4 ms·
> There were some who believed that making the shareware disc easily-crackable was an intentional stroke of genius. I doubt it. I would believe that the id guy
by mewse-hn 2mo ago
> There were some who believed that making the shareware disc easily-crackable was an intentional stroke of genius.
I doubt it. I would believe that the id guys weren't too choked about the lost revenue after the fact, but the business guys probably believed the scheme would work (especially since they contracted a company that said "yes, this will work").
Aside from that, the shareware cd was incredible marketing - the digipak cd case was the kind of art and paper construction that nin was using on their discs (like the Broken EP), and the disc itself has nice art with the four logos in cardinal directions. I bought a copy of the registered disc from ebay years later and it's in a jewel case with really crappy artwork vs the shareware version, it was a surprising disappointment.
- ryanjshaw 2mo agoSurely anybody who could download the keygen could just as easily download the pirated game? Only difference is time and dialup costs, but neither of those would’ve pushed somebody into the buy category.
- sznio 2mo ago>Only difference is time and dialup costs, but neither of those would’ve pushed somebody into the buy category. well, if dialup cost more than just buying the game, it makes sense to buy it rather than pirate. also, if you care about audio then you'll get the cd, becuse downloading 400MB of audio over dialup isn't fun. compared to that a crack is just a single binary.
- darkwater 2mo agoDial-up cost will be discovered later by upset parents, and you already have all your nice pirates games, which you would need to pay upfront with your own pocket money (if that existed). But in any case physical copy + crack was the best solution at the time.
- virtue3 2mo agoit would have been like 520 hours to download 500mgb. Assuming it didn't break at some point. That was pretty tough in that day and age. Especially from pirate sites. mIRC had some good servers but getting someone to keep a direct connection with you for that long was problematic too. And then if you didn't have a dedicated phone line for the modem...
- Lorkki 2mo agoIf I remember correctly, actual pirated copies would have been maybe tens of megabytes, since they didn't include the CD audio. But that would still have been a hefty modem download.
- tetrisgm 2mo agoCorrect
- hdgvhicv 2mo agoI got 3kB/sec, or 6 minutes per meg in ‘96. 10 meg an hour wasn’t terrible even I. The U.K. where you paid a penny a minute.
- justsomehnguy 2mo agoThat's why you had a download manager and left the machine running all night.
- skhr0680 2mo agoThe common pirated version of Quake was a 20MB pre-release leak that had oodles and oodles of minor differences to the final version. All of the actual levels themselves are playable and completable. The funniest differences are a mean trap that was removed from the final E1M1, and E2M6 still begins with the eponymous oubliette, banished from official releases until 2021 (!).
- dole 2mo agoPeople were still replacing their 14.4k modems with 28.8s in 1996. I remember seeing the Quake 15 x 1.44 zips on local BBSes, which would've taken at least 3.5 hours over a perfect 14.4 connection so definitely a daunting phone line tie-up for the average kid (I had the CD.)