They did not buy licenses. That game (and others) was developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), an organization founded by Minnesota

They did not buy licenses. That game (and others) was developed by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), an organization founded by Minnesota legislature. They developed educational software and distributed it on computers across the state of Minnesota. Later, due to the huge success of the game, they sold the game (bundled with others) across the US. tl;dr: made possible by government funding https://medium.com/@stevepepple/why-did-all-children-of-a-certain-age-play-oregon-trail-6a53e27e83d8 https://medium.com/@stevepepple/why-did-all-children-of-a-ce... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECC