You can once again slay demons like it’s 1993 unencumbered as Bethesda have removed the need to be logged in to Bethesda.net to play the latest re-releases of Doom and Doom II. The publisher is working on a way to reduce the visibility of the in-game prompts to login for online connectivity altogether, too.
Making the announcement on Twitter, Bethesda told players the sign-in is entirely optional from here on out and the disconnected notification has been removed. There was huge excitement when it was announced at QuakeCon 2019 that the classic Doom and Doom II (and Doom 3) were coming to PC and other modern systems for free. That elation swiftly turned to menace as players found they had to jump through Bethesda’s online account system to play the two-decades-plus old games.
Fans weren’t happy, and Bethesda responded, explaining the idea was to reward Slayers Club members for playing through the trilogy. Not a bad idea in premise, sure, but having sign-in be obligatory for all just served to irritate the player-base, many of whom just wanted some no frills old school FPS action.
The latest update, rolled out August 15, has taken away the necessity to be signed in to Bethesda.net, meaning the games can now be enjoyed without any online access whatsoever.
We’ve deployed a patch for the re-releases of DOOM and DOOM II, which now adds an option to skip the Bethesda net login requirement and removes the disconnect notification during gameplay. pic.twitter.com/KtlbRvmRyJ
— Bethesda (@bethesda) August 15, 2019
That said, there is still an in-built poke that asks players to login that Bethesda is still working on removing.
Sometimes being the Doomslayer just has to come with a sacrifice.