Wat happen to the days of shareware?

[bitachbutz]

Any of you guys remember in the late 90's there was Shareware? They had Quake and Duke Nukem in shareware versions? If you liked it you can also share it with your friends. The only catch to them games is that it was limited to the level you can play up to. If you liked the game so much you can buy the full blown version.

What ever happened to them days?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Demos still exist, although certain games do not create "good demos" such as story driven roleplaying games. Many other games are either a well established franchise (will sell well without a demo) or are simply too complex to make a proper demo out of (developers might be hard pressed to meet deadlines, a demo would only complicate things).

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Those don't fit on 5.25" Floppies like they used to. And to think I used to buy the damn floppies with shareware games on them. Ahh, the good ol'days.

 

[TallBill]

Demos?

 

[aCynic2]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
Those don't fit on 5.25" Floppies like they used to. And to think I used to buy the damn floppies with shareware games on them. Ahh, the good ol'days.</end quote></div>

I bought or received a lot of stuff on floppies. Databases (before MS had Office), WPs, programming libs (the good old days of programming graphics in DOS on a PC or on an Atari 800), learning ASM, C, developing DBs for game record keeping, etc.

To the OP, shareware is not lucrative.

There is two models that work these days: commercial software and FSF/GPL w/ paid support.

You can get free support for either from the community, but individualized help will cost you.

 

[Markbnj]

I think the shareware model for games required the simplicity of an earlier time. The average game these days costs about $10m or more just to buy into the "looks pretty good" club.

 

[novasatori]

I miss multi player spawn versions more.

Heh, of course if they had that for most recent games there would be no reason for anyone but one person to buy them, since everything is basically multi player only now a days.

 

[Fulcrum]

Some games are so short these days, that if they gave you the first few levels to play you'd be getting 1\4 or more of the entire game. At least it often seems that way.

 

[pontifex]

they went missing, like your "h" in what...

as everyone said, demos still exist and that's basically what shareware was.

 

[imported_michealo]

shareware ended when quake 1 shareware was unlocked so easily that everyone did it

 

[CKent]

u spelt "2" rong 1n ur thr34d t1tl3, r u dum?

 

[bullbert]

Those don't fit on 5.25" Floppies like they used to. And to think I used to buy the damn floppies with shareware games on them. Ahh, the good ol'days.

The paradigm of "shareware" has grown from:

* pay $5 for the floppy, then if you like the initial release, pay $15 more for the complete game license including patches and additional content (shipped in the mail, aka pre-internet)

to

* pay $50/$60 for the retail DVD, then if you like the initial release, pay $150 more for the Mission Expansions, "nickel and dime" (now $5-$10) DLC enhancements, monthly/yearly multiplayer server access, etc