Mick Gordon, renowned composer on Doom and Doom Eternal, pulled the curtain back on what was allegedly going on with the state of the title’s music in development.
Even years after the launch of Doom Eternal, controversy is still rampant surrounding the title’s botched soundtrack release, and the composer Mick Gordon has unleashed an alleged ‘expose’ just yesterday on the state of the game’s music during development. Overall, he alleges a toxic and poor working environment at the hands of Executive Producer Marty Stratton, avoidable forced time crunches, a huge amount of unpaid work, hush money, and the list goes on and on in his alleged lengthy statement on Medium.
The huge response starts with why it was even penned in the first place, and the main reason was due to Marty Stratton’s open letter post on Reddit back in 2020, where he appears to allege Mick Gordon was the difficult party to work with. While constantly complimenting his musical prowess, he alleges Gordon was the sole entity responsible for the Doom Eternal OST fumble. There are statements involving id Software’s lead audio designer, Chad Mossholder, like “Mick has shared with me that the attacks on Chad are distressing, but he’s done nothing to change the conversation,” alleges Mick Gordon let misinformation and blame fall on Mossholder, for the bad quality of the release and did nothing to rectify it.
Fast-forward to yesterday, three years removed from the Reddit post, Mick Gordon lengthily described his version of events with screenshots, soundwave editing photos, and a timeline of what exactly happened from the conception of Doom Eternal all the way to its release, a rare insight of actual game development from the musical side of things, but one with many allegations of mistreatment and miscommunication with id Software.
Mick Gordon’s Alleged Key Issues
- Unfair payment for his work, he was allegedly paid for a contracted 142 minutes of music, and id Software used 286 minutes of ‘rejected music’ that Gordon was allegedly never paid for.
- Time mismanagement since the beginning phases, “A contract delay — on id Software’s side — led to a late start, putting us behind schedule immediately,” and other revealed details show time crunching was issued before even a single level was developed Gordon claims.
- Miscommunication and a non-responsive nature led Gordon to allegedly believe his music was being declined ‘on purpose’ so id Software could use more of it without paying.
- Alleged lies of the Doom Eternal OST contract signing made from Marty Stratton to date the signing two months earlier than March with the aim to place blame solely on Gordon.
- Caustic language and assertions of Gordon being difficult, such as ‘ball-ache’ allegedly being used.
- Blaming Doom Eternal delays on Gordon publicly on Reddit.
All in all, Gordon issued the statement on Doom Eternal due to “Marty’s Reddit post severely impacted both my professional and personal reputation. In releasing this statement, I’m exercising my right to defend myself. It is a defence, not an unprovoked attack, issued with extreme reluctance only after all other attempts to resolve the matter have failed,” so the alleged miscommunication continues years after the title’s release. Gordon continues in the ‘Factual Rebuttal’ segment of his long-winded defence post, “They would have avoided the entire situation by communicating their plans to me” which is a common theme throughout.
Fans can read the entire post from Gordon on Medium, and these issues are still being resolved legally, it will take time for a real conclusion to be reached.
