Doom Timeline

Doom has never really had a single, clean history. The original games led into expansions, sequels, ports, canceled projects, reboots, and an enormous community scene that developed alongside the commercial series. Putting those events in order makes some of the connections between the different eras much easier to see.

The Formative Years: 1990–1992

The roots of Doom reach back to late 1990 and early 1991. id Software was officially formed on February 1, 1991, and quickly established itself with Wolfenstein 3D, released on May 5, 1992. Within months, the studio pivoted toward something far more ambitious. The making of Doom formally began on September 18, 1992—the same date that Spear of Destiny was released. That overlap underscores how rapidly id moved from one project to the next during this era.

1993: Birth of a Genre

Throughout 1993, multiple alpha builds circulated privately. Doom 0.2 was released on February 4; subsequent builds followed on February 28, April 2, and May 22. An October press-release beta preceded the landmark public release: Doom 0.99 (version 1.0) shareware dropped on December 10, 1993, followed by the first registered version on December 16. The game detonated across university networks and BBSes almost immediately, making the final weeks of 1993 one of the most consequential moments in PC gaming history.

1994–1996: Expansion and Competition

The idgames archive, which would become the de-facto repository for community WADs, was founded in March 1994 by Barry Bloom at ocf.unt.edu. It migrated several times before settling at Walnut Creek CD-ROM in December of that year. Doom’s first console ports arrived in November on the Sega 32X and Atari Jaguar.

1995 brought The Ultimate Doom (mastered April 17, released June) and the first Doom novel was published in August 1995. The competition stiffened in 1996: Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, and Strife all shipped, while id released Final Doom on June 27. John Romero was fired from id Software on August 6, 1996. That autumn, Chex Quest—a family-friendly Doom-engine mod bundled inside cereal boxes—arrived on October 31, an oddity that has since earned devoted preservation efforts.

1997: Doom 64, the Doom Source Code, and the GPL Era

Doom 64 launched on April 4, 1997 (with an initial release on March 31), a Nintendo 64-exclusive title that diverged substantially from the PC games in art and level design. Later that year, on December 23, 1997, id Software released the Doom source code publicly. This single event catalyzed the entire source-port ecosystem: Chocolate Doom, Crispy Doom, PrBoom+, DSDA-Doom, GZDoom, and dozens of other ports all trace their legal basis to that release. The license was later upgraded: on October 3, 1999, John Carmack re-released the source under the GNU General Public License (GPL), following persuasion by community member Andrew “Linguica” Stine.

1998–2003: Community Infrastructure and Doom 3 Development

The Doom community formalized much of its infrastructure in 1998. Doomworld, the major Doom news and community site, was founded on March 13, 1998, and the Doom Wad Station launched that December. On June 1, 2000, John Carmack mentioned in his.plan file that id had begun a new Doom project. The year 2003 saw Masters of Doom by David Kushner published on May 6, offering the definitive narrative history of id Software’s founding years.

2004–2007: Doom 3 and the Steam Era

Doom 3 launched in North America on August 3, 2004, with Japan and Europe following shortly after. Set aboard a UAC Mars research base in the mid-22nd century, the game’s fiction is elaborated in detail on the Doom Wiki’s dedicated Doom 3 timeline, which traces events from prehistory through 2147. The Doom 3 expansion Resurrection of Evil followed in April 2005. The Doom Wiki itself was founded on January 5, 2005, becoming the canonical reference for all things Doom. On August 3, 2007, every Doom game arrived on Steam simultaneously, marking a new era of digital distribution for the franchise.

2009–2012: ZeniMax, BFG Edition, and Doom 4 Development

A pivotal corporate event occurred on June 24, 2009, when id Software was acquired by ZeniMax Media, placing Doom under the same corporate umbrella as Bethesda Softworks. The Doom Wiki itself underwent a structural change: it forked from Wikia Inc. in February 2011 and relaunched at its current home, doomwiki.org, on September 5, 2011. The Doom 3 source code was released on November 22, 2011. In October 2012, Doom 3: BFG Edition—a remaster bundling enhanced Doom 3, its expansion, and updated versions of the original games—hit US markets.

2013–2015: The Long Road to Revival

The years following the BFG Edition were defined by false starts. In April 2013, reports surfaced confirming that the long-gestating Doom 4 had not merely stalled but been restarted from scratch. That instability soon reached the top of the studio: Todd Hollenshead announced his resignation as id Software’s president that June, and John Carmack himself departed in November, severing the last direct link between the company and its founding generation. The reboot finally found its footing in 2015. Bethesda unveiled the new Doom publicly at its first-ever E3 press conference on June 14.

2016–2017: Doom Returns

Doom (2016) shipped worldwide for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 13, 2016, reviving the franchise with a design philosophy built around speed and aggression rather than the survival-horror pacing of Doom 3. The game reached the Nintendo Switch in November 2017, while a standalone VR spinoff, Doom VFR, closed out the year that December.

2018–2020: Eternal

id Software revealed Doom Eternal at Bethesda’s BE3 showcase on June 10, 2018, following it with a gameplay-focused unveiling at that year’s QuakeCon. After a delay from its original November 2019 target, Doom Eternal launched worldwide on March 20, 2020, alongside a remastered re-release of Doom 64 that finally brought the Nintendo 64 exclusive to modern platforms. The first single-player expansion, The Ancient Gods, Part One, followed that October.

2021–2023: Consolidation Under Microsoft

Microsoft’s September 2020 agreement to acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion closed on March 9, 2021, folding id Software and the Doom franchise into the Xbox family; the classic titles and Doom Eternal landed on Xbox Game Pass within days. The Ancient Gods, Part Two arrived that March as Eternal’s second and final expansion. Microsoft’s reach extended further in October 2023 with the completed acquisition of Activision, bringing Raven Software—Doom’s co-developer on Heretic and Hexen decades earlier—under the same corporate roof.

2024–2025: Legacy Re-releases and The Dark Ages

Doom: The Dark Ages was officially revealed at the Xbox Summer Games Showcase on June 9, 2024. That August, id Software partnered with Nightdive Studios and MachineGames to release Doom + Doom II, a modernized re-release of the two classic games bundled with a new two-episode mod, Legacy of Rust, alongside updated Doom Eternal modding tools. The Dark Ages itself launched on May 15, 2025.

2026: Ongoing Updates

The franchise’s momentum has continued into 2026. Doom Eternal reached GOG.com that April with full offline support, freeing it from a mandatory Bethesda.net login. The Dark Ages received its own expansion, Revelations, announced on June 7 and released on July 7. On August 6, a physical Doom Collection cartridge for the Evercade handheld was announced at QuakeCon.

Community Timelines: Mods and Source Ports

The primary release timeline is complemented by three parallel community timelines maintained on the Doom Wiki: the timeline of mod releases, the timeline of source port releases, and the timeline of utility releases.

The timeline of mod releases documents PWADs, megawads, and total conversions from the very first public third-party PWAD—the Origwad, released March 7, 1994—through the present day. The timeline of source port releases traces the evolution of Doom’s open-source descendants, from early ports like DOSDoom and Boom through the sophisticated modern releases maintained today. The timeline of utility releases catalogs the editors, node builders, and other tools built to support the modding scene. Together, these four timelines provide a complete picture of the Doom ecosystem across more than three decades of activity.

The Doom 3 In-Universe Timeline

Beyond real-world release history, the Doom 3 fiction has its own elaborate internal chronology. The Union Aerospace Corporation was founded in 2015 by Thomas Kelliher. Mars construction began in earnest in 2095, with the Alpha Labs becoming fully operational on July 17, 2130. Excavations in 2104 uncovered the Martian hero’s burial chamber and the Soul Cube at a dig site that would later be developed into Site 3. The demonic invasion depicted in Doom 3 occurs in the mid-2140s, when teleportation experiments under research director Malcolm Betruger inadvertently re-open gateways to Hell. The in-universe timeline extends to at least 2147, placing the Doom 3 narrative firmly in a speculative science-fiction frame distinct from the abstracted military-horror setting of the classic games.

The Franchise Today

Looking at the release history as a whole, the franchise breaks into roughly four phases: the classic series spanning 1992–1997, the Doom 3 period, a canceled Doom 4 era from 2008–2013, and the revival series beginning in 2013 with the reboot that became Doom (2016). Each era represents a distinct design philosophy, technological leap, and relationship between id Software and the wider publishing industry. The Doom Wiki timeline article continues to be updated as new events occur, making it a living document of one of gaming’s longest-running franchises.