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PayPalDrama in open source land, as a major conflict has caused many developers to leave GZDoom behind to fork it into UZDoom. It seems like going forward most people will end up using UZDoom.
What actually happened? In the official Discord server that covers ZDoom and related projects, an announcement was put up by a moderator noting "Due to a conflict between GZDoom's lead developer/maintainer Graf Zahl, a lot of other developers decided to leave GZDoom and work on a new fork of the engine now known as UZDoom".
They continued to note that "UZDoom is a direct continuation of GZDoom and will inherit all of its features (and add more eventually)" but the point is that it will have "a more stable development structure with healthy collaboration and less power given to individual 'project leads'".
Pictured - Doom Infinite
Looking a bit further into it, a bug report on the GZDoom GitHub page titled "Project management" was opened that gave a little more detail noting issues with the lead of GZDoom pushing untested code, using an LLM to write code and hiding "not insignificant changes in commits, which has people worried that you'll randomly rip out features that they rely on". In reply, the project lead simply said "Feel free to fork the project under a" (yes, that really all they said).
A later comment before the bug report was locked points out the specific change in GZDoom that was made with ChatGPT.
Really a shame when such incredible projects go through issues like this. Hopefully the ZDoom / UZDoom will come out healthier and stronger from this with a more community orientated approach to the code.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Feel free to fork the project under a
Imagine being so mad you can't even tell them to fork it correctly.
Really disappointing reading this, gzdoom deserved better
Last edited by Leahi84 on 15 Oct 2025 at 12:34 pm UTC
Couldn't even be bothered to give a proper reply, shows how much he cares I suppose.
For me I'm just shocked but suppose I never knew the lead of this engine was such a massive knob-handle
R Daneel Olivaw a day ago
The regular zdoom page still tells people to go download gzdoom, but I'm hopeful over time they'll change that recommendation or at least add uzdoom.
walther von stolzing a day ago
Of course, I initially thought it was a hardware defect, and I still do. On the other hand, I have used the Deck frequently with other games since then and have not experienced any further issues. Has anyone experienced this issue with Selanco?
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ [External Link]
I wrote a piece on my blog about the (lack of) ethics in AI, but this piece about coding standards stands out in the context of Graf espousing AI code generation. Maybe it'll improve... but right now, all it does is slow you down.
[External Link]
That was early 2025. By now, ai should have improved the slowdown to 25%.
This whole AI conundrum is not going to end well for humanity. emoji
Yep. That's why I'm hoping that the bubble bursts sooner than later. Just the damage to the planet alone will contribute to our demise.
Hopefully retail projects like selaco will move over to this new fork
Selaco is already using their own fork, so it doesn't really affect them
And who will be the first to fully support "Heretic: Faith Renewed" and "Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur"?
Important questions...
What does the "U" stand for
It stands for 'Ultimate', as in 'Ultimate ZDoom'.
I checked and UZDoom doesn't have a package on the AUR. I'll try building one but I have no experience with makepkg or anything so I have nfi how it'll go.
[joke]
Anyone have a list of the worst ones? Asking for a friend...
[/joke]
I'm waiting for DrMcCoy to comment on this and see what he thinks. ^^
I might be a bit devilish but it's always a pleasure to read that sort of "things". But sure it's not a happy end for GZDoom, at least it shows that most developers don't like that shit and move on to do things nicely.
silverhikari a day ago
I checked and UZDoom doesn't have a package on the AUR. I'll try building one but I have no experience with makepkg or anything so I have nfi how it'll go.
probly would be easier to start with the gzdoom pkgbuild and then replace with the uzdoom specific parts.
if you have any issue i would be glad to help as i have packed a few programs.
Graf has a history of being a major dick, and hyper controlling.Well, not in the github issue mentioned in the article. If I was a major dick and a control freak, I would delete everyone's comments and ban them immediately and permanently.
Maybe you are right, and the guy's dismissive reply was the last thing that made everyone lose it, but come on.
In my opinion, the internet nowadays is a highly hysterical environment, where people argue, fight, cancel, burn bridges between each other over nothingburgers.
To me it starts to look like a conspiracy where something or someone ruins everything by any means, so we can't have nice things. Crazy, I know.
The internet has became a place that I am mostly avoiding.
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