‘Huge’ Number Of People Cancelling DOOM Pre-Orders Over ‘Botched Physical Release’

Back at the end of last week, we reported how DOOM: The Dark Ages’ physical version seemingly had a tiny amount of content on the disc, and apparently that’s leading to a “huge” number of people cancelling their boxed pre-orders.

This comes courtesy of the game preservation-focused Twitter account “Does it play?”, and plenty of disappointed DOOM fans have responded to confirm they’ve been cancelling their physical versions since the news dropped.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, DOOM: The Dark Ages has just a few MB of data on the disc, meaning that the full game needs to be downloaded in order to play it. Ultimately, it renders the disc pretty useless overall.

We definitely understand the frustration around this, but also question whether it’s going to lead to a different scenario in the future. How many people resemble a “huge” amount at this point? If it’s enough, then Microsoft may sit up and take notice, but in all likelihood it’s nothing compared to the digital demand across all platforms.

Hopefully we’re wrong! It’d be great to see the likes of Gears of War: Reloaded, Fable, The Outer Worlds 2 and many other games shipping proper versions on disc (if Baldur’s Gate 3 did it, so can any game), and maybe… just maybe… people expressing their displeasure over this decision will make a difference for future Xbox first-party releases.