Doom Eternal Composer Alleges Unpaid Wages and Abuse in Lengthy Soundtrack Controversy Response

ign.com:

Two years after a controversy over Doom Eternal's soundtrack mixing highlighted a behind-the-scenes conflict between the game's developers and composer Mick Gordon, Gordon is finally speaking out.

In a lengthy post on Medium, Gordon has offered his side of the conflict over Doom Eternal with an account that includes allegations that id Software failed to pay him for half the game's soundtrack, and that executive producer Marty Stratton was a recurringly abusive presence throughout his work on the score and the OST.

For context, Gordon's issues were first highlighted back in 2020 when the Doom Eternal soundtrack was released alongside the collector's edition and fans noted discrepancies in sound mixing between the soundtrack and the same piece in Doom 2016. At the time Gordon pointed out on social media that he didn't mix the tracks in question, leading Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton to issue a public statement about Gordon's work on the game. Stratton's account included multiple concerns that Gordon wouldn't be able to deliver his promised work on time, and ended by noting that they likely wouldn't be working together again.

Now, however, Gordon paints a very different picture.

He begins by describing being given tight deadlines for final versions of his promised musical tracks — two finished pieces of level music per month. However, he says he lacked direction as to what kind of levels or environments those tracks were meant to cover due to constant development changes and missed milestones.

Gordon then claims he proposed an alternative scheduling plan to management that would allow him to write broader, reusable themes first that could then be shaped into specific final versions as levels were hammered