This news post leaves me in a quandary, readers, because I will need to write a swear word for the sake of full journalistic transparency, but Google’s algorithms tend to frown on sweary articles. On the other hand, Google’s algorithms don’t like it when you spend whole intros handwringing about Google’s algorithms, either, so let’s stop, er, faffing around and speak of Doom. Id Software parent company Zenimax recently trademarked “IDKFA”, a string of letters that will be of deep significance to original Doom players, and which may therefore be evidence of an impending announcement.
IDKFA is – cover your ears, Google! – short for I Don’t Know Fuck All. It’s an ancient cheatcode that unlocks all the game’s weapons and grants you megaarmour. It being somewhat of a retro insider term bodes well, I guess, for anybody fearful that their next helping of id Software’s demon-melching series will be some kind of ultra-modernised F2P affair or similar.
Belated update: …or possibly IDKFA stands for “ID Keys Firearms Armor”, as has been plausibly argued in the comments on this article, with reference to other Doom cheatcodes that start with “ID-“. I think the commenters are probably in the right of it. See, this is the kind of flagrant idiocy that wouldn’t have happened if Alice0 were still here. I swore at Google for nothing! Ah, what a load of shit.
Original article resumes: Zenimax’s trademark covers “downloadable computer game software via a global computer network and wireless devices” and “downloadable computer game software for personal computers and home video game consoles”. Seems pretty cut-and-dried, though again in the interests of full journalistic transparency, I should add that it also covers “scientific, nautical, surveying, electric, photographic, cinematographic, optical, weighing, measuring, signalling, checking (supervision), life-saving and teaching apparatus and instruments”. So this could be a new Doom game, or it could be some kind of Doom diving bell. They really are putting Doom on everything these days.
“Doom: Year Zero” was among the games mentioned in a Microsoft presentation from July 2020 that leaked online last year as part of Microsoft’s legal tussle with the US Federal Trade Commission over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Eurogamer have heard that a Doom announcement is forthcoming at this year’s Summer Games Fest in June.
In other news, Zenimax parent Microsoft recently closed Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, a development that probably has every other Microsoft-owned developer of games that aren’t Call Of Duty sweating in their boots. Id seem relatively secure against wider corporate “optimisation” or “repositioning”, given their outsized reputation and the success of the last couple of Doom reboots – Doom Eternal made half a billion dollars in its opening nine months. But this being Microsoft in 2024, who knows?