Doom Co-Creators Trade Barbs Over Who Built Deathmatch

Few games have a origin story as thoroughly picked over as Doom. The 1993 shooter from id Software reshaped PC gaming, and its multiplayer mode, Deathmatch, became the template for competitive shooters that followed. So when two of the game's key creators started arguing about how that mode came to be, it drew attention well beyond the fan community.

The disagreement played out on X, formerly Twitter, where John Romero and Sandy Petersen each challenged the other's recollection of how Deathmatch took shape. Romero co-founded id Software and is among the best-known names associated with the original game. Petersen was a designer on the project, contributing levels and monsters that remain central to the Doom identity. Both men have long been part of the public record of the game's history, which is part of why their exchange carries weight.

What makes the argument interesting is how ordinary it is. Development teams in the early 1990s worked fast, in small groups, and often without the paper trail that later projects would generate. Ideas got passed between people in hallways, over late-night builds, and during playtests, and three decades later each participant tends to remember their own role most vividly. Deathmatch is a particularly tangled case, since the mode grew out of experimentation with networked play rather than a single moment of invention.

It is worth noting that the core facts of the game are not in dispute. Doom's place in gaming history is secure, and Deathmatch's influence on the genre is well documented. The open question is attribution: who proposed the idea, who built it, and whose account holds up. Those are the kinds of questions that tend to resurface whenever a classic game's creators get the chance to speak for themselves.

For fans, the exchange is a reminder that the games they love were made by people who still have strong opinions about them. Readers who want the specifics of each claim will find them in the original posts, where both men laid out their versions in their own words.