DOOM Co-Creator John Romero Says Piracy Helped id Software Distribute the Shooter

The developers understood market realities and adapted.

Many developers and publishers fight piracy and make life difficult for fans of free software in every possible way. However, another path exists, and that is cooperation.

John Romero, co-founder of id Software and one of the creators of DOOM, recently discussed a specific approach to distributing the shooter during an era when the internet and digital distribution were not yet heavily developed.

Players could try the shareware version of DOOM, which did not feature all the content. Downloading it in those years was difficult, however, and pirates began appearing on the market to sell this trial version.

The developers decided not to fight those distributing pirated copies and instead used the situation to their advantage. For example, Romero explains, id Software knew that DOOM was being actively pirated in Taiwan because that was simply the market. They decided to contact local pirates and negotiate a deal by offering to sell them official boxes:

We knew that [DOOM] was being copied in Taiwan: 100%, that was the market back then. So we contacted the largest pirates there and asked: “Can you buy boxes from us? Very cheaply. Very, very cheaply.” And they bought a bunch of boxes from us to make it look legitimate.

id Software, Nightdive Studios, Bethesda

This is how the creators of DOOM managed to distribute the trial shareware version of the shooter among players. The developers earned their profit from sales of the full version of the shooter.

Romero also talked about game protection. id Software understood that if someone set out with a goal, the game would be copied, so they chose not to waste resources on protection:

You can never win the copy protection war, and we didn’t want to spend time on it. If people want to copy a game, they’re going to copy it. Maybe they’ll buy it later, but… we ourselves didn’t have the money for everything we played, so we decided this: we aren’t going to make copy protection. If people want to play, they’ll find a way anyway.

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