Day of Defeat (DoD) is a team-based multiplayer World War II first-person shooter video game of the European Theatre of World War II. Second only to Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat was one of the most popular Half-Life modifications in the early 2000’s. While Day of Defeat saw most of it’s growth in player-base with casual players, the competitive esports community has played DoD in leagues continuously since 2001, largely without any support from outside organizations and sponsors.

While Day of Defeat:Source was released in 2004, DoD 1.3 remained much more popular as a competitive esport, where it is still played actively in leagues in 2014.

Competitive Format

The standard league format is 6v6 with 20 minutes halves, with teams switching between axis and allies at the half-way point. Points are awarded to teams for capturing and holding checkpoints throughout the map, and bonus points for capturing all of the flags on the map (“capping-out”), which then resets all flags and returns all of the players to their respective spawns. At the conclusion of both halves, the team with the most total points combined, wins.

In contrast to more popular competitive esports titles like Counter-Strike, DoD players spawn continuously on a timer, as opposed to a round based format. This promotes very exciting and dynamic gameplay, where the strategies and play styles can change quickly in response to the team losing or gaining control of a particular area of the map.

Beta 1.3b


The first version of DoD to reach widespread popularity, and the rise of the Stronger Than All league, which saw it’s first several seasons dominated by the Quake clan, Sorry Ass Clan. The first dominant American team emerged in 101st, who developed a strong rivalry with SAC| before they ultimately gave up the game, leaving 101st to dominate the rest of the North American scene in the early days of DoD. 1.3b DoD was very different from the game DoD is today. The game was played in an 8v8 player format on maps much larger than those played after DoD’s retail release. The weapons were incredibly accurate with very little recoil, and player movement was much faster. Gunfights were very dynamic, with the victor often being the player best able to maintain their aim a midst the chaos of jumping, sprinting, prone-diving, and bandaging. Teams like 101st did much of the leg work in developing the early meta game, and transitioning the community from casual Quake style play to more strategic and tactical based esports friendly play styles.

Other popular teams included RBC, KWI, 85th, 45thID, and QoR (Jun 2001 – Aug 2002) .

Beta 3.1


DoD skyrocketed in popularity after the release of DoD Beta 3.1 (August 8th, 2002). This included the games expansion into the growing Cyberathlete Amateur League, and upstart leagues such as the United Gaming Syndicate, Iron Glove League, and The Proving Grounds. This era was dominated by teams such as NUDE, Vigilante Elite, Highball, and Negative Tension, and players such as regis, Strifetoe, Plex, and Hannibal. While not the most popular period in DoD’s history, the 3.1b era is often regarded as DoD’s “glory days” by many early adopting beta players, as the community saw a huge influx of gamers from outside of the original community after it’s retail release in 2003.

Retail DoD

Day of Defeat was released as a standalone retail title on May 1, 2003. This brought many gameplay changes, such as eliminating jump shooting and bleeding/bandaging, and tweaks to player movement and weapon mechanics. The majority of the competitive community found the retail version of DoD unsatisfactory, as it lost many of it’s unique elements that distinguished it so much from other competitive FPS games like Counter-Strike. The community experienced it’s first die-off in player base, as much of the first generation of competitive players moved onto other games, or simply stopped playing altogether.

Fragmart 2003


Fresh off the heals of the incredibly disappointing release of Retail, DoD had it’s first sponsored esports LAN tournament hosted at Fragmart 2003 in Vancouver, BC (August 2003). About 8 teams attended the event, where mTs emerged victorious over challengers CHAR (sponsored by hb’s configs) and others. While Fragmart 2003 was a landmark event, and in the end, a saving grace for the floundering competitive community, the event is most remembered for the antics of one Flak88|squad_leader, which were caught on camera and released by Darkrabbi.

CPL 2004


Day of Defeat finally broke into the CPL lineup at their Winter 2004 event, where Highball emerged victories over runners-up Check-Six. The success of the CPL event catapulted Day of Defeat to a much larger player base, and the continued growth and development of the community led to future esports events for DoD from 2004 – 2006.

Retail 1.3, CPL and WSVG


Day of Defeat saw it’s popularity peak in the post-retail era, with the latest version being released on July 7th, 2004. With tournaments at the CPL and WSVG from 2004 – 2006, DoD saw its player base peak at over 5,000 active players in CAL in 2005. However, the DoD community could not take advantage of this momentum, and made asses out of themselves when only given a BYOC tournament at the CPL Winter 2006 event, and the community downsized to less than 1,000 active players in less than a year. Eventually, the community was unable to support a CAL division, and temporarily shut down in December 2006. CAL resumed play in 2007/2008, but ultimately closed it’s doors completely with the subsequent scandal and sale of CPL/CAL in 2009.

This era was dominated by teams from CheckSix and compLexity, and represents the last era in which sponsored esports teams supported DoD.

TPG – The Next Generation


When the dust settled in 2010, with DoD showing it’s age at nearly a decade old, only TPG remained as the lone competitive league to support Day of Defeat. In 2011, following the death of Gotfrag and the relaunch of Nineteen Eleven, a resurgence was observed as many players returned to the community, supported by players who had just begun playing in the CPL/WSVG era. Remarkably, TPG has continued to support DoD, and has just concluded it’s 33rd season, with plans for future events and seasons into 2014.

In August 2014, DoD will host it’s first live esports event in the better part of a decade, when 8 teams will head to Las Vegas, NV for ESL Vegas LAN 2014. This marks the first time since WSVG that DoD community has had the opportunity to play at a sponsored esports event.

While the competitive DoD community remains small, it serves as an example of what can be accomplished by smaller gaming communities left out of the mainstream and without the support from sponsors and professional esports leagues.

Valve has stated that it indeed does have interest in developing future Day of Defeat titles, but a timeline for when we might be able to expect future games to be developed is unknown (HL3).

Release History

Alpha 4 (April 8, 2000)
Alpha 6 (September 27, 2000)
Alpha 6.5 (October 15, 2000)
Alpha 6.5 (October 16, 2000)
Alpha 6.7 (October 28, 2000)
Alpha 6.8 (November 6, 2000)
Beta 1.0 (January 12, 2001)
Beta 1.1 (February 14, 2001)
Beta 1.2 (April 5, 2001)
Beta 1.3 (June 4, 2001)
Beta 1.3b (July 27, 2001)
Beta 2.0 (February 6, 2002)
Beta 2.1 (May 10, 2002)
Beta 3.0 (July 11, 2002)
Beta 3.1 (August 8, 2002)
Version 1.0 (May 1, 2003)
Version 1.1 (November 14, 2003)
Version 1.2 (May 19, 2004)
Version 1.3 (July 7, 2004)