Summary
- UZDoom forks GZDoom after dev-team drama; it’s now the preferred active fork.
- UZDoom 5.0 adds bone-based IQM model support, better controllers with haptics, multiplayer, and ZScript debug.
- After a year of reworks, v5.0 ships now — check out the GitHub repo and grab the v5.0 build today.
The cool part about open-source software is that, if you really don’t like where it’s headed, you can always fork it and make your own. That’s exactly what happened late last year when the development team for the popular Doom modernising engine, GZDoom, imploded due to some drama. But fret not, for the team forked the code and made UZDoom, which seems to be the version people should use going forward.
UZDoom reaches v5 after recovering from some big drama
If you can’t beat ’em, fork ’em
As spotted by GamingOnLinux, UZDoom has just hit version 5.0. You can check out all the tweaks as listed on the changelog, but the devs added this handy summary that nicely explains the most important parts:
After an over year-long development cycle and a truckload of internal reworks, UZDoom 5.0 has finally arrived! Starring bone manipulations for IQM models, significantly improved controller support (including haptic feedback!), the overhauled multiplayer, ZScript debug support, and much more, we knew this version would need a full upgrade. We appreciate everyone being patient since we know it took a while, but we promise it was worth the wait.
If you’re wondering what happened with the drama, the GZDoom dev team reportedly had some issues with management back in October 2025. They were reportedly pushing unfinished builds, using LLMs to code features, and messing up the repo. The owner said people could fork it if they weren’t happy, and that’s exactly what they did. Thus, UZDoom was born, and it seems to be the version that people will be mostly working on from now on.
If you’d like to learn more, check out the UZDoom GitHub repo and download the v5.0 build available right now.
