Mick Gordon, award winning composer best known for his work on Doom (2016), Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, has issued a lengthy statement regarding the controversy surrounding the Doom Eternal Original Soundtrack.
The dispute regarding the OST comes from the quality of the album, as well as many tracks being remixed by the game’s audio director. When the soundtrack released in April 2020, fans noticed that most of the tracks were highly compressed, to the point that it had a noticeable difference. Composer Mick Gordon replied to comments on Twitter that he only mixed a small portion of the soundtrack, and suggested that audio director Chad Mossholder had actually edited the music. Gordon concluded by stating that he was dissatisfied with the work, and would likely never work with id Software again.
Then, in May 2020, id Software Studio Director Marty Stratton published an open letter to fans on Reddit confirming that Gordon had only composed 12 of the 59 tracks on the OST despite being given many time extensions. When the quality of the OST did not meet id’s standards, Stratton had Mossholder mix songs using in-game assets, which was compressed to compensate for other in-game audio.
The complications with the OST affected fans especially hard, as the soundtrack was packaged with all copies of the Collector’s Edition of the game. Furthermore, because Gordon won numerous awards for his work for the 2016 reboot, Doom fans were especially looking forward to Eternal’s soundtrack.
Today, Gordon has finally responded to Stratton’s open letter with an in-depth letter of his own, giving his own account of the controversy in great detail.
In short, Gordon claims that Stratton “used disinformation and innuendo” to put that blame squarely on on Gordon, and after publishing the open letter on Reddit, offered Gordon a six-figure settlement in exchange for never discussing it publicly.
Gordon states that the Doom Eternal OST was announced to come with the Collector’s Edition of the game before he was ever under contract to produce one. He writes that pre-orders for the collector’s edition began right away, which meant customers were paying for a product that hadn’t even been discussed with him; in fact, he learned about the deal through the news like all other customers.
According to Gordon, the Doom Eternal soundtrack would be impossible to complete before the game’s release even if he was under contract due to the complexity of how the game is scored. Gordon says that each “track” is made up of hundreds, if not thousands, small music samples that are activated in-game based on the player’s actions. For an Original Soundtrack, these would need to be carefully arranged in a way that was appealing as a complete song, adding significant time and effort to the project.
Other takeaways from the response is that Gordon claims that he still hasn’t been paid for over half of the work he did for Doom Eternal’s score, that the finished OST project did not meet his own standards, and that lawyers have been involved representing both sides since the dispute began.
Gordon makes clear that this letter is in an act of defense for his career, not an unprovoked attack to smear Stratton and id Software. He adds that does not want fans to wage a hate campaign on his behalf, and that online acts of hate will only make matters worse for all involved, including the fans.
Gordon’s full response can be read HERE on his blog site.
How do you feel about Mick Gordon’s response? Does this change your opinion on id Software and/or Doom Eternal? If you’ve listened to the OST, what is you opinion on its quality? Your thoughts and opinions are appreciated in our comment section below and on our social media pages!
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Source: Medium @mickgordon, id Software
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