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DRM from the 90s: Thirty years ago, id Software tried to take advantage of the massive storage capacity of the CD-ROM format by bundling the studio's previous games with Quake. The system designed to manage this "unlocking" feature failed spectacularly, giving crackers and pirates an easy way to play all the company's games without paying any extra.
Quake recently turned 30, and id Software celebrated the milestone by releasing new content for the game's "enhanced" version. However, a more recent story highlights some of the unusual business decisions made by the Texas-based studio back in the 1990s. The game that broke id's old guard was also instrumental in making life much easier for pirates than it should have been.
According to a recent post by developer Fabien Sanglard, the Quake shareware CD contained many of id Software's previous games, which could be unlocked on demand. The idea was that gamers would "taste" the first level of Quake and then spend more money to either purchase the full game or buy one of the company's previous FPS releases.
