Mick Gordon releases tell-all statement on Doom Eternal OST

Mick Gordon, the composer for a variety of AAA video games, including Id Software’s Doom series as well as upcoming first-person shooter Atomic Heart, has released a revealing statement about his time working on Doom Eternal. A long piece, it delves into claims of intense crisis, months without pay, mismanagement, and a lengthy legal battle.

For those unaware, the Doom Eternal OST was released in April 2020 as a clearly confusing product. We covered this back then with a long article, but it was clear there had been a rift between Mick and Id. Now, three years later an open letter written by Marty Stratton While Id Software largely blamed Mick for the quality of the OST, Mick has presented his own side of the story.

Median Gordon Post (which we recommend you read in its entirety here) covers a variety of issues he claims to have experienced during his time working on Doom Eternal, as well as in the months and years after the game’s release. This includes crises, with Gordon stating, “I worked smoothly for months, desperately trying to stay on top of things, and each week seemed to bring a new set of problems.” Gordon says this was made worse by being left out of meetings, unanswered emails, files being automatically deleted, and information being withheld.

Furthermore, Gordon claims that he suffered from serious pay problems while working on Doom Eternal. He claims that the audio team withheld approval of the tracks, which in turn withheld payment, leading to alleged 11 months without pay for his work.

As for the Doom Eternal OST, Gordon claims that he was not offered a contract to produce the Doom Eternal OST when pre-orders were released, with his name attached to the product.

In terms of additional workload, Gordon claims he had produced “more than double the contract minutes” when he finished. He also claims that Id Software used almost all of the music, which is more than double what the company allegedly paid. Gordon claims in his post that Id Software still refused to pay for these tracks.

As for the original scope of the Doom Eternal OST, Gordon alleges that he originally “proposed a full album of 30 tracks and a running time of over two hours”, however this was rejected if Gordon’s statement is to be believed, despite from Marty. Stratton’s open letter stating the opposite.

Perhaps the strangest claim raised by Gordon concerns the album of edits sent to him by Id Software, which the company said had been in the works for a short period of time. However, thanks to the metadata of the audio files shown by Gordon in his statement, some of the tracks appear to have been in the works since August 2019, before Gordon claims he received the contract.

The massive statement concludes by covering the Reddit post of the open letter, which Gordon claims was posted after a Skype call between him and Stratton. The following months included a mix of legal negotiations, in which he was allegedly offered a six-figure sum to remain silent about the situation.

What happens next is up in the air, but it seems that Mick Gordon has managed to land new projects that are working better for him. We can only wait and see if Gordon gets the public apology he wants, or if the legal battles continue in the background.