Development of Doom
"Doom"s original release date was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop on the game, with several employees sleeping at the office; programmer Dave Taylor claimed that working on the game gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as hype for the game had been building online. At midnight on December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours, the development team at id uploaded the first episode of the game to the internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to the first network that they planned to upload the game to—the University of Wisconsin–Parkside FTP network—that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download the game at once, crashing the university's network. Within hours, other university networks were banning "Doom" multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems.
Venus Doom
"Venus Doom" was released on 14 September 2007, and charted in thirteen countries, including at number two in Finland, number three in Germany, number five in Switzerland, and number nine in Austria. The album also gave HIM their highest US chart position to date at number twelve. "Venus Doom" was eventually certified gold in Finland, and was also nominated for the "Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package", as well as "Rock Album of the Year" at the 2007 Emma Awards. HIM began the North American leg of the supporting tour for "Venus Doom" on 18 October 2007 in Sayreville, New Jersey, with Bleeding Through serving as support. The band's shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on 14 and 15 November 2007 were also filmed and recorded, and later released as the live album "Digital Versatile Doom" on 29 April 2008. In December 2007 HIM toured across the UK, before starting a European tour in early 2008.