The Drama With the DOOM Nintendo Switch Port Explained

When it comes to violent shooters, there is no game more classic than Doom. So when the original game, and it's two sequels, randomly appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop, people were alarmed. But their excitement has was quickly crushed after a couple of complications.

It started last week, when Doom, Doom II, and Doom 3 appeared on the Nintendo eShop with not so much as a tweet by Bethesda, only for the two sequels to be removed quickly after. Only to later have the games be released for Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 as part of this weekend's Quakecon.

This is the part that everyone liked. You could easily play a classic shooter on modern consoles without the fussing of porting decades-old programming.

The bad part, however, was what Bethesda claims was a production bug. When you tried to play the game on Nintendo Switch, you were asked to sign into your Bethesda.net account every time. The online community was very upset by this, believing it to be entirely unneeded to sign into an online network for a game from 1993. Various folks also claimed that it required a constant internet connection, but this was quickly proven false.

But they do present a valid question: why do you need to sign into a Bethesda.net account?

According to the official Bethesda Twitter account, this was supposed to be an optional setting to reward existing Bethesda.net users. 

"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."

While this has appeased some, others were not so easily swayed. They suspect that this was a lie to cover up an unpopular decision. This is understandable, given that the prompt claimed: "a Bethesda.net account is required to play this title."

Lie or not, it's since been resolved. At least Bethesda responds well to the criticism they receive.