Last year, DOOM Eternal was slated for a 2019 release before it was delayed to March 19, 2020 in order to ensure a quality product. In a recent podcast, a senior executive at Bethesda gave some insight into what exactly caused the delay.
In USGamer's Branching Narratives podcast, Pete Hines, Bethesda's senior vice president of global marketing and communications, spoke about a variety of topics. One of the more interesting ones is about the exact reason DOOM Eternal was delayed. It turns out of one of the major reasons for the delay was because of the heavily negative reception Fallout 76.
It's no secret that Fallout 76 had a very rocky reception riddled with bugs and low-quality duffel bags, and Bethesda didn't want to make the same mistakes again. "We said, 'These are not ready, and we're not going to make another mistake, and we're going to take the extra time even though that time hurts, and is painful, and you miss a holiday," Hines said. "DOOM Eternal was so much better for it, and the response to Wastelanders was so much better for the extra time."
In addition to talking about Bethesda's decision to delay DOOM Eternal, Pete Hines remarks about the company trying something new with Deathloop, the upcoming PlayStation 5 game developed by Arkane Studios about an assassin trying to escape the titular Groundhog Day-esque time loop by killing and avoiding being killed. "Even if it's just a one-0ff and they go back to doing other things, they're still better for the experience, and they take away new learnings." As for some of their biggest upcoming projects, like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6, he said "Yeah, I'm not telling you anything."
Even with the extra time devoted to ensuring DOOM Eternal was a great game, it didn't come without controversy. In an update released sometime after the initial launch, Bethesda added Denuvo Anti-Cheat to their game, which they promptly removed in the game's next update after a massive backlash from players. As well as using a kernel-mode driver to scan for cheats, which has the potential to be used for monitoring and data collection, many were upset about Bethesda dropping this new software without prior warning.
DOOM Eternal is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with a Switch port coming sometime in the future.
Source: USGamer