Is There Any Way to Make Money from DOOM? (Legally and not "Scammy"?)

[DoomyWoomy]

I just want to make a bit of money using DOOM.  I'm not intending to resell the WADS, IWADS, or source ports.  Is there any way to make some form of profit, legally and not scummy?  Any ideas appreciated.

[Faceman2000]

You could check if id is hiring.

[dasho]

If you have to rely on whatever money you are trying to make with Doom, I suggest a traditional job. If not, then just stream and make clickbaity ad-enabled YouTube videos and hope you luck out.

[Azafran]

Probably the only ways of making money from Doom is to have a Youtube or Twitch channel about the game. Or making your own game using GZdoom and selling it. Either way, it's much easier to find a job doing anything else.

[ZeroTheEro]

if you don't want to make games off the GZDoom engine, you start by becoming a streamer who plays the game and get your channel monetized.

You can make analysis Doom videos on Youtube and get your channel monetized.

[Lucius Wooding]

I agree with most others here. Stream, or make good content and try to get some Patreon goodness going. But honestly it's not worth your time if your goal is to make money. By the time you make a couple hundred bucks, honestly it'd probably be over a year's worth of hard work to build your community up. In the shorter term you might be able to make money off selling crafts such as cacodemon plushies or the like, but you'd have to get decent exposure and also bang them out in quantity to make any supplemental income. Also you'd need applicable skills and materials and I'm not sure about the licensing issues you might encounter.

 

At the end of the day, Doom is a hobby and also fairly niche. If you wanted to make money off gaming in general I'd say it's more doable, but not off of 30 year old titles. It was mainstream in the mid 90s and the recent titles have been successful, but far from the biggest titles on the market. There's no way millions of people are downloading WADs anymore.

 

You'd make significantly more as a greeter at Walmart or mowing Sandy Peterson's lawn than you would in weeks of work as a content creator. Even the folks that make it somewhat big don't generally get a full time income. So if you're poor definitely don't do anything other than getting a job.

[Murdoch]

No.

[Noiser]

AFAIK you can sell your game under the original Doom engine or on a few specific source ports as long you don't use any resource from the IWADs. Having Freedoom as a starting point is a safe bet. I think you also need to include the source code of your game, but you can read more about licensing here and here.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Noiser

[Dragonfly]

Found... what, exactly?

 

If you mean some magical way to make a quick buck off of doom? Pfft, no chance. 

[Shepardus]

Posting a MyHouse reaction video can get you some clicks, but it may be a little late to hop aboard that train.

[Shakariki Heisenberg]

hmm
1 make doom content on yt/twitch
2 compose,draw,or make mods for doom

[Gougaru]

There's no money in being a doom tuber. Don't do it

[Kabal9955]

And why would you want profit?

[FecalMystAche]

I think the better question is why would anyone want to give you money for “using” Doom in the first place? 

[Major Arlene]

3 hours ago, Kabal9955 said:

And why would you want profit?

Because goods and services cost money and inflation is a thing. Just a guess 🤷‍♀️

[kevansevans]

11 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

Because goods and services cost money and inflation is a thing. Just a guess 🤷‍♀️

 

I'm personally a big fan of eating.

[nolongeramnion]

Step 1: join community based around a game using a free and open source engine
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit

Edited June 22, 2023 by amnion

[Major Arlene]

To be less sarcastic and answer the question, I've commissioned folks to make art assets and weapons for my total conversion mod. So while it's not off the actual Doom mod itself, folks can still get money for contributing to one. I also stream my map making. But all a side hustle. Most of us have full time jobs.

[tatsu91]

On 6/21/2023 at 4:12 PM, Gougaru said:

There's no money in being a doom tuber. Don't do it

Doom is overall kinda niche in the grand scheme of things. And as some streamers found out if you don't play Doom the user base you build will go else where for that stream.

[nobleflame]

Why does everything have to be about profit and making money? 

 

This game is virtually free - obviously you pay the tiny price on Steam or whatever for the iwads - then you've got literally 30 years of fan made, high quality content to enjoy. 

Carmack released the source code to allow for a community of modders to grow - trying to actively make money from this concept seems morally wrong to me. 

 

Sure, there are a number of streamers out there, but arguably they make money because of their personalities, not because of DOOM. Even someone like Decino isn't making a consistent living off of DOOM. 

Edited June 24, 2023 by nobleflame

[TheSlipgateStudios]

To avoid the "get a job" thing, the only ways to earn money from Doom are:

1. Become a YouTuber and record Doom videos.

2. Become a Twitch streamer and play Doom wads.

3. Create a GZDoom based product and sell it on Steam.

 

All 3 are really difficult and time consuming, but good luck!

[Dragonfly]

Given how you need 1000 ad views (so exclude youtube premium and adblock users) to earn a measly $18 (apparently, though I doubt it's actually this high)... Youtube ain't gonna get you a sum of money worth living from particularly quickly.

And sure, you COULD hit a video early on that goes viral. That's cool... until you realise that you earned $0 from that though, because you need 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours worth of content _watched_ by people (or 10 million youtube shorts views, but fuck shorts) before you can even earn via Youtube. This is why so many youtubers start patreons super early; but again, that'll take a long time before it adds up to a sum worth your time.

 

As a former twitch streamer, I can tell you twitch ain't the way to go for money - if you're doing it for the cash, you're going to have a very, very bad time.

 

And while making a game in the Doom engine is a viable method, again, you'll be putting in hundreds / thousands of hours before any monetary value lands in your pockets - and your game's gonna have to be damn good to entice enough people to buy it where it becomes a viable income source. It's very, very probable you'd need to also commission several other people in the lead-up to the game's completion for things like art, code, music, etc. So again, like youtube and twitch streaming, you should only do this because you enjoy the task, not because you want money.

 

 

TL;DR:
Just get an actual job if you're financially troubled. If you could work doom stuff such as video creation or mod creation, you can do a office job, even a work-from-home role.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Dragonfly said:

Just get an actual job if you're financially troubled. If you could work doom stuff such as video creation or mod creation, you can do a office job, even a work-from-home role.

I so loathe the terms "actual job".

 

This is not against you, just to be clear, I just hate the fact that we the 99% are barred from making a living out of our passions. :(

Edited June 24, 2023 by Rudolph

[Dragonfly]

Aye, it's not great, but equally seems to be the most "correct" term in this case sadly.

[lokbustam257]

If you want to go "Doom-tuber", don't do it. Doom is a somewhat niche game, and if you managed to get some 5 dollars from just Doom content, then that's honestly really lucky.

 

Or you could be a really good MIDI musician and make people pay for your music but that's not really Doom related right?

[Gougaru]

3 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

Given how you need 1000 ad views (so exclude youtube premium and adblock users) to earn a measly $18 (apparently, though I doubt it's actually this high)... Youtube ain't gonna get you a sum of money worth living from particularly quickly.

And sure, you COULD hit a video early on that goes viral. That's cool... until you realise that you earned $0 from that though, because you need 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours worth of content _watched_ by people (or 10 million youtube shorts views, but fuck shorts) before you can even earn via Youtube. This is why so many youtubers start patreons super early; but again, that'll take a long time before it adds up to a sum worth your time.

 

As a former twitch streamer, I can tell you twitch ain't the way to go for money - if you're doing it for the cash, you're going to have a very, very bad time.

 

And while making a game in the Doom engine is a viable method, again, you'll be putting in hundreds / thousands of hours before any monetary value lands in your pockets - and your game's gonna have to be damn good to entice enough people to buy it where it becomes a viable income source. It's very, very probable you'd need to also commission several other people in the lead-up to the game's completion for things like art, code, music, etc. So again, like youtube and twitch streaming, you should only do this because you enjoy the task, not because you want money.

 

 

TL;DR:
Just get an actual job if you're financially troubled. If you could work doom stuff such as video creation or mod creation, you can do a office job, even a work-from-home role.

Very true. I've spoken to decino about it and basically it's a hobby that gives him some money but he's still got a real job.  Having a little extra change from a hobby is nice though 

[Major Arlene]

58 minutes ago, lokbustam257 said:

Or you could be a really good MIDI musician and make people pay for your music but that's not really Doom related right?

If it goes into a level, it's doom related. I wish people would stop getting the idea peripheral stuff like that doesn't count, it does. 

[Nikku4211]

On 2/21/2023 at 11:11 AM, Noiser said:

AFAIK you can sell your game under the original Doom engine or on a few specific source ports as long you don't use any resource from the IWADs. Having Freedoom as a starting point is a safe bet. I think you also need to include the source code of your game, but you can read more about licensing here and here.

 

5 hours ago, TheSlipgateStudios said:

To avoid the "get a job" thing, the only ways to earn money from Doom are:

1. Become a YouTuber and record Doom videos.

2. Become a Twitch streamer and play Doom wads.

3. Create a GZDoom based product and sell it on Steam.

 

All 3 are really difficult and time consuming, but good luck!

 

I'm with these people when it comes to making your own completely original IWAD based on a GPL Doom source port with completely original assets(or commercially-licensed ones).

 

It's pretty hard to make art for it, though. Especially textures. Depending on the look you want, you may end up with travel expenses just to take photos of various materials in order to avoid accidentally stealing someone else's photos.

 

On 6/22/2023 at 2:36 PM, Major Arlene said:

To be less sarcastic and answer the question, I've commissioned folks to make art assets and weapons for my total conversion mod. So while it's not off the actual Doom mod itself, folks can still get money for contributing to one. I also stream my map making. But all a side hustle. Most of us have full time jobs.

 

2 hours ago, lokbustam257 said:

If you want to go "Doom-tuber", don't do it. Doom is a somewhat niche game, and if you managed to get some 5 dollars from just Doom content, then that's honestly really lucky.

 

Or you could be a really good MIDI musician and make people pay for your music but that's not really Doom related right?

 

Yeah, you can also get commissioned by people in the Doom community to make visual art or music for Doom-related projects.

 

But this requires you to be really, really really good at visual art and/or music in the first place. This is not something you can make a quick buck from.

 

I have never been paid for music until January of this year(for 2 non-Doom related projects), a whole decade after I've started messing around with music trackers. I've drawn for more than a decade too, but to this date I've never been paid to make visual art for anyone.

 

So yeah, unfortunately, you'll have to look for a local job in your area unrelated to Doom. Even minimum wage multiplied by hours of work would pay better.

[Koko Ricky]

I would love to see small teams receiving *optional* tip jars while they work on big projects. But whenever I bring it up it seems to bother people here. 

[ＤΞＬＴΛ]

It's called patreon, look it up ;)