The developers at id Software love putting Easter eggs into their games. In Doom Eternal alone, there's a bookshelf with references to Fallout, Quake, Half-Life, Duke Nukem, and so many more. The saturation of references in Doom games makes it all the more surprising that id confirmed in its latest patch that it had removed one. And it was a strikingly popular Easter egg, at that.
The Easter egg in question is a nod to Japanese Virtual YouTuber Inugami Korone. The Hololive vtuber played through Doom in 2016 and her fans created the meme "DOOG" to celebrate it. Korone's digital avatar is a dog, after all. To celebrate her playthrough, and perhaps id's love of vtubers in general, the studio added a "DOOG ETERNAL" Easter egg in Doom Eternal. Players just needed to activate the chainsaw four times from Doom Eternal's rune selection screen and a Doog Eternal logo would be shown.
What's odd isn't the addition of the Doog Eternal Easter egg, though. It's that id has decided to remove the Easter egg. In id's 3.1 patch notes, published on October 23, id announced that "The DOOG easter egg has been removed, but will live in infamy." id goes on to explain that it was surprised how quickly the Doom community was able to find the Easter egg. The implication being that it was the discovery of the DOOG Easter egg that led to id removing it.
Without any reasoning for the Easter egg's removal, fans have been left speculating. Obviously, there's no expectation that id removes an Easter egg once found. This is unprecedented. So fans believe there must be a reason for the removal. The most common sentiment being that there is or could be a legal issue that arises due to the Easter egg. This seems silly, but may not be entirely unfounded. Doog is, after all, a creation of Korone's fans. While there's no trademark or anything, it'd be understandable for id or Bethesda to worry.
The other possibility is that the Doog Eternal Easter egg was slipped into Doom Eternal without going through proper verification. Perhaps the discovery of the Doog Easter egg was a surprise to some within id and Bethesda as well, so it's being removed as a result.
Regardless of the reasons for its removal, it's still something special that can be shared by fans of both Hololive and Doom. The Easter egg doesn't have to remain in the game to be celebrated. And it's not like anything truly disappears on the internet these days.
Doom Eternal is available now on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S support planned for the future.