Pre-OST it sounds like he kept interacting in hopes that they would pay him on time. For the OST, I suppose a combination of professional decency and the fact that his name was already attached to the release kept him going.

Mick Gordon's been a household name thanks to his legendary DOOM(2016) soundtrack, so I'm not surprised he was trying to keep it up. A musician can really live or die by their name recognition and that open letter did a helluva number to his reputation.

> the fact that his name was already attached

couldn't he have sued on the basis his name was attached to it?

Quite possibly, but that's a lot of money to put up against a company (zenimax) known for their legal team. It would also mean never working with id/zenimax/bethesda/possibly even Microsoft game studios in general again.

I'm not a lawyer, but this is a difficult road. You can't sue merely because somebody wrote mean or untrue things.

You have to prove that they're untrue and that they caused you harm.

In Mick's case, that harm would presumably take the form of lost income in form of work he didn't receive from other companies due to Marty's false claims. That's difficult (read: expensive) to prove in court.

Also, as others have noted, suing iD/Zenimax would also be some level of professional suicide. There are way more talented arts than there are paying artist gigs. That means game companies have hundreds or thousands of artists to choose from, and they consciously or subconsciously filter out the "risky" ones.

Zenimax is run by IP lawyers, Im sure they have everything on paper.

He had a lot at stake a lot of incentives to work something out with them. Not everyone can afford to just hire lawyers immediately and only talk through lawyers and burn bridges even further than they're already burned.

Having worked as a contractor ... sometimes, you hope things will get better or at least tolerable, or you go on because still need to be paid because stopping may mean you get nothing (bad contracts). It's a pretty common topic for contractors.

IDK "game studio doesn't allot enough time to make game, narcissistic manager works very hard to get anyone else to take the fall" isn't at all hard for me to believe.

This dude has screenshots, file metadata, and a contract to back him up. That contract says 12 songs. Sounds like that's all there is to it.

Why is it so hard to believe that a giant software project was mismanaged? Not like anyone has ever seen that before.

Perhaps, but he has provided actual evidence that conflicts with Marty's public open letter (late date of contract finalization; work on soundtrack excluding him far prior to being near the deadline).

I think "managers want to cover up bad management and blame someone else" is a perfectly logical reason for Id Software to act this way.

That's why you go to reddit and read the open letter and then you decide which sounds more plausible.

Half of it is that, and half of it is that it is standard procedure for contract artists to not be caught standing in a court of law. Nobody wants to hire people who sue.

> Nobody wants to hire people who sue

so why bother ever paying one?

Because that gives the studio the reputation of being a deadbeat. All the incentives point towards "keep disputes private and resolve them out of court if possible".

Obviously, if the studios never pay, then nobody agrees to work for them, and the whole system of creative production just collapses.

Related note: iD is going to have a harder time hiring composers now that this is public.

I think it is more of a lobster in the pot situation. Every contractor is used to watching as the business side of an effort fucks everything up and doing their best to deliver despite the best efforts of managers and lawyers everywhere. SOWs not matching the original description? Asking to start work before the ink dries? Actually we dont want to pay for that thing we said we would pay for after all? No b2b transaction goes without at least one of those. In consulting lingo we call it "pricing in some slack" and its a lesson every rookie learns on their first ever contract 100% of the time.

He just didn't notice when it became irredeemable because hey, he's been working with DOOM for decades at this point and it's always worked out.

Reading this account, written from a position of hindsight, absolutely.

But when you're in the thick of it, involved with a project you really want to succeed, and which has an impact on your reputation, it is so, so easy to convince yourself that it's all a misunderstanding and you just need to keep trying. Particularly if you are a good-hearted person yourself. I've certainly suffered from this (and very few people who know me would agree that i need to be more of an arsehole!).