id games on steam

[TJet]

Just noticed that id games, all the way back to Commander Keen, are now available on steam. http://www.steamgames.com/v/index.php?publisher=id

[Deadfyre]

Content deleted for AUP breach.

If games are still for sale it's illegal to provide links to them where they can be obtained freely.

Please don't use this forum to discuss things that can be considered as copying games illegally.

Also remember this is a PUBLIC forum.

Thank you.

Father

PM me if you have any questions.

[Gaara]

<<Fox edit: line removed as intention is unclear>>

As for the iD game on steam, yep I'm sure it will be nice to actually legally own some of those games finally after so long.

*edit* I noticed that Keen 6 isn't in the list, despite it being developed by another house, it was sold on to Apogee so it should be on there. Interesting that it is not.
Also keen dreams but that is another matter entirely I suppose

[Deadfyre]

Read this and laughed.

Slashdot | id and Valve May Be Violating GPL

"With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release."

Wonder how long this Id Steam will last.

[YZ250]

Hmmm I'm pretty sure when Wolfenstein, then Doom 1 came out, I couldnt buy these, and were not commercially available, they were freeware right from the start. So was Doom 2 and many others by memory.
Actually I bought them from Moonee ponds Town Hall swap meet in Melb. Funny these guys were selling discs of freeware, never occured to me that they were getting them free, as I could have.

[TJet]

id games were never freeware. There were demos which usually consisted of the first level but the full version of all id games were commercial releases.

[YZ250]

Sorry, correct terminology was Shareware,and I still never seen it available in any shop to purchase. Mail Order perhaps? Maybe I had the nine level free Version, actually I still have the discs. It certainly wasnt 1 LEVEL

When Doom Shareware was first released it crashed the University of Wisconsin's FTP twice! It is also the worlds most installed program. Doom's success could be pined down to having a demo, with 9 levels to play gamers couldn't resist. And besides if you downloaded it from the internet it was free. The full version was published in 1993 by id Software.



The Page of Doom: id History

On December 10, 1993, id released its much-anticipated DOOM. DOOM attained phenomenal success and is still recognized as the hottest 3-D action game of all time. DOOM changed the face of computer gaming forever. Recognized as the catalyst and inspiration of what we know now as 3-D action gaming, an estimated 15 million copies have been downloaded around the world, passed from player to player by floppy disk or online networks. In 1994, DOOM was awarded Game of the Year by both PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World and received the Award for Technical Excellence from PC Magazine.

[TJet]

Sorry, used the term "level" a little too loosely.

Your right, the Doom demo consisted of the first episode, which as you said had 9 levels. The commercial version of the game had 3 episodes each with 9 levels. When Ultimate Doom was released they added a 4th episode.

[Jigoku]

Yep, the demo was the first Episode. A quarter of the game ... [edit] ah yes it was originally only three levels ...

The engines for Doom (I think) and Quake were Open Source'd but the games themselves are still copyrighted, and Doom will continue to be until December 10, 2068.

[zero]

The shareware version of Doom contained the first episode, and was free to distribute. id allowed any publisher to sell it for whatever price they wanted if it were put onto disk, in a box etc.

When you finished the shareware version or exited the game, there were 2 splash screens urging you to register (via phone & money order I'm pretty sure) and receive the full version, with the two other episodes.

My mate and I were obsessed with it when it was first released. We used to play multiplayer for entire weekends at a time using an old serial cable

Released as shareware, people were encouraged to distribute Doom further, and did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold, and the popularity helped the sales of later games in the Doom series which were not released as shareware. In 1995, The Ultimate Doom (version 1.9, including episode IV) was released, making this the first time that Doom was sold commercially in stores.

Later on, GT Interactive were the official distributors of Ultimate Doom & Doom 2 in Australia.

It was never legal to distribute the 'registered' full version.