Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch built a DOOM captcha that requires you to finish off three bad guys in Nightmare mode to prove that you’re human. According to Hackaday, the DOOM captcha is built as a WebAssembly app, which is ideal for graphics rendering, video processing, and gaming right on your browser.
However, since this is just an app on a browser and you likely want to retain the use of your mouse for switching windows, you’re limited to using the arrow keys for movement and the spacebar for firing your weapon (just like one of our editors had to back in the 1990s). Jumping around to dodge and using your cursor to look around is, unfortunately, not allowed. You could use cheats like IDKFA (all keys, weapons, ammo and 200% armor) and IDDQD (God mode), though, to increase the fun and your chance of survival.
By default, the captcha gives you 50 ammo, 0% armor, and 100% health to finish the required deed, which can be quite difficult. One technique we’ve discovered to prove your humanity is to hang back and let the enemy come to you. Once you’ve got them in sight, blast away with your weapon, which is quite effective even at a distance.
The DOOM captcha will give you some nostalgic fun while proving that you’re a real person. However, it might also end up frustrating for non-gamers, especially as you need some level of hand-eye coordination to get the required kills to get past the captcha. On the other hand, this might also serve as a good gatekeeper, especially if you don’t want non-DOOM gamers to visit your page.
There is little to no chance that you’ll get hooked on the DOOM captcha, as it will automatically end once you get the required three kills. It’s also unfortunate that it only uses one level, so you’re just repeating the captcha every time you enter a page that uses it. It probably would’ve been better if Rauch used Stable Diffusion to build a unique level every time the DOOM captcha loads, but then you might get distracted enough and get stuck playing the captcha instead of doing real work.
On the other hand, we’re also unsure if this would be an effective actual tool for weeding out bots and proving your humanity. After all, we’ve seen some researchers train AI bots to play DOOM and those could even outperform the average FPS player. Nevertheless, this might be more than enough to stop a crawler from accessing your page, especially as it might not know how to respond when asked to “kill at least 3 monsters.”
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Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer
Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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10 CommentsComment from the forums
ottonis LOL this was funny! But what it that DOOM captcha is going to use action data to train an AI?
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H4unter The captcha doesn't tell you that you can use ALT + Left/Right arrow keys to strafe.
Captcha becomes much easier once you realize you can strafe.
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jg.millirem To get access to some resource, you’re required to simulate killing with a gun. I hate juvenile gaming culture.
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drtweak Question, does it stop after 3? Will it reset if i reload the page? I feel the same about this as i do playable ads on games...I play them till i can't play them anymore forgettinga bout the actual purpose of why i was even being shown them haha
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H4unter Yes, the captcha ends after 3 kills by the player. Although, many more hostile NPCs can be killed by other NPCs trying to shoot through them at the player.
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evdjj3j drtweak said:
Question, does it stop after 3? Will it reset if i reload the page? I feel the same about this as i do playable ads on games...I play them till i can't play them anymore forgettinga bout the actual purpose of why i was even being shown them hahaRead the article.
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Crescent Fresh jg.millirem said:
To get access to some resource, you’re required to simulate killing with a gun. I hate juvenile gaming culture.Congratulations, you're the first person in a quarter of a century to somehow get offended by Doom. Next up, bare ankles in public? These newfangled "dice" that'll no doubt demonically possess the poor fools who dare to roll them?
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bradhouser I know a lot of humans who would fail to pass this test, I doubt this will catch on in the wild. OK if you want to join some Grand Poobah Wizard forums or some other game related website. I won't be happy if I must be good at shooting demons to prove I am human.
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NatalieEGH Considering I basically play strategy games (outside of DDO which I finally stopped playing when they went past level 30), I would probably fail the Captha miserably.
I think I have played only a few games that required hand-eye coordination, "Pong", "Pacman games (counting all as just 1)" "Space Rogue", "Space Invaders", "Lemmings", "Berserk", "Donkey Kong", and some 4 person game where we played around a console trying to avoid "Death". I am horrible at hand-eye coordination games. I finally stopped playing because of frustration and spending hours with little or no improvement. You will note, all the games predate 1990 except Lemmings which came out in the early to mid 1990s. I never even considered attempting "Doom" because of the difficulty associates described.
I certainly hope no business that wants my business uses this Captha. I hope my creditors do use this Captha as I might be able to get a Americans with Disability Act (ADA) exemption from those $5 to $10 fees for the businesses to post payments on my cards by telephone. If they insist upon the fees there might even grounds for class action litigation possibly resulting in punitive damages partially or completely erasing the debt.
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USAFRet While I think this is mostly just a proof of concept, any business or site that employs this will not get my $$$.
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