Mod-ern Warfare: Non-BFG Doom 3 Yanked From Steam
Yesterday, we brought you word of a really neat Thief total conversion mod for Doom 3. You probably gazed upon it, felt your excitement glands emit a mucus concoction of pure glee, and downloaded it as quickly as your lovestruck heart could handle. But then you remembered something: Doom 3 was released back when games still came in boxes. Your copy, unfortunately, has probably been devoured by this cluttered meatspace we call reality. Now normally, this would be the part where Steam comes to the rescue. There is, however, one teensy-weensy little problem: vanilla Doom 3's been abruptly pulled from Steam. You can grab the BFG Edition, but it takes to mods like a Cyberdemon face to, well, a BFG. So I got in touch with id/Bethesda about the issue, and here's what they said.
"DOOM 3 and Resurrection of Evil are now only available through the BFG Edition, which also includes the Lost Mission," a rep told RPS. "If you already own the original versions of DOOM 3 and Resurrection of Evil, you will still be able to access them from within your Steam library."
"We do realize that there are fans that would like to purchase the original version of the game, and we’re looking into options for them. When there’s new info to share, we’ll let everyone know."
Which is a bit of an odd thing to say, given that the seemingly obvious answer is to just put Doom 3 back on Steam - no muss, no fuss. I suppose, though, that something is better than nothing. If nothing else, id's acknowledging fan complaints on this one. Obviously, though, there's reason to be skeptical of the motivations behind all of this. I mean, why remove one option if not to corral buyers to the other? I'm not aware of any Steam policy that prohibits multiple packages containing the same/similar games, so I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on here.
I suppose time will tell, though. If Doom 3's back in the (heavily duct-taped) spotlight sooner rather than later, then it's no big deal. But id and Bethesda are being pretty vague about the whens and wherefores, so it's tough to say what exactly's going on behind the curtain.