Eurogamer.net caught up with id Software to talk about their new DOOM game, specifically asking about player concerns about multiplayer support in the first-person shooter reboot. They outline problems with rampant cheating and missing features, noting that some of the features players desire, such as the ability to create custom games, were present in the alpha test via undocumented command-line arguments, but are not available in the release version. Marty Stratton tells them that id is actively banning cheaters, though they note that one cheat vendor brags that not one user of their "product" has been caught in over a year. Here's more from Doom's executive producer and game director:

So it's time to put it to id. I asked Marty Stratton, Doom's executive producer and game director about what the future holds, and he was quick to put concerns at rest. "There's certainly no lack of commitment to Doom as a multiplayer game on our side," he says. "We are already working on private matches with custom game settings and expect to include that in a free update this summer."

Stratton acknowledges the missing features from the alpha, though he notes the fact that players weren't meant to access them. "There were a few developer tools discovered in the alpha that we knew we would need to improve before releasing to consumers and as mentioned, we are working on most of those updates now."

Later he expects bots to be added to the game. "Our bot system was actually written by one of our long-time senior programmers, John Dean, known online as 'Maleficus', who also wrote the Return to Castle Wolfenstein Fritz bot and the bots in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, so he does great work with bots. But John also just happens to be our internal lead programmer on SnapMap, so he's very busy."

The goal is to make bots available across both standard multiplayer and SnapMap, but it's likely that they'll be rolled out in phases, based on supporting where players want them most first, then improving them so they're flexible enough to work elsewhere. SnapMap will also be getting new features to develop it as a multiplayer environment.