The Shareware Games That Asked Us to Trust Them

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There was a time when you could get a computer game for free.

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Not a free-to-play game, not a demo with a giant buy now button sitting permanently in the corner,

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and not something designed to sell you coins, characters, skins,

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or whatever else a publisher had decided you might want, but a real game.

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You'd get it from a friend, copy it from a floppy disk, find it on a computer

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magazine's cover disk, or download it from somewhere on the early internet.

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You'd install it, play it, and eventually discover that if you wanted the rest

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of the game, there was a pretty simple solution. You could buy it.

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That was shareware. And looking back at it now, there's something strange and

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yet comforting about the whole arrangement.

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Because shareware wasn't really asking you to trust the software,

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it was asking you to trust the person who made it.

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If you grew up around computers in the 80s or 90s, there's a good chance you've

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encountered shareware without necessarily thinking about what the word meant.

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You might have picked up a floppy disk from a friend. Maybe it came with a computer magazine.

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Maybe you downloaded something from a bulletin board or one of these early software

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libraries that seemed to contain an almost impossible amount of stuff.

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You installed the game, and there it was. Sometimes it was a complete little

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game. Sometimes it was the first part of something bigger.

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But you got enough to understand what the developer was trying to do and enough

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to decide whether you liked it.

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And if you did, you were given a choice. Keep playing the version you had or

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send the developer some money and get the registered version.

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There might be a registration card in the box, or an address on the screen,

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or there might be instructions telling you where to send a cheque or money order.

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And that was it. There was no payment processor waiting behind the menu,

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no subscription, no digital storefront, no account you had to create before

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you could even start the game.

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Just a developer saying, essentially, here's something I made,

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try it, and if you like it, support me.

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That sounds really simple now, but at the time it was actually quite radical.

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The real interesting thing about shareware was that the developer couldn't force you to pay.

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If you had an unregistered copy of the game there was usually nothing stopping

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you from continuing to use it or copy it, give it to somebody else or put on

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another floppy disk and pass it around.

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The technology wasn't particularly good at enforcing the rules so the model

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depended, at least in part, on something much less technical. Trust.

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The developer trusted that if you enjoyed your work, you'd do the right thing.

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And the player had to make the decision for themselves.

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Now that doesn't mean that everyone paid. They obviously didn't.

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Shareware developers had plenty of complaints about people happily using their

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software without ever registering it.

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But that's what makes the model so interesting. The transaction wasn't built

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around stopping you from accessing something.

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It was built around letting you experience it and hoping you'd see enough value

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in it to want to support the person who made it.

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And there was something wonderfully human about that.

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A lot of shareware came from small developers or tiny teams.

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People making software because they had an idea, or because they wanted to solve

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a problem, or because they thought they could make something better.

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There wasn't necessarily a giant company sitting behind the product.

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Sometimes it was just one person and somewhere on that registration form was their name.

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You weren't paying a faceless corporation, you were sending money to someone

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who had made something you liked.

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Of course, shareware didn't last forever in its original form.

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The internet got faster. Software became larger.

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Online payments became normal. Downloading things became easier.

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The whole process of getting software changed. And in games,

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the basic idea of giving people a taste of something before asking them to buy it survived.

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We got demos. We got downloadable games. We got digital storefronts.

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And eventually, we got downloadable content.

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Now DLC itself isn't a bad thing. There's a huge difference between buying a

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game and six months later getting a substantial new expansion with new characters,

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new locations, new stories or an entirely new experience.

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That's additional content.

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It's something that didn't exist when you bought the original game.

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But somewhere along the way another version of DLC appeared.

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And that's where things get a little more complicated.

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Because that can feel less like here's something new we've made and more like

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here's something we've already made.

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You can have it if you pay us again.

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This is where modern games can feel very different from these old shareware games.

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You can spend a significant amount of money buying a game at launch and then

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discover there's a whole ecosystem of additional purchases sitting around it.

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Extra characters, extra modes, deluxe editions, premium currencies,

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cosmetic items, additional missions.

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Features that are advertised as part of a more expensive version.

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And again, none of these things are automatically bad. Games are expensive to

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make, and developers need to make money.

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Ongoing development costs money. Expansion packs cost money.

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The problem comes when the player starts to feel like they're being charged

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to unlock pieces of something they thought they'd already bought.

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And that's a very different relationship.

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But with Shareware, the incomplete version was the invitation.

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You got something first, you played it, and then you decided whether it was worth paying for.

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With some modern games, the feeling can be almost reversed. You've already paid

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and now you're standing in front of a series of locked doors,

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seeing what's behind them, but you need to pay again.

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And I don't think the answer is simply that companies became greedy. That's too easy.

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The economics of making games changed enormously. Development teams got bigger,

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budgets became enormous, games more complicated, and online services became part of the product.

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And players changed too. We became accustomed to games that lasted for years,

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rather than a few weekends.

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We expected new content, updates, online features, and games to keep evolving after launch.

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The industry responded to what people were willing to buy. But something about

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the relationship still changed.

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Shareware was based on a simple personal proposition. I made this,

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you can try it. If you think it's worth something, pay me.

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Modern gaming, on the other hand, feels like a much more complicated proposition.

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You bought this, here's everything else you could buy.

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And I think that's why shareware is worth remembering. Not because it was perfect, it wasn't.

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Not because everything was better in the 90s. It definitely wasn't.

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But because it represented a kind of relationship between the person making

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something and the person using it.

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There was an assumption that the work itself could convince you of its value.

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And that's why I want to come back to the little registration card.

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It's such a small thing, a piece of paper with your name, your address and the name of the software.

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And maybe a cheque tucked into an envelope.

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But somewhere on the other side of that transaction was a person who had made

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something and was waiting to see whether enough people thought it was worth paying for.

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The registration card was proof that the system worked, because people chose to participate in it.

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You weren't forced to register, you weren't locked out of the game until you

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turned it over your credit card, and you didn't have to buy a premium edition

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just to access something that was already sitting on the disc.

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You played, you decided, and then you supported a creator if you wanted to.

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And looking back at that, it feels almost quaint.

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But I think it's also something that's worth holding on to, because technology

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has made it incredibly easy to measure what we're willing to pay for.

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It can track what we click, what we buy, what we almost buy,

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what we play, how long we play it, and which locked door we're most likely to open.

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Shareware, on the other hand, came from a time when the technology couldn't do any of that.

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And maybe that's what I find most interesting about shareware.

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We tend to remember it as an old way of distributing software.

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Floppy disks, registration cards, magazine cover disks, little games that somehow

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made their way around the world.

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But underneath all of that was a really simple idea. Let people experience the

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thing that you've made, then trust them to decide what it's worth.

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Now that's not necessarily a better business model, and it's certainly not a

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perfect one, but it created a particular feeling between creator and customer.

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You weren't constantly being reminded that there was something else to buy.

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You weren't necessarily being treated as a collection of future transactions.

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You were being given something, And, if it mattered to you, you could give something back.

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And that's why these old shareware games still feel different.

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Not because they were free, not because they were games, but because somewhere

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inside that little floppy disk

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or registration card was an idea that feels increasingly unusual today.

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The person who made this trusts me to see its value.

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And maybe that's the real artifact. Not the software, not the floppy disk,

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not even the registration card.

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It's the relationship they represented.

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A time when getting something for free didn't necessarily mean you were the product.

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Sometimes it just meant somebody had made something they wanted you to try and

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trusted you to decide what it was worth.

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I'm Danny Brown and this is Artifacts.