History Trivia / DRL

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: This nearly happened as Kornel was eventually sent a C&D by Zenimax in 2016. However, the only demands of the C&D were to remove the Doom trademark from the official title on his website (Kornel changing the official title to "DRL" was enough), DRL was otherwise allowed to remain online for downloading and with its content entirely unchanged. To help farther protect from farther C&D, Kornel also released the game's source code to the public in response (which he was planning to do anyway after Jupiter Hell's release as a thank you to the fans that supported him).

* ApprovalOfGod: John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall are on record as liking and supporting DRL, with Carmack even donating to Jupiter Hell's Kickstarter. And seeing how lightly it was let off in its C&D by Zenimax, it seems the then owners of the Doom license at least approved of the game's existence beyond ensuring it had no official connotations.

* ScrewedByTheLawyers: This nearly happened as Kornel was eventually sent a C&D by Zenimax, however the only demands of the C&D were to remove Doom from the official title on his website and ingame (Kornel changing the official title to "DRL" was enough), and for Kornel to release the game's source code to the public (which he was planning to do anyway after Jupiter Hell's release). With those demands met, DRL was allowed to remain online for downloading and with its content entirely unchanged, and with the source code released fans can more easily make their own modifications to the game.

* ApprovalOfGod: John Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall are on record as liking and supporting DRL, with Carmack even donating to Jupiter Hell's Kickstarter. And seeing how lightly it was let off in its C&D by Zenimax, it seems the current owners of the Doom license at least approve of the game's existence beyond ensuring it has no official connotations.

** Despite Jupiter Hell being touted as a spiritual successor, Version 0.9.9.7 was not intended to be the final version of the game, and the developers have stated the next version is in the works, while asking the forums for new things to add to the game during Jupiter Hell's development. However, with Kornel focusing his efforts on Jupiter Hell, it has been approaching a decade now since 0.9.9.7's release (with it releasing back in March 2013), and there's still no sight or word of the next version's release. That said, the game is chock full of content and quite polished as is, especially by the standards of a free fan game, and 0.9.9.7 does not have any significant bugs, so the game is in a reasonably complete state and won't suffer much if 0.9.9.8 never gets released.

* DevelopmentHell: Despite Jupiter Hell being touted as a spiritual successor, Version 0.9.9.7 was not intended to be the final version of the game, and the developers stated the next version is in the works, while asking the forums for new things to add to the game. However, with Kornel focusing his efforts on Jupiter Hell, it has been years since 0.9.9.7's release, and there's still no sight or word of the next version's release. The originally planned sequel to DRL teased in the game's ending SequelHook also seems like it'll never come to fruition, with it never making it past a conceptual stage, and with the gameplay ideas that Kornel had for it being implemented into Jupiter Hell. Kornel however has expressed a desire in creating an officially-licensed [=DoomRL=], so the dream for that true sequel may not be dead if that can become a reality.