alt Hacker NewsI did exactly this thing when I was a broke teenager. The files in my ID1 directory that I shuffle around from computer to computer to this day came from that disc 30 years ago. (I still have the disc, but not the case.) I did, however, purchase Quake II and III when they were released. And many years later bought Quake on Steam. I think they got their money's worth from me after all.
(There were some who believed that making the shareware disc easily-crackable was an intentional stroke of genius. It got people who couldn't afford the full retail version to buy the game and expand its popularity. The argument being that $10 was a fairly ludicrous amount of money to pay for a single shareware game. Shareware CDs tended to be $5 on the high end, or free with most computer/gaming magazines.)
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Glad I am not the only one who carts an id1 directory around. Mine originally came from a retail disk with a funny story, I had bought it for a friend. a birthday present. and a couple years later I bought their old pc from them and that quake disk was in the box of parts. It had came back me.
This strategy makes sense in developing markets. People might be too poor to buy your game right now so you distribute it for free hoping that in the future they will get rich and then they'll actually buy your newer game.
> 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.