Last year, Nightdive Studios came out swinging with a surprise release of enhanced versions of Doom and Doom II, making the classics significantly more feature-packed and playable on modern hardware, including the Steam Deck. Later, Valve gave the Doom bundle a well-deserved Steam Deck badge because of how well it ran on the handheld. However, the good luck didn't last long, as one of the latest updates for the bundle ended up breaking it on the Steam Deck.

As part of ‘update 2’, the Doom bundle now has support for mods during online play. According to the release notes, game hosts can activate mods before entering the multiplayer menu, while other players need to subscribe to the mod before joining a match. Additionally, mods must be made using “Vanilla DOOM, DeHackEd, MBF21, or BOOM” to be compatible. There were also some general improvements, which you can check out in the full patch notes below, but unfortunately, the update initially broke compatibility with the Steam Deck. Thankfully, a fix has already been released, and the issue appears to be resolved.

Update 2 adds Multiplayer Mod support for DOOM + DOOM II and game improvements/fixes!

Multiplayer Mods

• Hosts need to activate the mod before entering the multiplayer menu 
• Players will need to subscribe to the same mod before joining a match 
• We recommend using room codes to join modified matches 
• Mods must be authored with Vanilla DOOM, DeHackEd, MBF21 or BOOM to be compatible

General

• Resolved an issue in which some red doors did not display as red on the automap
• Fixed multiple crashes reported by the community when loading game saves
• Improved text line wrapping legibility for mod descriptions in Asian languages
• Removed map prefix from intermission screen to be consistent with original game behavior

Multiplayer

• Added spectator mode when players are dead and waiting to respawn in co-op mission play (it can also be initiated manually from the scoreboard button)
• Fixed an issue in which disabling the crosshair would also turn off player name and co-op respawn text display
• There are now more than 4 player colors available in game and on scoreboards
• Resolved an issue in which players would lose weapons when respawning in co-op using modern rules
• Fixed an issue in which the cross-platform friends menu could not be properly backed out of when no friends were available
• Further optimized multiplayer networking code
• Addressed crosshair centering issue in certain splitscreen configurations
• Intermission animations now run at the correct speed in splitscreen mode

Mods

• The mod downloader can now process more than the first 100 subscribed mods

For Mod Creators on PC

• Mod screenshots with spaces and other non-alphanumeric characters in their file names will now upload correctly in most cases

Mod Compatibility Updates

• MBF21 instant kill sectors were incorrectly killing non-enemy actors
• MBF21 instant kill sectors will fire immediately when a monster enters them, instead of waiting
• BOOM and MBF21 effects that kill monsters will deal 1 million damage instead of 10000 damage in order to fix mods that used monsters with high HP values to create an invulnerable enemy
• BOOM generic floor actions were not selecting the right neighbor when finding which sector ceiling or floor height they needed to move to
• Players can hurt and shoot projectiles at their own voodoo dolls (aka player model / clone), to be consistent with the original game
• ENTERPIC in UMAPINFO is correctly shown for the map you are entering instead of the map you just left
• DeHackEd strings for BOOM keys can now be replaced through DEH patches
• BOOM line action 242 (Deep water) will now transfer ceiling and floor lighting
• Now avoids crashing for invalid sized demos when playing the demoloop
• Maps using DMAPINFO will print the map name on automap, level select, and savegames
• Changing DeHackEd ammo type will now actually change the ammo type
• Fixed Berzerk Factor not calculating correctly in the A_WeaponMeleeAttack MBF21 codepointer
• Fixed BTSX Episode 1 and Episode 2 demo playback not rendering fullscreen
• Mods that override DOOM (1993) Episodes 1-3 will use the correct intermission screen
• MBF21 A_Lower codepoint now checks for an invalid weapon before changing weapons if out of ammo

Steam Release Notes

Doom and Doom II are no longer broken on Steam Deck

Before the developers pushed a hotfix to ensure Steam Deck players could play without needing to change anything, a temporary workaround was introduced – a beta version of the game that rolled back the update, allowing Steam Deck users to keep playing. However, it wasn't long before a more permanent fix was released, which, props to the developers, was a pretty quick turnaround. Now, you shouldn't run into this issue anymore.

Edit: For Steam Deck users a hotfix has been applied, so make sure you have the latest version installed before launching and thank you for the quick feedback and providing crashlogs!

Steam Release Notes

About the Author

Hassam Nasir

Hassam boasts over seven years of professional experience as a dedicated PC hardware reviewer and writer.