot, but i could make a few uneducated guesses. one, gamepass subscriptions, which obfuscate the data and has sent multiple studios to the grave even when they had moderate success. two, the economy is terrible in the US and getting worse by the day, making a $70+ game not an appealing purchase. three, maybe the Boycott Divestment Sanctions protest is having some effect.
- What is the BDS link here?
  
  Microsoft owns id's parent company these days, and Microsoft provides services to the Israeli military.
  
  BDS put Microsoft on their list of companies to boycott, and Microsoft owns the studios that made DOOM TDA
- Four, hardware requirements delaying would be purchasers.

Yeah no shit. My battlenet launcher wanted $100 for it.

After Eternal, I’m not interested in this one. 2016 was fantastic, but Eternal felt all over the place. It tried to tell a story but skipped the entire second "book" between the two games, making it feel unfinished trilogy.
Then there’s the difficulty, easy was too easy, and normal was too hard. I shouldn’t have to choose between surviving 10+ hits (easy) or dying in 3-4 (normal). That’s not balance. And I don’t have the time to ‘git gud’ when the difficulty jump is this extreme.
Considering they already had to tweak difficulty in The Dark Ages, it looks like they’re still struggling to get the scaling right
- In the dark ages you can customise the difficulty to a great degree.

It's 300﷼, that's 70 USD i think, what did they expect? I'll wait for it be cracked. I'm patient.
I can buy 12 indie games with that alone.

The reverse-Midas of Microsoft, whatever they buy turns to shit.
- It has nothing to do with quality, most people played it on game pass instead of buying it.
  
  How nice for Microsoft, I'm sure it's a big success.

Game is mid imo

The game is basically less Doom & more WH40K-ish.
You want a more Doom-like game ? Try SELACO eventhough it's early access, the 1st chapter is long & fun & guess what the devs told the anti-woke mob to fuck off & the devs are getting cancelled for it.
It's basically F.E.A.R+Classic Doom graphics (Uses the GZDoom engine)

So much I don't know here. Like what an 80.lv is, what their source Alinea Analytics is or what either of their credibility is, why a second source (Ampere) arrived at a PS5 number that deviated from Alinea's by over 100%, why this didn't make 80.lv question the veracity of the claim they opted to put in their headline, what sales even mean in the context of Game Pass, why I would care about the potential profitability of a game I don't care about, why I clicked this post, am writing this comment, or why Microsoft opts to be complicit in Israel's genocide.
- They're a market research agency, and are well-known and credible enough. See: https://80.lv/contact-us
  I care about industry news. Hence the post.

DOOM 16 was fantastic, but eternal felt gross. It was a huge step back from 2016, and didn't feel fun. I'm not bothering with the newer games since they essentially are going off gimmicks.

Did a new DOOM game get released?
- Well "new" is arguable.
- Yes it runs on Microsoft excel

The only real criticism I have of the game is the price. I think it was a great single player experience, but I totally understand people balking at the $70 price tag.
It was fun, but I put it down once the credits rolled. Nothing inherently wrong with that; cramming a ton of completionist and weekly update content would not have made this a better game.
Maybe I’m just old.

good. i won't buy it until it's $10. and not even then if they haven't removed denuvo at that point

In the UK its £70 ($95) for the base game and £100 ($135) for the full game. Bethesda go fuck yourself.
Edit: Title is somewhat dishonest, it has over 3M players. Just that most are on gamepass. Still not buying it though.

I watched a few levels of it. This game has already been made. It's called Painkiller and I beat it 20 years ago.
- No fps gun has ever been as satisfying as that stake launcher.
  Here's hoping the painkiller remaster/remake doesn't suck.

I'm avoiding it because it just doesn't look that fun. I played the last 2 new dooms and they were good, for console shooters. More PC gamers should have higher standards than this. I don't want a dumb story about medieval times, collecting dolls, linear maps, cyberdragon mounts, running from arena to arena and then starting repetitive wave fights. Just make a good shooter please!
- You basically summed up why i didnt find the reboot and its dlc any good haha

Fewer than. *
- No less than is correct because they know the exact number they have sold.
  If you've sold less than 1,000 units then you have sold a number of units that is under 1,000.
  If you have sold fewer than 1,000 units you have not sold 1,000 units but you're not sure how many units you have sold just that that number didn't reach 1,000.
  But they do know how many units they sold, otherwise they wouldn't know if they had sold less than 1,000 so it is "less than".

Well they added a mandatory "parry" system to a doom game, what did they expect?

BDS?

There’s a video on YouTube called “Doom The Dark Ages Story Explained” but it’s a Doom game.

Not a big fan of the new Dooms, although I did like 2016. Nothing beats the ol' Doom II (via source ports).

Anyone know what the budget was? At 800k sold, that's roughly $56M, minus merchant fees, plus whatever they get for 2.2M players on Game Pass.
Definitely not bad, though I expect it'll take a while for them to recoup their budget.

I just want id to do something else. Doom is fun and all but they’ve kinda perfected it.
- Commander Keen remake when?
  
  Commander Keen, like you've never seen him before! Now in high res 8k textured raytraced 60 fps 3D! It's a shooter! Upgrade your blaster with online upgrades! Skins! Online co-op! DLC! AI chatbot npcs! Lootboxes! Gacha eggs! Sprawling open procedurally generated world! And new for nextgen... play as Kendra Keen!
  !!!
  Maybe leave it be.
  
  They tried in 2019.https://youtu.be/Znd0kUXpdts https://youtu.be/BpneMd8xTFw
  For some reason they cancelled it after the gameplay trailer was released.

Put the entire game on the disk/ 2 disks and I will buy.

Bethesda ought to just let the Doom IP go and give it to someone who actually cares.
I will never give a single red cent to Bethesda ever again and I sure as hell ain't doing it for this. Whatever this is has no business claiming to be a Doom game. They probably would have had slightly better luck if they slapped the veneer of some other IP over it rather than Doom.
- You obviously haven't played it. The game is great and 100% worthy of the Doom name.
  
  I mean, it ain't bad, it's fun(I'm on mission 13-14), it's still a Doom game. But it's definitely the weakest of the last 3 games.
  The Atlan is a cool concept but it's just slow combat, the dragon sections are okay I guess but not groundbreaking.. The overall combat itself is fun, but it's somehow less visceral than the other two games, glory kills are basically gone and you just do a melee attack most of the time... I honestly enjoyed Eternal much more, it's combat made you use the mechanics in a better way
- Oooh, so edgy and tough. Do you have a fan club already, or can I be the one to start it?

Sooo as far as im concerned i personaly will buy it beacuse it looks fun buuut on discount . Right now its just too expensive. And i can buy claire obscure for 2/3 of the price and thats also on my list sooo guess which one will go first.
But to be fair i am not exatcly the most representative sample i basicaly never buy games for more than 40$ and mostly even cheaper. Previous doom games i bought for something between 10$ and 20$ soooo.