Petition to get the Shareware Episode an offical listing on steam

[Lemono]

It feels very odd for such an important and iconic piece of Doom's history to be completely forgotten by so many and for so long, I think they should have the Shareware wad from back then up on steam as a separate, free game. The engine already disallows mods with the Shareware wad if that's a concern.

The old Shareware release would also be a great intro to the franchise for new Slayers and Guys alike! Especially with this new rerelease and its polish!

[Seamus]

Why? This regularly goes on discount for $4.

[SyntaxError999]

Companies arn't really into the whole "demo" thing anymore. Likely they figure there's a 100 streamers out there to answer any questions someone has about
a game. Plus I get the impression Bethesda would like to unalive the shareware. Not allowing the distribution of the doom1.wad anymore sparked the FreeDoom project after all.

Its a shame... I like the idea. I'd be an interesting curiosity in Steams "Free to play" section of the catalog.

[Lemono]

Originally posted by SyntaxError999:

Companies arn't really into the whole "demo" thing anymore. Likely they figure there's a 100 streamers out there to answer any questions someone has about
a game. Plus I get the impression Bethesda would like to unalive the shareware. Not allowing the distribution of the doom1.wad anymore sparked the FreeDoom project after all.

Its a shame... I like the idea. I'd be an interesting curiosity in Steams "Free to play" section of the catalog.

Wait they disallowed the distribution of doom1.wad ?!?!?!?!?

[Lemono]

Originally posted by Seamus:

Why? This regularly goes on discount for $4.

4 is greater 0

The point is to give an awesome demo for people who aren't confident in a 32-year-old game, that and the shareware is a MASSIVELY important piece of Doom history and it shouldn't just be discarded and forgotten

[UNBREAKABLE]

Originally posted by Lemono:

Originally posted by Seamus:

Why? This regularly goes on discount for $4.

4 is greater 0

The point is to give an awesome demo for people who aren't confident in a 32-year-old game, that and the shareware is a MASSIVELY important piece of Doom history and it shouldn't just be discarded and forgotten

But the game has nothing left to prove anymore and is a crucial part of digital history, why does it need a free version to convince people to play it?

[Seamus]

Originally posted by Lemono:

Originally posted by Seamus:

Why? This regularly goes on discount for $4.

4 is greater 0

The point is to give an awesome demo for people who aren't confident in a 32-year-old game, that and the shareware is a MASSIVELY important piece of Doom history and it shouldn't just be discarded and forgotten

The point is the game is dirt cheap and there are myriad ways to try it out without pointlessly adding shareware doom to steam.

[Jackass of Doom]

You can find shareware doom pretty straightforwardly, there's no real reason for it to be on steam.

[DoomTheRobot]

Kind of unrelated but it bugged me that the old XBLA demo of DOOM only had just the first level to play and not the entire episode. Always thought that was really odd.

Also, doesn't really make sense to have an entire separate Steam page just for a demo when all they would have to do is just enable the "Download Demo" button on the sidebar for that. There's a reason why Bethesda went back and cleared out all the other classic DOOM-related store pages...

Originally posted by SyntaxError999:

Not allowing the distribution of the doom1.wad anymore sparked the FreeDoom project after all.

False. Read about the Freedoom project here.[freedoom.github.io]

[benakenobi]

in practical sense all it would achieve is gather statistics on what kind of Steam users were interested in having certain software (Doom shareware in that case) and note how many would actually play it and subsequently buy full package with/without discount.
how valuable such statistics would be is another story
sort of sociological experiment that would certainly make some press and generate some advertising revenue for people having no hand in creation or support of Doom

[Lemono]

Originally posted by Jackass of Doom:

You can find shareware doom pretty straightforwardly, there's no real reason for it to be on steam.

Accessibility, a new Doom player is not boutta find a source port or figure out dosbox, they will either just wait for a sale or not bother with the game at all

[Seamus]

We flat out do not need shareware doom on steam. It is a waste of server space.

It can be found in tons of places online including places where you can just play it via your browser.

[Kyller92 AKA Cinos]

Wouldn't putting the shareware on Steam remove the purpose of it being a shareware in first place ?

[happygreenfrog]

I think something to keep in mind here is actually that you can't really test the official port using the shareware version you can find out there online easily. While I have my doubts they'd bother even with this in mind (I could see Night Dive wanting to do it, but Bethesda...), it does mean the merit in having such a version wouldn't literally only be a few minutes of amusement of "hey, they have shareware doom on steam now, that's kind of funny".

[jack mama]

This is actually a good idea, considering the shareware release of ROTT is available as a demo for the ludicrous edition. It'd be neat if they added a demo for Doom + Doom II with just the first episode.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Originally posted by jack mama:

This is actually a good idea, considering the shareware release of ROTT is available as a demo for the ludicrous edition. It'd be neat if they added a demo for Doom + Doom II with just the first episode.

The problem is that shareware ROTT is it's own exclusive campaign, whereas in Doom it's just Knee Deep in the Dead.