Doom: The Dark Ages Director Explains Why They Scrapped Multiplayer

Doom fans eagerly await the release of Doom: The Dark Ages. The game is the next installment for the beloved franchise, but it will be a prequel this time. We’re going way back, well before the events of the Doom 2016 reboot setting. However, when you pick up this game, don’t expect to see any multiplayer component added.

id Software is still chipping away at the game, but unfortunately, there’s no plan to add multiplayer gameplay. Speaking to GamesRadar, Hugo Martin, the game director behind the upcoming game, spoke about deciding on how to proceed with the project. Early on, it was decided that the game would be a single-player experience. That’s because the development team wanted to focus all their energy on making the best campaign possible.

With Eternal, we wanted to put mechs in the game. There were things we wanted to do with Eternal. The scope of the project, you start spreading out resources to make a multiplayer component.

It’s live service… you can’t just do a little multiplayer. You’ve gotta go — fans’ expectation is [that] you go all the way. It would definitely come at the expense of the single-player aspects. It felt good to just focus [on] Doom as a single-player experience and not try to turn it into a live service game. – Hugo Martin

Looking back, Hugo noted that some ideas were scrapped from the previous Doom Eternal installment. Because of the scope of the project, it would have been too tough to incorporate everything planned for the campaign experience and add a multiplayer component.

Likewise, the development team didn’t want to add something to the mix for the multiplayer later on in development. Hugo noted that fans would expect the developers to go all in with it. So, instead of turning Doom: The Dark Ages into a live service experience, it will remain a single-player game. That might be a good thing, as it seems like there is plenty of content we would have for Doom Eternal if the team was fully focused on the campaign.

Doom: The Dark Ages is set to release into the marketplace on May 15, 2025. Players can pick this game up on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S platforms. In the meantime, you can read about how the developers returned to the original Doom game for inspiration and why the studio opted to set the game during medieval times.