20 ms·

My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal

922 points by bangonkeyboard 4y ago

RagnarD 4y ago
It’s a horrific story and should be a cautionary tale for anyone doing contract work. A lot can be said but a few things come to mind: 1) To call this Marty character shit would be an insult to shit. Mick made the mistake of considering him to be an honest individual who can be reasoned with. It’s disgusting that Marty’s employer hasn’t fired him so hard that he goes into orbit. 2) Mick should have a ruthless business manager interfacing to clients and handling contracts and payments.
c0l0 4y ago
> It was a masterpiece in Excel but a disaster in reality. I feel you.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Too often those who build the schedule are entirely divorced from reality, yet also insulated from the effects their schedule has.
CoolGuySteve 4y ago
Horror stories like this are the main reason I only ever bill by the hour and invoice biweekly. Like, sure, I'll change things to meet requirements but I'm not going to work for free or go without pay for months. It's also much easier to fire bad clients or to stop working when an invoice goes unpaid for too long. The only downside to this approach is when salaried subordinates don't understand this dynamic and rack up billable hours with useless meetings or busywork. Oftentimes when this happens management doesn't realize it until they get sticker shock from an invoice which is why I try to issue invoices frequently.
- ncallaway 4y ago
  One thing that surprised me was milestone billing with approvals, but moving on to the next milestone without getting approval on previous ones. I agree with you, this project structure sounds… much worse than T&M billing, but if I were going to take on a contract in this structure I would have a simple rule of “I won’t work on the next milestone, without getting approval on the prior one” (for something like this, where the milestones are pretty small, maybe I’d be willing to work one milestone ahead). But I’d absolutely use the schedule pressure as a tool to get them to care about approvals. Because, from the described contract structure, what incentive does the client have to give timely approvals or rejections? None!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dspillett 4y ago
  > Horror stories like this are the main reason I only ever bill by the hour and invoice biweekly. This sort of thing is why I've always kept a salaried position. I could make more, perhaps have more varied & interesting work, and maybe gain other flexibility, if I switched to contracting, but few people extolling these benefits to me ever mention the flip side when things aren't perfect – I'm more than happy to make less to avoid all that. From the article: > The contract never showed up. > but if I needed more time, they would be happy to amend the contract later No contract, no work. Work starts late because of no fault of mine, including late/no contract? Delivery is likely delayed. Want me to accept an assurance: put it in the contract or otherwise in indisputable writing now. This probably marks me as someone unsuited for contract work, or too difficult to work with as a contractor, ete, and that is fine by me!
  - x55j33 4y ago
    > Work starts late because of no fault of mine Yes, but apparently in Mick's case your name is on the product, and your reputation gets ruined if you don't play ball. A big software company can pay lawyers much longer than you can keep food on the table without pay.
    - dspillett 4y ago
      His name was there without permission effectively, due to the lack of contract, so I doubt they'd try to fight that way. They have the big team but the opposition has an open&shut case, not worth the cost and the risk of subsequent action for wrongful use of the name. They might threaten of course, so he'd still need nerves. Again, reasons why I've always stayed away from contracting!
    - randomNumber7 4y ago
      Even good lawyers would have trouble bending the obvious. He had no contract to produce the OST (first) and he could have publicly claimed, that he only produced the game music and was not involved in that final mix of the OST.
  - brightball 4y ago
- blitz_skull 4y ago
  Another alternative to hourly billing is value-based pricing with up-front payments. May not work in every industry, but if a client isn't willing to do that, they're probably not a good-faith client anyway.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  why I try to issue invoices frequently. Agree 100%. Although I've found that for this to be effective, you also need to be able to cease work which means you need a sufficiently large financial cushion. A long time ago, when I contracted, I was essentially living month to month. I invoiced frequently but clients would often pay up in a painfully slow manner. But I had no real leverage because I was unable to cease work. Kudos to contractors who achieve what I wasn't quite able to.
  - danuker 4y ago
    > which means you need a sufficiently large financial cushion. Absolutely. But this happens wih pay-per-project also, which is why on-demand contract work is much more expensive than salaried. > no real leverage You can always look for a new job/client, even while working for the present one. A counteroffer is quite convincing.
- mjmsmith 4y ago
  As an independent developer, I stop working as soon as more than once invoice is outstanding. Anything else is asking to be left holding the bag (or more of it than you already are.)
ramesh31 4y ago
ZeniMax makes EA look like Valve. Truly the worst corporate scum imaginable.
- account42 4y ago
  Valve is hardly a saint, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g
- causality0 4y ago
  Remember when they decided they owned the word "scroll" and started suing anyone else who used it?
  - nottorp 4y ago
    And Prey.
    - ramesh31 4y ago
      And what they did to Carmack And the Oculus lawsuit And… so on.
      - LegitShady 4y ago
        carmack/oculus were not innocent bystanders. That they couldn't prove it in court is very different than carmack/oculus being innocent. oculus are bigger scum than zenimax.
agentwiggles 4y ago
This is really disappointing to read. Mick's soundtrack was a huge part of making DOOM 2016 and Eternal such great experiences. His talk at GDC where he goes into some of the process of creating the soundtrack is fantastic, so much fun to see the creativity he brought to the game's music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him.
- danuker 4y ago
  > DOOMy This popped to mind, an unrelated but appropriate song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJcY3iMZG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJcY3iMZG8
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him. He didn’t do the music for DOOM Eternal DLCs and it already shows.
- somat 4y ago
  It was a great soundtrack, perfect for doom. but that talk left me confused. what I got out of it. he did not want your normal heavy metal soundtrack so he deconstructed music down to it's core, created a bunch of noise, layered it up to make the songs... but it sounded bad, so he had to add the heavy metal back in. At the end I am like... so your whole process... was for nothing?
  - tehbeard 4y ago
    I mean, learning a hypothesis doesn't work isn't for nothing? And unlike previous entries in the series, iirc, during gameplay the soundtrack reacts to the player's progress rather than just being there in the background.
- test1235 4y ago
  For the longest time, that GDC video was the most watched on their channel. Even now, it still appears to be a close second. I've watched it through twice myself, despite not even working in the game or music industry.
Chris2048 4y ago
A lot of this feels a little "glutton for punishment". Like, they keep f*cking with him yet he continues to interact..
- fartsucker69 4y ago
  - bak3y 4y ago
    Why is it so hard to believe that a giant software project was mismanaged? Not like anyone has ever seen that before.
  - koollman 4y ago
    Having worked as a contractor ... sometimes, you hope things will get better or at least tolerable, or you go on because still need to be paid because stopping may mean you get nothing (bad contracts). It's a pretty common topic for contractors.
  - Jiro 4y ago
    I think "managers want to cover up bad management and blame someone else" is a perfectly logical reason for Id Software to act this way.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Perhaps, but he has provided actual evidence that conflicts with Marty's public open letter (late date of contract finalization; work on soundtrack excluding him far prior to being near the deadline).
  - mariusor 4y ago
    That's why you go to reddit and read the open letter and then you decide which sounds more plausible.
  - camgunz 4y ago
    IDK "game studio doesn't allot enough time to make game, narcissistic manager works very hard to get anyone else to take the fall" isn't at all hard for me to believe. This dude has screenshots, file metadata, and a contract to back him up. That contract says 12 songs. Sounds like that's all there is to it.
causality0 4y ago
Out of curiosity, has there ever been a gag agreement that wasn't put forth by an absolute asshole to cover up their asshole behavior? Like are they ever used for good?
- hnick 4y ago
  They can be used in court cases to avoid biasing the public/jury before the case is heard to completion. Depending on your perspective you may see this as protecting the assholes involved but its intent is for a balanced and impartial hearing.
- kazinator 4y ago
  Yes; among the kinds of restraining orders against assholes, there can be provisions against certain kinds of public speech on certain topics (e.g. which would be harassing to someone).
- ARandumGuy 4y ago
  By their very nature, gag agreements tend not to go public. Therefore, we're probably not going to get any stories of "good" gag agreements in the news.
- youguyssuck 4y ago
  One example might be to protect the name of the victim in sexual harassment/abuse cases
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Non disparagement clauses are gonna be common in any settlement where the other party has the legal upper hand. A wrongful termination would be an example, where the settling party would want assurances the manager won't pull a Marty on reddit.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> My response is lengthy and detailed to prevent vague statements from turning into rumours and speculation. He's not kidding. This thing has a table of contents.
imwillofficial 4y ago
Music is literally half of why that game is amazing. They should have been sucking his dick to keep him around. Geez management sucks almost without exception. Almost.
deng 4y ago
Ugh, what a horror story. I mean, crunch is terrible enough, but I can't imagine how exhausting it must be for music production, especially when it's this kind of balls-to-the-wall power-metal stuff that is used for DOOM. While I can appreciate that it's really well done, I actually had to turn it off during the game because it was just too much for my ears.
Karliss 4y ago
Is it known why this response comes out now, 2-3 years after the “DOOM Eternal OST Open Letter” to which it responds? Waiting until any related NDAs time out?
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  Mick says in the statement that he feels like he has exhausted every other avenue of addressing the Open Letter and lack of payment for all of the music used in the game, this is pretty much a last resort that he didn't want to have to publish.
- Centigonal 4y ago
  Mick goes into detail about how he's been pursuing a settlement, and resorted to posting this after years of stalling from Zenimax.
- nvarsj 4y ago
  Seems obvious to me. Making a public statement is always going to be the option of last resort for a professional. Seems like Mick did everything he could and finally did this as his last ditch attempt to at least rescue his reputation.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    I'm surprised that he can't issue a DCMA takedown of Doom Eternal.
    - enneff 4y ago
      The ownership of those works is certainly a complex issue. Contractually ownership would have been assigned to id, but what happens for unpaid work? What about works in progress? Depends on the contract terms and the interpretation of those terms. Sounds like a lot of grey areas, and there can be significant repercussions for making spurious DMCA claims.
      - hnick 4y ago
jbm 4y ago
Already deleted from the r/doom front page despite hundreds of upvotes. Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/yqjvzu/mick_gordon_posted_a_new_response_concerning_the https://old.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/yqjvzu/mick_gordon_po...
- chx 4y ago
  It isn't, it's on the top of the page, heavily upvoted and awarded. It seems one of the mods deleted their account though after admitting they have friends at Bethesda. https://i.imgur.com/8E7bOoQ.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/8E7bOoQ.jpeg https://old.reddit.com/user/Mr-R00T https://old.reddit.com/user/Mr-R00T
  - phone8675309 4y ago
    Fuck that guy - glad he's gone
  - scambier 4y ago
    Almost all the biggest subs, or popular subs tied to a commercial product, have shitty moderators. They're either modding dozens of subs or have conflicts of interest with said products.
    - ram4jesus 4y ago
      This is so widespread it really lends to the conspiracy (almost certainly true) that most viral reddit content is astroturfed. Perfect example, one of the premier journalists in esports, Richard Lewis, cannot have his excellent and often-ground-breaking content posted to the LoL subreddit because the mods are in bed with Riot.
  - jbm 4y ago
    It didn't show up in best, the top of the day, nor the top of the hour when I posted the above, but I am glad that it is pinned. (I use Apollo but I was looking via the old. site; I wonder if that might be the cause?)
- 4y ago
tb_technical 4y ago
Unfortunately, abusing artists in media companies has become the norm. Hollywood and the Music industry set the example for how to extract maximum value from an artist while keeping them desperate for money. Unfortunately, those Hollywood behaviours seem to have jumped to game development. It's disgusting.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Unfortunately, abusing artists in media companies has become the norm. Since the early 1920s.
cyberpunk 4y ago
I had a real feeling Mick got the shaft over this one. A real shame, his OST would have been absolutely badass. What a waste of time for everyone involved, they certainly won't find anyone better for scoring the next ID games. I hope he lands on his feet, whatever he does next.
- somuchfordonor 4y ago
  This forum is full of people with amnesia over how many id Tech people are assholes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomNumber7 4y ago
    But John Carmack is such a great programmer. How can these people be assholes? /s
    - filoleg 4y ago
      John Carmack had no hand in DOOM (2016), and was out of iD Software for quite a while by that point, so I have no idea why you felt the need to bring him up.
      - 6thsurvivor 4y ago
        He had, he worked on the level editor: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/610468397554499584 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/610468397554499584
        filoleg 4y ago
        Oh damn, I actually had no idea. I stand corrected, thanks for pointing it out. That explains why there was so much hype for how good Snap Map (the level editor) turned out. I remember playing with it for a bit, and it seemed both powerful and super easy for someone with zero experience in it to get something simple but fun going.
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48
- damagednoob 4y ago
  Hah, now I know where he got it from: https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?t=53s https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?t=53s
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    Yep!
nimbius 4y ago
"Afterwards, he offered me a six-figure settlement to never speak about it." Mick, thats not a settlement, thats a payoff for taking a hit so the boss doesnt take the fall. Marty wanted this to go away so he could continue ladder-climbing the tech industry. that he even attempted to do this strongly suggests hes probably paid these things out before.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  Tangent, but I always wonder how these kind of payments are paid for. Would it be out of pocket money for Marty, or would he let Mick bill some phantom hours and have the company pay for it?
  - aliswe 4y ago
    Maybe bookkeeped under "litigation".
  - FeistySkink 4y ago
    It's a simple contract with all conditions spelled out. The company pays.
    - jszymborski 4y ago
      Why would companies go to bat for these execs that are liabilities? Why not pay out the settlement and send Marty to Zenimax's St Helena division to prevent having to pay this sort of thing out again? (or worse, risk the damage of having someone not willing to take hush money like Mr. Gordon).
      - FeistySkink 4y ago
        Having been in a similar situation on a lot smaller and insignificant scale, I wish I could say something coherent: I wrote and re-edited a long rant here, before ultimately deleting it. But then I see the Adam Neumanns et al. of this world still continuing to be successful despite their numerous public and not so screw-ups that add up to billions, and realize that it's the usual "A times B times C equals X".
nurettin 4y ago
Thank you Mick Gordon for all your hard work! Mick is such a legend. I'm sorry this happened to him. I wish we got to hear the original original sound track, not some last minute Chad edit. I wouldn't be surprised if he deleted it all.
Arjuna 4y ago
”The same thoughtless disregard for basic music fundamentals that plagued the preliminary edits ended up on the final OST.” As a musician and music-lover, seeing how they brickwalled [1][2] Mick’s tracks in the screenshots only serves to add to the heartbreak of his entire saga. [1] Loudness War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war [2] The Loudness War https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ
- mrob 4y ago
  It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon. See the section starting at "id Software approved my mastering". The alleged "disregard for basic music fundamentals" appears to have introduced more dynamic range, although not in a way that's pleasant to listen to.
  - mort96 4y ago
    From the article: > [...] Doing so caused dramatic amplitude spikes at the edit point. Chad didn’t bother to crossfade the transition: both files play simultaneously (causing spikes at double the volume). > To compensate, he “remastered” the edited song by normalising it to 0dBFS — a rudimentary error. That's why the OST is so incredibly brickwalled.
    - mrob 4y ago
      That's not what "normalising" means. Normalising is just changing the gain of the whole track so the peak level matches your target. And this is obviously what it meant, because if it somehow actually meant dynamic range limiting, we would not see the volume spikes.
      - mort96 4y ago
        Ah, sorry. I read it to mean compression. I see that I'm wrong now. Thanks!
  - ndepoel 4y ago
bentt 4y ago
this is heartbreaking a sad lesson in contracts and work. don’t get upside down, ever. save the good faith for church. really sorry, Mick
nvarsj 4y ago
Truly insane. It's a shame Mick had to go public on this so hard, I feel it has undoubtedly hurt his professional career. But what Marty/id Software did here is completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting. What a mess.
- another_devy 4y ago
  I don’t think he is going any hard in-fact all of his post is completely focused on his treatment. He could’ve exposed Marty’s/id’s treatment with others. I think he still is trying to avoid confrontation in court, maybe settle outside.
MDGeist 4y ago
As a musician I understand his desire to deliver a finished work that everyone could be happy with even after he was given strong incentives to just bail on it. It is a shame that the OST he wanted to release wasn't able to happen.
bitwize 4y ago
Well, Id is pretty much yet another AAA sweatshop in my view now, just like Naughty Dog. When the principals of a game studio known for innovating and having fun leave, the studio seems to morph into an ugly, EA-shaped default.
- twblalock 4y ago
  All AAA studios are sweatshops and everyone has known that for years.
barbazoo 4y ago
People arguing over email, I'm shocked that didn't work out /s
D13Fd 4y ago
This is so sad. I was unfamiliar with this whole dispute, but I've been a huge fan of the Doom 2016 soundtrack ever since that game was released. The music was absolutely essential to the game and it's amazing to me that they apparently didn't realize that and didn't treat the author as essential to the game development process. I'm also worried that he apparently hasn't sued or settled yet. At least based on his story, it looks like he may have some amazing claims here, and any plaintiff-focused contract/IP firm worth its salt would be beating down his door to get this case. But some of his claims are likely state law claims that are subject to a statute of limitations that has either run at this point or is about to run, and settlement negotiations generally don't toll the statute of limitations. Get on it!
s_dev 4y ago
I would expect this story from a struggling indie game dev startup but ID Games, Zenimax, Mick Gordon and Stratton are all huge players in the game dev industry -- thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole. I was always curious about why the Doom Eternal OST never really showed up on Spotify. This story explains that.
- enneff 4y ago
  This would never happen with an indie studio because they wouldn’t have the deep pockets to legally strong arm the contractor. If both parties were small businesses then the threat of legal action from either side would keep them both form misbehaving.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Comevius 4y ago
  On the contrary, after the horror stories coming from Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, sometimes requiring the government to intervene, my expectation is really low. If anything this is a dull affair since nobody got killed or sexually harrassed.
  - phone8675309 4y ago
    He did get vivid death threats though
- some-guy 4y ago
  > thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole The industry has almost always been terrible for decades now, this situation is just another drop in the bucket of terrible stories.
loupol 4y ago
This is a really long read. If you want a summary the Factual rebuttal at the end and the TL;DR are good. Really damning account regarding Id's management and Marty Stratton in particular, and it seems like he's got a rather thorough paper trail to back it up. The worst I feel is him not being paid for half the music used in game that he produced and then discredited by lies on social media, and those are things he can clearly prove with the payments that were made and legal contracts he signed. An actual contractor horror story, this will probably make future composers be very careful when signing anything with Id Software as long as management remains the same there.
leach 4y ago
Damn I won't give ID any more money. What pieces of shit. Complete incompetence by marty
agentultra 4y ago
What a story. I've had to take action against bad clients before when I was working as a consultant. Never a fun process. Mick's work on the soundtrack is such a huge component of what made these games great. His dedication to the final product and the fans is admirable. I hope he doesn't have to go through something like this again. The stress alone is not worth it.
runevault 4y ago
That open letter from Marty always felt fishy to me, because everything I ever saw about Mick made him feel like someone who is simply enthusiastic about music and all the stuff he claimed smelled wrong. I ended up writing it off as "Maybe he's just better at a public persona than I figured," and was sad but moved on. But now? Oof I wonder what Bethesda/Zenimax/MS does about this, because the look is NOT good for Marty, and Mick seems to have the receipts to back it up.
- Scaevolus 4y ago
  Conjecture: Marty will sue him for defamation and lose when discovery proves that substantially every allegation Mick made was true. This was Mick's entire life for two years, but was just another contractor Marty was (badly) juggling. One of them will have a far clearer memory of what's going on.
  - runevault 4y ago
    I would agree with that. I said the look wasn't good because I can't know everything but Mick seems to have enough receipts finding a detail that makes Marty look less bad will be challenging at best. My guess would be Marty made promises to upper management and things fell apart due to mismanagement. If this was JUST Mick and Marty interacting without some level of outside force I doubt Marty would act this stupidly.
- Comevius 4y ago
  I knew Marty's open letter was bullshit back then when I first read it since the game was originally set to release in 2019, and here he was talking about not having Mick under contract for the OST in January 2020. It was also suspicious that he said that they didn't have the source material for the game music after that contract has ended. That would be such a tremendous oversight, the studio not owning all the material for their game. It all makes sense after reading Mick's statement. Chad was tasked with the OST for the original release date back in August 2019, and he was supposed to use the game music, including the parts that ended up being rejected for the game. This is why Mick was ignored for months when asking about the OST. They only went back to him in March 2020 when it was apparent that the studio is not up to the task.
thefz 4y ago
In case we need another example to why Reddit moderation needs... moderation: Attempting to remove the Reddit post myself I’d had enough. I grew tired of having the respect I afforded Marty, and his employer, with attempts to resolve the dispute privately, get turned into a giant waste of time, effort and money. The Reddit post had been up for 15 months and attempts to resolve the dispute with Marty had gotten me nowhere. With my patience stretched to the absolute limit, I decided to take steps to remove the Reddit post myself. Reddit Moderator: I reached out to one of the r/DOOM moderators. We made contact and arranged a call via Discord. The moderator introduced himself and spoke about his love for the DOOM franchise and its fanbase. Along with the r/DOOM subreddit, he told me he also moderated the official DOOM Discord server. I told him how Marty’s Reddit post had affected me deeply, both professionally and personally. It was a source of ongoing stress and harm, and I asked if he’d consider removing it. Much to my relief, he instantly took it down. But within 12 hours, the post was reinstated. The moderator blocked me on Discord and didn’t reply to my emails. A few days later, Marty’s lawyers contacted me and said removing the Reddit post had greatly offended him. He was furious and made it clear in the strongest terms that an amicable resolution would be impossible. I just read some of the article and that's horrible behavior from ID. You have my support, Mick.
- NickC25 4y ago
  Feel bad for him, the Reddit mod really needs to be taken to task for bending over to appease Marty.
  - Pet_Ant 4y ago
    If the mod was personally threatened with a lawsuit could you blame him? I think that is a very likely possibility…
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      A lawsuit for removing a post on a subreddit he has full control over?
    - driverdan 4y ago
adamrezich 4y ago
it was always obvious that DOOM Eternal had a pretty troubled development, what with all the delays, the apparent focus on the novel multiplayer mode that nobody ended up really liking at all, the promised-after-release Dark Souls-style "invasions" system that never ended up materializing, and the general unfocused nature of the final product compared to its predecessor. but getting a peek behind the scenes here is really interesting because even though it's not the focus of this post, it does help paint a picture of a pretty rough dev cycle. it's really too bad because DOOM (2016) was an excellent complete package of a game, and Eternal felt pretty rough by comparison… I wonder what the franchise can do to make a comeback at this point. personally I'd be alright with letting the DOOM brand lie fallow for awhile once again before taking another crack at it. fantastic read, and I hope things go better for Mr. Gordon going forward.
- suremarc 4y ago
  DOOM 2016 got by on its freshness and its tone. The combat mechanics in DOOM Eternal, while having some divisive elements, really pushed the envelope for the series and for FPS games in general. But that was thanks to Hugo Martin, not Marty Stratton.
  - mrtranscendence 4y ago
    Agreed. I’m sad to see all the negative comments about Eternal here, because in my view it’s one of the best gaming experiences of the last few years.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    eh, I definitely saw what DOOM Eternal was going for in terms of gameplay, but I wasn't really a fan of how it turned out in the end. the previous game was definitely a bit barebones as far as innovative gameplay was concerned but that was OK—it was a solid shooter, and a somewhat surprisingly good DOOM game! some people didn't care for the "arena" combat but I loved it, each arena was evocative of a miniature Quake multiplayer encounter! and then when Arcade Mode was added after release, I spent hours perfecting my runs on a few levels. instead of just iterating on the previous game, DOOM Eternal tried a bit too hard to craft a unique "combat puzzle" design ethos, which was alright, but didn't quite click with me. one specific part that stuck out like a sore thumb to me—despite being ultimately a pretty minor thing—was that part where there's goop on the ground that prevents you from jumping. when I got to that part, I was like, oh neat, ok, here's a new gameplay element. now I'm gonna have to consider if there's goop on the ground in combat encounters or something going forward, cool. but no, instead, it was just used in that one sequence so you have to trudge through some goop and avoid a few stationary tentacle monsters, and then it never appears again. this stuck with me because it shows how far they've strayed from the classic DOOM design ethos, of giving level-builders tools to design interesting experiences. instead everything felt very setpiecey, very specifically-designed-for-this-encounter. the lore stuff too felt overwrought as well—I really enjoyed how DOOM (2016) felt in that regard, it felt like you just got plopped into (the cancelled) DOOM 4, but instead of becoming immersed and participatory in the story, Doomguy didn't give a shit about anything except, goddammit, these moron scientists in yet another alternate universe once again did experiments with Hell shit and whoops yet another demonic invasion has arrived as a result—well, you know what to do, time to kick some demon ass regardless, it's what you do best! it was a good twist on the Half-Life 2 worldbuilding formula, sort of leaning on the fourth wall without totally breaking it, recognizing that players don't want a Half-Life-style DOOM 3 again, but rather, they just want to shoot some damn demons. but then DOOM Eternal decided to play it straight and make all this overwrought lore and crap that I just could not for the life of me be arsed to care about at all. and they could've toned down the fanservice in the hub world to about 20% of what they shipped and it would've been nice without being over-the-top.
skrebbel 4y ago
This Marty person seems like a full on psychopath. I always wonder with stories like these how the lawyers feel after a day’s work. Like, “hi daddy, how was work?” - “oh it was fantastic, we strong armed an independent musician into getting screwed over by our client, an ambitious psychopath!” -hugs-
- crazydoggers 4y ago
  Parent comment might seem flip, but it’s actually a real and important point. There are quite a number of people with anti social personality disorder within corporate management structures. Marty has all of the hallmark signs. I think the real sad part is that Mick wasn’t able to identify Marty’s personality type at the outset, and seemed to keep falling for his lies, gaslighting, and manipulation, and under estimated the degree to which someone like him would throw someone under the bus at a moments notice. Mental heal of corporate America definitely needs more examination, because with this type of wealth and power, it often ruins lives both big and small.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    I think the real sad part is that Mick wasn’t able to identify Marty’s personality type at the outset The sociopathic and sociopathy-adjacent people who rise to these positions of power are very good at cloaking behaviors. They're not obviously creepy jerks hiding in the bushes near a playground wearing filthy clothing, leering at the children and planning an abduction. Nobody wants to work with people like that and they almost never become successful. The ones who do climb the ranks generally have a lot of positive traits. That's what makes them so dangerous. One minute they're doing something legitimately good. The next minute they're pulling sociopathic moves. Somebody like Jeffrey Epstein is a great example. Accomplished socialite, donated to great causes and institutions, personable, even had a close female friend so he couldn't be an abuser, right? Except he was, obviously. The lesson for me was not that people were gullible, it was that some of these predators are simply that good at cloaking themselves. (To be crystal clear, I'm not saying Marty is as bad as Epstein, or directly comparing them in any way whatsoever. I'm just saying: successful jerks are usually a complex mix of good and bad traits. In Marty's defense he's in a high pressure role with a lot of money on the line and lots of crap to navigate and perhaps is trying his best but has come up short. I don't know.)
kar1181 4y ago
If you read up on Tim Willits' time at id it seems like a proper protege took his reigns. In my early career I lamented not going into games development but goodness what a bullet dodged.
- Asooka 4y ago
  Well, there are some good places to work. I've heard Hello Games (makers of No Man's Sky) are pretty alright, notwithstanding the kerfuffle with their initial release of NMS. I've had some acquaintances working in various Ubisoft locations say it's not bad. Though even if it is a well-managed studio, you'll still have to deal with occasional crunch to meet holiday deadlines and such, plus the pay is often lower than similar positions in other sectors.
  - phone8675309 4y ago
    > I've had some acquaintances working in various Ubisoft locations say it's not bad. Hate to break it to you: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53391689 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53391689 Activision, Blizzard, Ubisoft, and now Zenimax, Bethesda, and id are on my "do not buy or play" list for games.
brightball 4y ago
The most shocking thing about this situation to me is that he didn't get an attorney involved after 2 months without pay. 2 months is generous.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  It's easy to say, and important to do, but also hard to do. These relationships always have a hugely asymmetrical power balance. As a contractor your reputation is so critical and the games industry is a small place. And there are far more artists than jobs.
  - brightball 4y ago
    True. Touched on this in my other comment too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535123 Reading through this particular situation though, he was in a unique position to negotiate due to all of management bungles. 1. Original soundtrack author. 2. Conference announcement that he would be producing the sound track as presales exploded. There were others as well. I'm a very patient person, but one thing I've learned over the years is that you can't drag your feet when people are intentionally stalling you. Within 2 weeks of the E3 announcement after multiple attempts to get it resolved, you have to make it clear that you can't continue working without a contract in place. I'm sure it's a "hindsight is 20/20" situation, but it was hard to read through all of that management abuse without seeing him put his proverbial foot down.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      It's hard to find good legal representation you can trust and is knowledgeable about the industry/situation. It is very easy to find a lawyer who will take your money, however.
      - brightball 4y ago
        That's a very valid statement, but at the same time you have to be prepared for it if you plan to be a contractor anyway. You need your own agreements. You need somebody to review agreements presented to you. If there are IP concerns you need to have clear legal language present around that as well. To get there, it's worth it to network in attorney circles. It's well worth it.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
I stand with Mick for speaking out. Fuck you, pay me. Looking forward to more from him in the future.
yrro 4y ago
Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for anyone who ever has to work or deal with Marty Stratton or Bethesda.
staindk 4y ago
Wow I vaguely remember that reddit thread and I think I felt a bit confused about it. Seemed like such an OTT reaction to something that should be handled internally - and then for a public statement you would keep it short, sweet and indirect (i.e. 2 paragraphs where you don't blame anyone except maybe yourself and some section of the company). Very glad Mick made this thorough post.
- barbariangrunge 4y ago
  Remember all the toxic anti-mick comments in that thread, saying it was all micks fault? The post really made people turn on him
Ghoyome 4y ago
WTH?!??? I’m never buying a thing directed by this douchebag Marty ever again.
umvi 4y ago
Not surprising behavior from id software. If you've ever read the book "Masters of Doom" (great book, btw) you can see that id software from the very beginning is really only known for making cutting edge games and that they've always had problems with bad management and abusing employees.
- filoleg 4y ago
  There is a difference between questionable management when your company consists of under 10 employees (aka ultra-startup mode) vs. when you are a large gamedev company under the umbrella of a massive publisher. A lot of things can be more understandable when you are a single-digit employee count company running on a shoestring budget (which iD Software was at the time), especially when no intentional malice was present. It is another thing when you are a large dev company that has a massive financial backing of a massive publisher, and you appear to be intentionally malicious towards a single contributor who did nothing wrong and was instrumental to your success.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
Given the presented facts and damaged professional reputation, why is this an "open letter" and not a defamation lawsuit?
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- Paul_S 4y ago
  Zenimax has more money
- mastax 4y ago
  It seems that Mick doesn't like getting lawyers involved, potentially to his detriment.
  - moogly 4y ago
    Indeed, lawyers will be involved now; just not on his side...
    - hnick 4y ago
      Based on the wording and the table of contents I'm pretty sure lawyers were involved in at least reviewing this open letter. A final ditch effort before the real expenses begin.
meanmrmustard92 4y ago
Marty came across as a slimy prick in the (otherwise excellent) Noclip documentary about the making of Doom (2016). Turns out the real-life version is much worse.
- gausswho 4y ago
  I remember bouncing off DOOM Eternal after a couple hours because all its clever new mechanics were oddly anti-fun and puzzly resource management. Like the creators didn't know what made the predecessor special. I was confused and stopped playing a couple hours in. So I watched the Noclip hoping to understand the design choices better. Marty was disgustingly smug and assured about it all, coming across like a victim for being a misunderstood creative genius. Several times he implied the 2016 breakout hit he was following up on was dull and repetitive. That helped me understand where it all went wrong. I'm devastated but not surprised that Mick got treated this way. Props to him for choosing to get the word out instead of taking a payoff. I hope there are professional repercussions for Marty.
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    I bought the 2016 release at full price like within the first month of its release and decided to skip Eternal when I heard several reviews mention you had to ration ammo. Few things annoy me more than shooters that don't let you shoot as much as you want. Hell, every time I replay DOOM 2016 the first thing I upgrade is ammo all the way, and only then do I even consider upgrading health or armor.
    - gausswho 4y ago
      Yeah that game loop was what I loved too. It was brainless in the ways I enjoyed, made you feel like a Doom Guy. It was as hard as you wanted, in that vein of game. Eternal was a brave subversion that just didn't suit the origins of the franchise. Maybe they won some crossover fans, but I'm not convinced the trade was worth it.
    - Geee 4y ago
      I never played 2016, but ammo in Eternal is pretty much similar to any older Doom games, except that you also get ammo by using chainsaw on enemies. I think this made the game excellent, because it forces you to get close to enemies and use different types of attacks. There's lots of ammo if you know how to play it. The game always spawns these 'fodder' type enemies which can be used to get ammo, so you'll never run out.
ilaksh 4y ago
Anyone else have experience with Id Software Studio Director Marty Stratton? We don't want to ruin his reputation unnecessarily either. But if he really did commit defamation to this degree, it should not be a footnote.
- enneff 4y ago
  Have a look on twitter. A few people “me too”ing wrt their relations with the guy.
- FeistySkink 4y ago
  The only gut feeling I have is that other people might have took the gag money plus the heavy-handed NDA or don't have the clout of Mr. Gordon to publicly speak out. But other than that, you're right. I hope more people come out and share their stories wrt id.
nsxwolf 4y ago
My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal is that it kicks all forms of ass.
libraryatnight 4y ago
I really enjoyed DOOM Eternal, but I rarely follow communities for games online so I didn't realize this was such a thing. Sad that a great game spawned such a nasty situation. It does seem Mick is in the right, here, this didn't have to go this way.
cragfar 4y ago
I don't do much contract work or deal with the video game industry at all, so I'm wondering was Mick just being overly understanding here about the payment issues? Someone refusing to pay me for work would instantly shut down any work I do with them. And my head nearly exploded when I read the part about how they secretly published a soundtrack that they didn't pay for, and then agreed to be pay for it only if he did another soundtrack for them.
- nmfisher 4y ago
  I am 100% on Mick’s side here, but so much about this situation screams naivete and poor contracts/legal advice on his part. He should have come down on them like a ton of bricks as soon as they announced an OST with his name on it, but that hadn’t been contracted (which both parties admit, so it’s definitely not he-said she-said).
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Delayed or never received payments are common for video game freelancers. Most projects fail, and so the likelihood you don't get paid out for a portion of your work is very high. You just have to eat it and set your rates accordingly. iD/Zennimax are big enough there's no excuse here, but as far as mentality anyone that's been freelancing in games has probably crossed over into this territory of just hoping the client stops being an idiot at least once if they're honest.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    If it’s so common why don’t the well known freelancers insist on upfront payments?
    - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
      These contracts are very asymmetric in negotiating power. That's actually true of gaming in general: as both an artist or coder you'll almost certainly make more money and have a much better work life balance outside of gaming. Freelancers are even more disposable. Basically, people who wanna make games do so mostly out of personal passion, and that means they get pretty screwed in negotiating compensation.
randomNumber7 4y ago
A lot of assholery going on at ID management, but mick did a lot of mistakes himself. He probably should just have sued them to pay for all the music and to not put his name on the OST... And why in the world would you trust that marty guy after talking with him on the phone. That just ... Also it would probably helped his reputation, to write some of this (the part about the OST) earlier in the doom reddit as response to marty.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
At the end of the day, this is a bog-standard contract dispute over creative differences, and now these guys have to hash it out in the court of public opinion, because some gamers didn't feel like the soundtrack was good enough for their money, and started making a stink? Good grief. "Social" media is killing society.
- s_dev 4y ago
  >because some gamers didn't feel like the soundtrack was good enough for their money, and started making a stink? I would compare Mick Gordon's contribution to the Doom game here to that of Howard Shore in Lord of the Rings. The experience is fundamentally limited without the music.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    But that wasn't the problem, was it? They got "the music."
    - phone8675309 4y ago
      Honest question: are you autistic?
      - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
        Why are you people always asking me that?
        phone8675309 4y ago
        Because your posts seem to be very literally focused without a nuanced understanding of the social aspects outside of the literal and technical.
        TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
        Whoosh.
sasas 4y ago
The original post by Marty always crossed my mind when listening to the OST sound track. It never really added up. Mick always came across a person with integrity - both artistic and otherwise. Now my mind can be put at rest. The behavior of Marty in the way it's described comes across classic narcissistic behaviors. Hopefully Mick has learned to recognize this early on in future engagements and to tread very carefully. This applies to all people in power in companies. Do not trust until that trust is earnt, no matter how friendly or forthcoming they appear. I learnt this early in my career and can (hopefully) can spot these people quickly before they gain too much leverage. Give them nothing that can be used against you because there is a good chance it will come back to bite.
- enneff 4y ago
  Based on how passionate Mick is about his work, and how incredibly polished his Doom 2016 work was, I always found it unbelievable that he would have been responsible for the Doom Eternal mess. I had no idea the details would be this messy.
Quixotica1 4y ago
Yikes, that Marty sure seems like an asshole, huh?
sasas 4y ago
It's all "who said what" until Mick shows screenshots of timestamps embedded in the audio files - direct proof that Marty outright lied. This could be important if there is any litigation made against Mick for this post if they attempt to destroy him financially by going to court.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > This could be important if there is any litigation made against Mick for this post if they attempt to destroy him financially by going to court. The problem is, every lawsuit - even if the facts are on your side - still has a chance of going belly-up at least partially and making you responsible for even a part of the opposing party's lawyer costs as judges have quite a bit of leeway in many jurisdictions on distributing cost between parties. Big companies routinely abuse this threat scenario because they know 99% of people can't afford paying big lawyer companies that earn five digits an hour.
fleddr 4y ago
This Mick Gordon guy has to be the most patient, understanding and abuse-tolerant person on the planet. Even after getting screwed over 30 times in a row he still was hopeful for a reasonable ending. I express that as a compliment, even if in the real world it works against you. It's not the main topic, but I like to call out attention to this: "incidences of online abuse escalated at an alarming rate as Marty’s Reddit post led to frustration over my alleged professional failure, and toxic gamers grew openly aggressive. They shared my personal details via message boards, including Reddit, which meant that abusers could now reach me in more ways than ever. They email-bombed my inboxes, crashing the server and clogging my messaging services, crippling my ability to communicate. They harassed my other clients with attempts to get me fired from their projects. They called my phone numbers around the clock, screaming messages full of abuse. I began receiving specific expressions of violence, the content so vivid it made me sick. The torrent of abuse telling me how to kill myself, how I’d be mutilated, how they would circulate photos of my body to traumatise my family, how my family would be murdered, how they’d hurt my animals, how they’d shoot up any event I attended, how I’d be raped to death, really started to wear me down in ways I couldn’t previously imagine." I'm strongly against authoritarian overreach and used to consider trolling a "fact of life", nothing requiring intervention. I no longer believe that. We're talking about a disappointing audio track for a stupid game yet the man and his family have to fear for their lives. And surely Mr Manager Marty looks at it with approval. A line has to be drawn in the sand. There must be a cost to such threats. A massive fine or some short prison time. Further, those enabling and launching the mob, even if unknowingly, need to carry responsibility too. This isn't just defamation, it spills over into real world danger.
- fknorangesite 4y ago
  > used to consider trolling a "fact of life", nothing requiring intervention. I no longer believe that. ... the man and his family have to fear for their lives. I'm wondering how you could be on the internet in a post-gamergate world and still be surprised that shit like this really does happen. It's incredibly common - why do you think those calls for stricter moderation started in the first place?
  - 4y ago
nazgulsenpai 4y ago
They should have paid him the 300 hrs just for the Super Gore Nest track.

It’s a horrific story and should be a cautionary tale for anyone doing contract work. A lot can be said but a few things come to mind: 1) To call this Marty character shit would be an insult to shit. Mick made the mistake of considering him to be an honest individual who can be reasoned with. It’s disgusting that Marty’s employer hasn’t fired him so hard that he goes into orbit. 2) Mick should have a ruthless business manager interfacing to clients and handling contracts and payments.

c0l0 4y ago

> It was a masterpiece in Excel but a disaster in reality. I feel you.

Arrath 4y ago
Too often those who build the schedule are entirely divorced from reality, yet also insulated from the effects their schedule has.

CoolGuySteve 4y ago

Horror stories like this are the main reason I only ever bill by the hour and invoice biweekly. Like, sure, I'll change things to meet requirements but I'm not going to work for free or go without pay for months. It's also much easier to fire bad clients or to stop working when an invoice goes unpaid for too long. The only downside to this approach is when salaried subordinates don't understand this dynamic and rack up billable hours with useless meetings or busywork. Oftentimes when this happens management doesn't realize it until they get sticker shock from an invoice which is why I try to issue invoices frequently.

ncallaway 4y ago
One thing that surprised me was milestone billing with approvals, but moving on to the next milestone without getting approval on previous ones. I agree with you, this project structure sounds… much worse than T&M billing, but if I were going to take on a contract in this structure I would have a simple rule of “I won’t work on the next milestone, without getting approval on the prior one” (for something like this, where the milestones are pretty small, maybe I’d be willing to work one milestone ahead). But I’d absolutely use the schedule pressure as a tool to get them to care about approvals. Because, from the described contract structure, what incentive does the client have to give timely approvals or rejections? None!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dspillett 4y ago
> Horror stories like this are the main reason I only ever bill by the hour and invoice biweekly. This sort of thing is why I've always kept a salaried position. I could make more, perhaps have more varied & interesting work, and maybe gain other flexibility, if I switched to contracting, but few people extolling these benefits to me ever mention the flip side when things aren't perfect – I'm more than happy to make less to avoid all that. From the article: > The contract never showed up. > but if I needed more time, they would be happy to amend the contract later No contract, no work. Work starts late because of no fault of mine, including late/no contract? Delivery is likely delayed. Want me to accept an assurance: put it in the contract or otherwise in indisputable writing now. This probably marks me as someone unsuited for contract work, or too difficult to work with as a contractor, ete, and that is fine by me!
- x55j33 4y ago
  > Work starts late because of no fault of mine Yes, but apparently in Mick's case your name is on the product, and your reputation gets ruined if you don't play ball. A big software company can pay lawyers much longer than you can keep food on the table without pay.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    His name was there without permission effectively, due to the lack of contract, so I doubt they'd try to fight that way. They have the big team but the opposition has an open&shut case, not worth the cost and the risk of subsequent action for wrongful use of the name. They might threaten of course, so he'd still need nerves. Again, reasons why I've always stayed away from contracting!
  - randomNumber7 4y ago
    Even good lawyers would have trouble bending the obvious. He had no contract to produce the OST (first) and he could have publicly claimed, that he only produced the game music and was not involved in that final mix of the OST.
- brightball 4y ago
blitz_skull 4y ago
Another alternative to hourly billing is value-based pricing with up-front payments. May not work in every industry, but if a client isn't willing to do that, they're probably not a good-faith client anyway.
JohnBooty 4y ago
why I try to issue invoices frequently. Agree 100%. Although I've found that for this to be effective, you also need to be able to cease work which means you need a sufficiently large financial cushion. A long time ago, when I contracted, I was essentially living month to month. I invoiced frequently but clients would often pay up in a painfully slow manner. But I had no real leverage because I was unable to cease work. Kudos to contractors who achieve what I wasn't quite able to.
- danuker 4y ago
  > which means you need a sufficiently large financial cushion. Absolutely. But this happens wih pay-per-project also, which is why on-demand contract work is much more expensive than salaried. > no real leverage You can always look for a new job/client, even while working for the present one. A counteroffer is quite convincing.
mjmsmith 4y ago
As an independent developer, I stop working as soon as more than once invoice is outstanding. Anything else is asking to be left holding the bag (or more of it than you already are.)

ramesh31 4y ago

ZeniMax makes EA look like Valve. Truly the worst corporate scum imaginable.

account42 4y ago
Valve is hardly a saint, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g
causality0 4y ago
Remember when they decided they owned the word "scroll" and started suing anyone else who used it?
- nottorp 4y ago
  And Prey.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    And what they did to Carmack And the Oculus lawsuit And… so on.
    - LegitShady 4y ago
      carmack/oculus were not innocent bystanders. That they couldn't prove it in court is very different than carmack/oculus being innocent. oculus are bigger scum than zenimax.

agentwiggles 4y ago

This is really disappointing to read. Mick's soundtrack was a huge part of making DOOM 2016 and Eternal such great experiences. His talk at GDC where he goes into some of the process of creating the soundtrack is fantastic, so much fun to see the creativity he brought to the game's music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FNBMZsqrY The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him.

danuker 4y ago
> DOOMy This popped to mind, an unrelated but appropriate song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJcY3iMZG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOJcY3iMZG8
sgjohnson 4y ago
> The next DOOM will be a little less DOOMy without him. He didn’t do the music for DOOM Eternal DLCs and it already shows.
somat 4y ago
It was a great soundtrack, perfect for doom. but that talk left me confused. what I got out of it. he did not want your normal heavy metal soundtrack so he deconstructed music down to it's core, created a bunch of noise, layered it up to make the songs... but it sounded bad, so he had to add the heavy metal back in. At the end I am like... so your whole process... was for nothing?
- tehbeard 4y ago
  I mean, learning a hypothesis doesn't work isn't for nothing? And unlike previous entries in the series, iirc, during gameplay the soundtrack reacts to the player's progress rather than just being there in the background.
test1235 4y ago
For the longest time, that GDC video was the most watched on their channel. Even now, it still appears to be a close second. I've watched it through twice myself, despite not even working in the game or music industry.

Chris2048 4y ago

A lot of this feels a little "glutton for punishment". Like, they keep f*cking with him yet he continues to interact..

fartsucker69 4y ago
- bak3y 4y ago
  Why is it so hard to believe that a giant software project was mismanaged? Not like anyone has ever seen that before.
- koollman 4y ago
  Having worked as a contractor ... sometimes, you hope things will get better or at least tolerable, or you go on because still need to be paid because stopping may mean you get nothing (bad contracts). It's a pretty common topic for contractors.
- Jiro 4y ago
  I think "managers want to cover up bad management and blame someone else" is a perfectly logical reason for Id Software to act this way.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Perhaps, but he has provided actual evidence that conflicts with Marty's public open letter (late date of contract finalization; work on soundtrack excluding him far prior to being near the deadline).
- mariusor 4y ago
  That's why you go to reddit and read the open letter and then you decide which sounds more plausible.
- camgunz 4y ago
  IDK "game studio doesn't allot enough time to make game, narcissistic manager works very hard to get anyone else to take the fall" isn't at all hard for me to believe. This dude has screenshots, file metadata, and a contract to back him up. That contract says 12 songs. Sounds like that's all there is to it.

causality0 4y ago

Out of curiosity, has there ever been a gag agreement that wasn't put forth by an absolute asshole to cover up their asshole behavior? Like are they ever used for good?

hnick 4y ago
They can be used in court cases to avoid biasing the public/jury before the case is heard to completion. Depending on your perspective you may see this as protecting the assholes involved but its intent is for a balanced and impartial hearing.
kazinator 4y ago
Yes; among the kinds of restraining orders against assholes, there can be provisions against certain kinds of public speech on certain topics (e.g. which would be harassing to someone).
ARandumGuy 4y ago
By their very nature, gag agreements tend not to go public. Therefore, we're probably not going to get any stories of "good" gag agreements in the news.
youguyssuck 4y ago
One example might be to protect the name of the victim in sexual harassment/abuse cases
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Non disparagement clauses are gonna be common in any settlement where the other party has the legal upper hand. A wrongful termination would be an example, where the settling party would want assurances the manager won't pull a Marty on reddit.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

> My response is lengthy and detailed to prevent vague statements from turning into rumours and speculation. He's not kidding. This thing has a table of contents.

imwillofficial 4y ago

Music is literally half of why that game is amazing. They should have been sucking his dick to keep him around. Geez management sucks almost without exception. Almost.

deng 4y ago

Ugh, what a horror story. I mean, crunch is terrible enough, but I can't imagine how exhausting it must be for music production, especially when it's this kind of balls-to-the-wall power-metal stuff that is used for DOOM. While I can appreciate that it's really well done, I actually had to turn it off during the game because it was just too much for my ears.

Karliss 4y ago

Is it known why this response comes out now, 2-3 years after the “DOOM Eternal OST Open Letter” to which it responds? Waiting until any related NDAs time out?

wilsonnb3 4y ago
Mick says in the statement that he feels like he has exhausted every other avenue of addressing the Open Letter and lack of payment for all of the music used in the game, this is pretty much a last resort that he didn't want to have to publish.
Centigonal 4y ago
Mick goes into detail about how he's been pursuing a settlement, and resorted to posting this after years of stalling from Zenimax.
nvarsj 4y ago
Seems obvious to me. Making a public statement is always going to be the option of last resort for a professional. Seems like Mick did everything he could and finally did this as his last ditch attempt to at least rescue his reputation.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  I'm surprised that he can't issue a DCMA takedown of Doom Eternal.
  - enneff 4y ago
    The ownership of those works is certainly a complex issue. Contractually ownership would have been assigned to id, but what happens for unpaid work? What about works in progress? Depends on the contract terms and the interpretation of those terms. Sounds like a lot of grey areas, and there can be significant repercussions for making spurious DMCA claims.
    - hnick 4y ago

jbm 4y ago

Already deleted from the r/doom front page despite hundreds of upvotes. Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/yqjvzu/mick_gordon_posted_a_new_response_concerning_the https://old.reddit.com/r/Doom/comments/yqjvzu/mick_gordon_po...

chx 4y ago
It isn't, it's on the top of the page, heavily upvoted and awarded. It seems one of the mods deleted their account though after admitting they have friends at Bethesda. https://i.imgur.com/8E7bOoQ.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/8E7bOoQ.jpeg https://old.reddit.com/user/Mr-R00T https://old.reddit.com/user/Mr-R00T
- phone8675309 4y ago
  Fuck that guy - glad he's gone
- scambier 4y ago
  Almost all the biggest subs, or popular subs tied to a commercial product, have shitty moderators. They're either modding dozens of subs or have conflicts of interest with said products.
  - ram4jesus 4y ago
    This is so widespread it really lends to the conspiracy (almost certainly true) that most viral reddit content is astroturfed. Perfect example, one of the premier journalists in esports, Richard Lewis, cannot have his excellent and often-ground-breaking content posted to the LoL subreddit because the mods are in bed with Riot.
- jbm 4y ago
  It didn't show up in best, the top of the day, nor the top of the hour when I posted the above, but I am glad that it is pinned. (I use Apollo but I was looking via the old. site; I wonder if that might be the cause?)
4y ago

tb_technical 4y ago

Unfortunately, abusing artists in media companies has become the norm. Hollywood and the Music industry set the example for how to extract maximum value from an artist while keeping them desperate for money. Unfortunately, those Hollywood behaviours seem to have jumped to game development. It's disgusting.

pessimizer 4y ago
> Unfortunately, abusing artists in media companies has become the norm. Since the early 1920s.

cyberpunk 4y ago

I had a real feeling Mick got the shaft over this one. A real shame, his OST would have been absolutely badass. What a waste of time for everyone involved, they certainly won't find anyone better for scoring the next ID games. I hope he lands on his feet, whatever he does next.

somuchfordonor 4y ago
This forum is full of people with amnesia over how many id Tech people are assholes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- randomNumber7 4y ago
  But John Carmack is such a great programmer. How can these people be assholes? /s
  - filoleg 4y ago
    John Carmack had no hand in DOOM (2016), and was out of iD Software for quite a while by that point, so I have no idea why you felt the need to bring him up.
    - 6thsurvivor 4y ago
      He had, he worked on the level editor: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/610468397554499584 https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/610468397554499584
      - filoleg 4y ago
        Oh damn, I actually had no idea. I stand corrected, thanks for pointing it out. That explains why there was so much hype for how good Snap Map (the level editor) turned out. I remember playing with it for a bit, and it seemed both powerful and super easy for someone with zero experience in it to get something simple but fun going.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48

damagednoob 4y ago
Hah, now I know where he got it from: https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?t=53s https://youtu.be/jVkLVRt6c1U?t=53s
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Yep!

nimbius 4y ago

"Afterwards, he offered me a six-figure settlement to never speak about it." Mick, thats not a settlement, thats a payoff for taking a hit so the boss doesnt take the fall. Marty wanted this to go away so he could continue ladder-climbing the tech industry. that he even attempted to do this strongly suggests hes probably paid these things out before.

stingraycharles 4y ago
Tangent, but I always wonder how these kind of payments are paid for. Would it be out of pocket money for Marty, or would he let Mick bill some phantom hours and have the company pay for it?
- aliswe 4y ago
  Maybe bookkeeped under "litigation".
- FeistySkink 4y ago
  It's a simple contract with all conditions spelled out. The company pays.
  - jszymborski 4y ago
    Why would companies go to bat for these execs that are liabilities? Why not pay out the settlement and send Marty to Zenimax's St Helena division to prevent having to pay this sort of thing out again? (or worse, risk the damage of having someone not willing to take hush money like Mr. Gordon).
    - FeistySkink 4y ago
      Having been in a similar situation on a lot smaller and insignificant scale, I wish I could say something coherent: I wrote and re-edited a long rant here, before ultimately deleting it. But then I see the Adam Neumanns et al. of this world still continuing to be successful despite their numerous public and not so screw-ups that add up to billions, and realize that it's the usual "A times B times C equals X".

nurettin 4y ago

Thank you Mick Gordon for all your hard work! Mick is such a legend. I'm sorry this happened to him. I wish we got to hear the original original sound track, not some last minute Chad edit. I wouldn't be surprised if he deleted it all.

Arjuna 4y ago

”The same thoughtless disregard for basic music fundamentals that plagued the preliminary edits ended up on the final OST.” As a musician and music-lover, seeing how they brickwalled [1][2] Mick’s tracks in the screenshots only serves to add to the heartbreak of his entire saga. [1] Loudness War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war [2] The Loudness War https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ

mrob 4y ago
It seems the brickwall mastering was intentionally done by Mick Gordon. See the section starting at "id Software approved my mastering". The alleged "disregard for basic music fundamentals" appears to have introduced more dynamic range, although not in a way that's pleasant to listen to.
- mort96 4y ago
  From the article: > [...] Doing so caused dramatic amplitude spikes at the edit point. Chad didn’t bother to crossfade the transition: both files play simultaneously (causing spikes at double the volume). > To compensate, he “remastered” the edited song by normalising it to 0dBFS — a rudimentary error. That's why the OST is so incredibly brickwalled.
  - mrob 4y ago
    That's not what "normalising" means. Normalising is just changing the gain of the whole track so the peak level matches your target. And this is obviously what it meant, because if it somehow actually meant dynamic range limiting, we would not see the volume spikes.
    - mort96 4y ago
      Ah, sorry. I read it to mean compression. I see that I'm wrong now. Thanks!
- ndepoel 4y ago

bentt 4y ago

this is heartbreaking a sad lesson in contracts and work. don’t get upside down, ever. save the good faith for church. really sorry, Mick

nvarsj 4y ago

Truly insane. It's a shame Mick had to go public on this so hard, I feel it has undoubtedly hurt his professional career. But what Marty/id Software did here is completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting. What a mess.

another_devy 4y ago
I don’t think he is going any hard in-fact all of his post is completely focused on his treatment. He could’ve exposed Marty’s/id’s treatment with others. I think he still is trying to avoid confrontation in court, maybe settle outside.

MDGeist 4y ago

As a musician I understand his desire to deliver a finished work that everyone could be happy with even after he was given strong incentives to just bail on it. It is a shame that the OST he wanted to release wasn't able to happen.

bitwize 4y ago

Well, Id is pretty much yet another AAA sweatshop in my view now, just like Naughty Dog. When the principals of a game studio known for innovating and having fun leave, the studio seems to morph into an ugly, EA-shaped default.

twblalock 4y ago
All AAA studios are sweatshops and everyone has known that for years.

barbazoo 4y ago

People arguing over email, I'm shocked that didn't work out /s

D13Fd 4y ago

This is so sad. I was unfamiliar with this whole dispute, but I've been a huge fan of the Doom 2016 soundtrack ever since that game was released. The music was absolutely essential to the game and it's amazing to me that they apparently didn't realize that and didn't treat the author as essential to the game development process. I'm also worried that he apparently hasn't sued or settled yet. At least based on his story, it looks like he may have some amazing claims here, and any plaintiff-focused contract/IP firm worth its salt would be beating down his door to get this case. But some of his claims are likely state law claims that are subject to a statute of limitations that has either run at this point or is about to run, and settlement negotiations generally don't toll the statute of limitations. Get on it!

s_dev 4y ago

I would expect this story from a struggling indie game dev startup but ID Games, Zenimax, Mick Gordon and Stratton are all huge players in the game dev industry -- thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole. I was always curious about why the Doom Eternal OST never really showed up on Spotify. This story explains that.

enneff 4y ago
This would never happen with an indie studio because they wouldn’t have the deep pockets to legally strong arm the contractor. If both parties were small businesses then the threat of legal action from either side would keep them both form misbehaving.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Comevius 4y ago
On the contrary, after the horror stories coming from Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, sometimes requiring the government to intervene, my expectation is really low. If anything this is a dull affair since nobody got killed or sexually harrassed.
- phone8675309 4y ago
  He did get vivid death threats though
some-guy 4y ago
> thus this looks bad for the industry as a whole The industry has almost always been terrible for decades now, this situation is just another drop in the bucket of terrible stories.

loupol 4y ago

This is a really long read. If you want a summary the Factual rebuttal at the end and the TL;DR are good. Really damning account regarding Id's management and Marty Stratton in particular, and it seems like he's got a rather thorough paper trail to back it up. The worst I feel is him not being paid for half the music used in game that he produced and then discredited by lies on social media, and those are things he can clearly prove with the payments that were made and legal contracts he signed. An actual contractor horror story, this will probably make future composers be very careful when signing anything with Id Software as long as management remains the same there.

leach 4y ago

Damn I won't give ID any more money. What pieces of shit. Complete incompetence by marty

agentultra 4y ago

What a story. I've had to take action against bad clients before when I was working as a consultant. Never a fun process. Mick's work on the soundtrack is such a huge component of what made these games great. His dedication to the final product and the fans is admirable. I hope he doesn't have to go through something like this again. The stress alone is not worth it.

runevault 4y ago

That open letter from Marty always felt fishy to me, because everything I ever saw about Mick made him feel like someone who is simply enthusiastic about music and all the stuff he claimed smelled wrong. I ended up writing it off as "Maybe he's just better at a public persona than I figured," and was sad but moved on. But now? Oof I wonder what Bethesda/Zenimax/MS does about this, because the look is NOT good for Marty, and Mick seems to have the receipts to back it up.

Scaevolus 4y ago
Conjecture: Marty will sue him for defamation and lose when discovery proves that substantially every allegation Mick made was true. This was Mick's entire life for two years, but was just another contractor Marty was (badly) juggling. One of them will have a far clearer memory of what's going on.
- runevault 4y ago
  I would agree with that. I said the look wasn't good because I can't know everything but Mick seems to have enough receipts finding a detail that makes Marty look less bad will be challenging at best. My guess would be Marty made promises to upper management and things fell apart due to mismanagement. If this was JUST Mick and Marty interacting without some level of outside force I doubt Marty would act this stupidly.
Comevius 4y ago
I knew Marty's open letter was bullshit back then when I first read it since the game was originally set to release in 2019, and here he was talking about not having Mick under contract for the OST in January 2020. It was also suspicious that he said that they didn't have the source material for the game music after that contract has ended. That would be such a tremendous oversight, the studio not owning all the material for their game. It all makes sense after reading Mick's statement. Chad was tasked with the OST for the original release date back in August 2019, and he was supposed to use the game music, including the parts that ended up being rejected for the game. This is why Mick was ignored for months when asking about the OST. They only went back to him in March 2020 when it was apparent that the studio is not up to the task.

thefz 4y ago

In case we need another example to why Reddit moderation needs... moderation: Attempting to remove the Reddit post myself I’d had enough. I grew tired of having the respect I afforded Marty, and his employer, with attempts to resolve the dispute privately, get turned into a giant waste of time, effort and money. The Reddit post had been up for 15 months and attempts to resolve the dispute with Marty had gotten me nowhere. With my patience stretched to the absolute limit, I decided to take steps to remove the Reddit post myself. Reddit Moderator: I reached out to one of the r/DOOM moderators. We made contact and arranged a call via Discord. The moderator introduced himself and spoke about his love for the DOOM franchise and its fanbase. Along with the r/DOOM subreddit, he told me he also moderated the official DOOM Discord server. I told him how Marty’s Reddit post had affected me deeply, both professionally and personally. It was a source of ongoing stress and harm, and I asked if he’d consider removing it. Much to my relief, he instantly took it down. But within 12 hours, the post was reinstated. The moderator blocked me on Discord and didn’t reply to my emails. A few days later, Marty’s lawyers contacted me and said removing the Reddit post had greatly offended him. He was furious and made it clear in the strongest terms that an amicable resolution would be impossible. I just read some of the article and that's horrible behavior from ID. You have my support, Mick.

NickC25 4y ago
Feel bad for him, the Reddit mod really needs to be taken to task for bending over to appease Marty.
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  If the mod was personally threatened with a lawsuit could you blame him? I think that is a very likely possibility…
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    A lawsuit for removing a post on a subreddit he has full control over?
  - driverdan 4y ago

adamrezich 4y ago

it was always obvious that DOOM Eternal had a pretty troubled development, what with all the delays, the apparent focus on the novel multiplayer mode that nobody ended up really liking at all, the promised-after-release Dark Souls-style "invasions" system that never ended up materializing, and the general unfocused nature of the final product compared to its predecessor. but getting a peek behind the scenes here is really interesting because even though it's not the focus of this post, it does help paint a picture of a pretty rough dev cycle. it's really too bad because DOOM (2016) was an excellent complete package of a game, and Eternal felt pretty rough by comparison… I wonder what the franchise can do to make a comeback at this point. personally I'd be alright with letting the DOOM brand lie fallow for awhile once again before taking another crack at it. fantastic read, and I hope things go better for Mr. Gordon going forward.

suremarc 4y ago
DOOM 2016 got by on its freshness and its tone. The combat mechanics in DOOM Eternal, while having some divisive elements, really pushed the envelope for the series and for FPS games in general. But that was thanks to Hugo Martin, not Marty Stratton.
- mrtranscendence 4y ago
  Agreed. I’m sad to see all the negative comments about Eternal here, because in my view it’s one of the best gaming experiences of the last few years.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  eh, I definitely saw what DOOM Eternal was going for in terms of gameplay, but I wasn't really a fan of how it turned out in the end. the previous game was definitely a bit barebones as far as innovative gameplay was concerned but that was OK—it was a solid shooter, and a somewhat surprisingly good DOOM game! some people didn't care for the "arena" combat but I loved it, each arena was evocative of a miniature Quake multiplayer encounter! and then when Arcade Mode was added after release, I spent hours perfecting my runs on a few levels. instead of just iterating on the previous game, DOOM Eternal tried a bit too hard to craft a unique "combat puzzle" design ethos, which was alright, but didn't quite click with me. one specific part that stuck out like a sore thumb to me—despite being ultimately a pretty minor thing—was that part where there's goop on the ground that prevents you from jumping. when I got to that part, I was like, oh neat, ok, here's a new gameplay element. now I'm gonna have to consider if there's goop on the ground in combat encounters or something going forward, cool. but no, instead, it was just used in that one sequence so you have to trudge through some goop and avoid a few stationary tentacle monsters, and then it never appears again. this stuck with me because it shows how far they've strayed from the classic DOOM design ethos, of giving level-builders tools to design interesting experiences. instead everything felt very setpiecey, very specifically-designed-for-this-encounter. the lore stuff too felt overwrought as well—I really enjoyed how DOOM (2016) felt in that regard, it felt like you just got plopped into (the cancelled) DOOM 4, but instead of becoming immersed and participatory in the story, Doomguy didn't give a shit about anything except, goddammit, these moron scientists in yet another alternate universe once again did experiments with Hell shit and whoops yet another demonic invasion has arrived as a result—well, you know what to do, time to kick some demon ass regardless, it's what you do best! it was a good twist on the Half-Life 2 worldbuilding formula, sort of leaning on the fourth wall without totally breaking it, recognizing that players don't want a Half-Life-style DOOM 3 again, but rather, they just want to shoot some damn demons. but then DOOM Eternal decided to play it straight and make all this overwrought lore and crap that I just could not for the life of me be arsed to care about at all. and they could've toned down the fanservice in the hub world to about 20% of what they shipped and it would've been nice without being over-the-top.

skrebbel 4y ago

This Marty person seems like a full on psychopath. I always wonder with stories like these how the lawyers feel after a day’s work. Like, “hi daddy, how was work?” - “oh it was fantastic, we strong armed an independent musician into getting screwed over by our client, an ambitious psychopath!” -hugs-

crazydoggers 4y ago
Parent comment might seem flip, but it’s actually a real and important point. There are quite a number of people with anti social personality disorder within corporate management structures. Marty has all of the hallmark signs. I think the real sad part is that Mick wasn’t able to identify Marty’s personality type at the outset, and seemed to keep falling for his lies, gaslighting, and manipulation, and under estimated the degree to which someone like him would throw someone under the bus at a moments notice. Mental heal of corporate America definitely needs more examination, because with this type of wealth and power, it often ruins lives both big and small.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  I think the real sad part is that Mick wasn’t able to identify Marty’s personality type at the outset The sociopathic and sociopathy-adjacent people who rise to these positions of power are very good at cloaking behaviors. They're not obviously creepy jerks hiding in the bushes near a playground wearing filthy clothing, leering at the children and planning an abduction. Nobody wants to work with people like that and they almost never become successful. The ones who do climb the ranks generally have a lot of positive traits. That's what makes them so dangerous. One minute they're doing something legitimately good. The next minute they're pulling sociopathic moves. Somebody like Jeffrey Epstein is a great example. Accomplished socialite, donated to great causes and institutions, personable, even had a close female friend so he couldn't be an abuser, right? Except he was, obviously. The lesson for me was not that people were gullible, it was that some of these predators are simply that good at cloaking themselves. (To be crystal clear, I'm not saying Marty is as bad as Epstein, or directly comparing them in any way whatsoever. I'm just saying: successful jerks are usually a complex mix of good and bad traits. In Marty's defense he's in a high pressure role with a lot of money on the line and lots of crap to navigate and perhaps is trying his best but has come up short. I don't know.)

kar1181 4y ago

If you read up on Tim Willits' time at id it seems like a proper protege took his reigns. In my early career I lamented not going into games development but goodness what a bullet dodged.

Asooka 4y ago
Well, there are some good places to work. I've heard Hello Games (makers of No Man's Sky) are pretty alright, notwithstanding the kerfuffle with their initial release of NMS. I've had some acquaintances working in various Ubisoft locations say it's not bad. Though even if it is a well-managed studio, you'll still have to deal with occasional crunch to meet holiday deadlines and such, plus the pay is often lower than similar positions in other sectors.
- phone8675309 4y ago
  > I've had some acquaintances working in various Ubisoft locations say it's not bad. Hate to break it to you: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53391689 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53391689 Activision, Blizzard, Ubisoft, and now Zenimax, Bethesda, and id are on my "do not buy or play" list for games.

brightball 4y ago

The most shocking thing about this situation to me is that he didn't get an attorney involved after 2 months without pay. 2 months is generous.

JohnBooty 4y ago
It's easy to say, and important to do, but also hard to do. These relationships always have a hugely asymmetrical power balance. As a contractor your reputation is so critical and the games industry is a small place. And there are far more artists than jobs.
- brightball 4y ago
  True. Touched on this in my other comment too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535123 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33535123 Reading through this particular situation though, he was in a unique position to negotiate due to all of management bungles. 1. Original soundtrack author. 2. Conference announcement that he would be producing the sound track as presales exploded. There were others as well. I'm a very patient person, but one thing I've learned over the years is that you can't drag your feet when people are intentionally stalling you. Within 2 weeks of the E3 announcement after multiple attempts to get it resolved, you have to make it clear that you can't continue working without a contract in place. I'm sure it's a "hindsight is 20/20" situation, but it was hard to read through all of that management abuse without seeing him put his proverbial foot down.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It's hard to find good legal representation you can trust and is knowledgeable about the industry/situation. It is very easy to find a lawyer who will take your money, however.
    - brightball 4y ago
      That's a very valid statement, but at the same time you have to be prepared for it if you plan to be a contractor anyway. You need your own agreements. You need somebody to review agreements presented to you. If there are IP concerns you need to have clear legal language present around that as well. To get there, it's worth it to network in attorney circles. It's well worth it.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

I stand with Mick for speaking out. Fuck you, pay me. Looking forward to more from him in the future.

yrro 4y ago

Jesus Christ. I feel sorry for anyone who ever has to work or deal with Marty Stratton or Bethesda.

staindk 4y ago

Wow I vaguely remember that reddit thread and I think I felt a bit confused about it. Seemed like such an OTT reaction to something that should be handled internally - and then for a public statement you would keep it short, sweet and indirect (i.e. 2 paragraphs where you don't blame anyone except maybe yourself and some section of the company). Very glad Mick made this thorough post.

barbariangrunge 4y ago
Remember all the toxic anti-mick comments in that thread, saying it was all micks fault? The post really made people turn on him

Ghoyome 4y ago

WTH?!??? I’m never buying a thing directed by this douchebag Marty ever again.

umvi 4y ago

Not surprising behavior from id software. If you've ever read the book "Masters of Doom" (great book, btw) you can see that id software from the very beginning is really only known for making cutting edge games and that they've always had problems with bad management and abusing employees.

filoleg 4y ago
There is a difference between questionable management when your company consists of under 10 employees (aka ultra-startup mode) vs. when you are a large gamedev company under the umbrella of a massive publisher. A lot of things can be more understandable when you are a single-digit employee count company running on a shoestring budget (which iD Software was at the time), especially when no intentional malice was present. It is another thing when you are a large dev company that has a massive financial backing of a massive publisher, and you appear to be intentionally malicious towards a single contributor who did nothing wrong and was instrumental to your success.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

Given the presented facts and damaged professional reputation, why is this an "open letter" and not a defamation lawsuit?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
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Paul_S 4y ago
Zenimax has more money
mastax 4y ago
It seems that Mick doesn't like getting lawyers involved, potentially to his detriment.
- moogly 4y ago
  Indeed, lawyers will be involved now; just not on his side...
  - hnick 4y ago
    Based on the wording and the table of contents I'm pretty sure lawyers were involved in at least reviewing this open letter. A final ditch effort before the real expenses begin.

meanmrmustard92 4y ago

Marty came across as a slimy prick in the (otherwise excellent) Noclip documentary about the making of Doom (2016). Turns out the real-life version is much worse.

gausswho 4y ago
I remember bouncing off DOOM Eternal after a couple hours because all its clever new mechanics were oddly anti-fun and puzzly resource management. Like the creators didn't know what made the predecessor special. I was confused and stopped playing a couple hours in. So I watched the Noclip hoping to understand the design choices better. Marty was disgustingly smug and assured about it all, coming across like a victim for being a misunderstood creative genius. Several times he implied the 2016 breakout hit he was following up on was dull and repetitive. That helped me understand where it all went wrong. I'm devastated but not surprised that Mick got treated this way. Props to him for choosing to get the word out instead of taking a payoff. I hope there are professional repercussions for Marty.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  I bought the 2016 release at full price like within the first month of its release and decided to skip Eternal when I heard several reviews mention you had to ration ammo. Few things annoy me more than shooters that don't let you shoot as much as you want. Hell, every time I replay DOOM 2016 the first thing I upgrade is ammo all the way, and only then do I even consider upgrading health or armor.
  - gausswho 4y ago
    Yeah that game loop was what I loved too. It was brainless in the ways I enjoyed, made you feel like a Doom Guy. It was as hard as you wanted, in that vein of game. Eternal was a brave subversion that just didn't suit the origins of the franchise. Maybe they won some crossover fans, but I'm not convinced the trade was worth it.
  - Geee 4y ago
    I never played 2016, but ammo in Eternal is pretty much similar to any older Doom games, except that you also get ammo by using chainsaw on enemies. I think this made the game excellent, because it forces you to get close to enemies and use different types of attacks. There's lots of ammo if you know how to play it. The game always spawns these 'fodder' type enemies which can be used to get ammo, so you'll never run out.

ilaksh 4y ago

Anyone else have experience with Id Software Studio Director Marty Stratton? We don't want to ruin his reputation unnecessarily either. But if he really did commit defamation to this degree, it should not be a footnote.

enneff 4y ago
Have a look on twitter. A few people “me too”ing wrt their relations with the guy.
FeistySkink 4y ago
The only gut feeling I have is that other people might have took the gag money plus the heavy-handed NDA or don't have the clout of Mr. Gordon to publicly speak out. But other than that, you're right. I hope more people come out and share their stories wrt id.

nsxwolf 4y ago

My full statement regarding DOOM Eternal is that it kicks all forms of ass.

libraryatnight 4y ago

I really enjoyed DOOM Eternal, but I rarely follow communities for games online so I didn't realize this was such a thing. Sad that a great game spawned such a nasty situation. It does seem Mick is in the right, here, this didn't have to go this way.

cragfar 4y ago

I don't do much contract work or deal with the video game industry at all, so I'm wondering was Mick just being overly understanding here about the payment issues? Someone refusing to pay me for work would instantly shut down any work I do with them. And my head nearly exploded when I read the part about how they secretly published a soundtrack that they didn't pay for, and then agreed to be pay for it only if he did another soundtrack for them.

nmfisher 4y ago
I am 100% on Mick’s side here, but so much about this situation screams naivete and poor contracts/legal advice on his part. He should have come down on them like a ton of bricks as soon as they announced an OST with his name on it, but that hadn’t been contracted (which both parties admit, so it’s definitely not he-said she-said).
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
Delayed or never received payments are common for video game freelancers. Most projects fail, and so the likelihood you don't get paid out for a portion of your work is very high. You just have to eat it and set your rates accordingly. iD/Zennimax are big enough there's no excuse here, but as far as mentality anyone that's been freelancing in games has probably crossed over into this territory of just hoping the client stops being an idiot at least once if they're honest.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  If it’s so common why don’t the well known freelancers insist on upfront payments?
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    These contracts are very asymmetric in negotiating power. That's actually true of gaming in general: as both an artist or coder you'll almost certainly make more money and have a much better work life balance outside of gaming. Freelancers are even more disposable. Basically, people who wanna make games do so mostly out of personal passion, and that means they get pretty screwed in negotiating compensation.

randomNumber7 4y ago

A lot of assholery going on at ID management, but mick did a lot of mistakes himself. He probably should just have sued them to pay for all the music and to not put his name on the OST... And why in the world would you trust that marty guy after talking with him on the phone. That just ... Also it would probably helped his reputation, to write some of this (the part about the OST) earlier in the doom reddit as response to marty.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

At the end of the day, this is a bog-standard contract dispute over creative differences, and now these guys have to hash it out in the court of public opinion, because some gamers didn't feel like the soundtrack was good enough for their money, and started making a stink? Good grief. "Social" media is killing society.

s_dev 4y ago
>because some gamers didn't feel like the soundtrack was good enough for their money, and started making a stink? I would compare Mick Gordon's contribution to the Doom game here to that of Howard Shore in Lord of the Rings. The experience is fundamentally limited without the music.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  But that wasn't the problem, was it? They got "the music."
  - phone8675309 4y ago
    Honest question: are you autistic?
    - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
      Why are you people always asking me that?
      - phone8675309 4y ago
        Because your posts seem to be very literally focused without a nuanced understanding of the social aspects outside of the literal and technical.
        TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
        Whoosh.

sasas 4y ago

The original post by Marty always crossed my mind when listening to the OST sound track. It never really added up. Mick always came across a person with integrity - both artistic and otherwise. Now my mind can be put at rest. The behavior of Marty in the way it's described comes across classic narcissistic behaviors. Hopefully Mick has learned to recognize this early on in future engagements and to tread very carefully. This applies to all people in power in companies. Do not trust until that trust is earnt, no matter how friendly or forthcoming they appear. I learnt this early in my career and can (hopefully) can spot these people quickly before they gain too much leverage. Give them nothing that can be used against you because there is a good chance it will come back to bite.

enneff 4y ago
Based on how passionate Mick is about his work, and how incredibly polished his Doom 2016 work was, I always found it unbelievable that he would have been responsible for the Doom Eternal mess. I had no idea the details would be this messy.

Quixotica1 4y ago

Yikes, that Marty sure seems like an asshole, huh?

sasas 4y ago

It's all "who said what" until Mick shows screenshots of timestamps embedded in the audio files - direct proof that Marty outright lied. This could be important if there is any litigation made against Mick for this post if they attempt to destroy him financially by going to court.

mschuster91 4y ago
> This could be important if there is any litigation made against Mick for this post if they attempt to destroy him financially by going to court. The problem is, every lawsuit - even if the facts are on your side - still has a chance of going belly-up at least partially and making you responsible for even a part of the opposing party's lawyer costs as judges have quite a bit of leeway in many jurisdictions on distributing cost between parties. Big companies routinely abuse this threat scenario because they know 99% of people can't afford paying big lawyer companies that earn five digits an hour.

fleddr 4y ago

This Mick Gordon guy has to be the most patient, understanding and abuse-tolerant person on the planet. Even after getting screwed over 30 times in a row he still was hopeful for a reasonable ending. I express that as a compliment, even if in the real world it works against you. It's not the main topic, but I like to call out attention to this: "incidences of online abuse escalated at an alarming rate as Marty’s Reddit post led to frustration over my alleged professional failure, and toxic gamers grew openly aggressive. They shared my personal details via message boards, including Reddit, which meant that abusers could now reach me in more ways than ever. They email-bombed my inboxes, crashing the server and clogging my messaging services, crippling my ability to communicate. They harassed my other clients with attempts to get me fired from their projects. They called my phone numbers around the clock, screaming messages full of abuse. I began receiving specific expressions of violence, the content so vivid it made me sick. The torrent of abuse telling me how to kill myself, how I’d be mutilated, how they would circulate photos of my body to traumatise my family, how my family would be murdered, how they’d hurt my animals, how they’d shoot up any event I attended, how I’d be raped to death, really started to wear me down in ways I couldn’t previously imagine." I'm strongly against authoritarian overreach and used to consider trolling a "fact of life", nothing requiring intervention. I no longer believe that. We're talking about a disappointing audio track for a stupid game yet the man and his family have to fear for their lives. And surely Mr Manager Marty looks at it with approval. A line has to be drawn in the sand. There must be a cost to such threats. A massive fine or some short prison time. Further, those enabling and launching the mob, even if unknowingly, need to carry responsibility too. This isn't just defamation, it spills over into real world danger.

fknorangesite 4y ago
> used to consider trolling a "fact of life", nothing requiring intervention. I no longer believe that. ... the man and his family have to fear for their lives. I'm wondering how you could be on the internet in a post-gamergate world and still be surprised that shit like this really does happen. It's incredibly common - why do you think those calls for stricter moderation started in the first place?
- 4y ago

nazgulsenpai 4y ago

They should have paid him the 300 hrs just for the Super Gore Nest track.