18 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About DOOM

9. The First Episode Was Free

The first episode of Doom, titled “Knee-Deep in the Dead,” was not distributed in the traditional sense. Instead of charging customers for it, id Software made the conscious decision to release it as shareware.

This allowed the game to be freely shared among family, friends, and communities, putting it in the hands of more people than it otherwise might not have had it been sold commercially. The rest of the game, however, was not free, with the following two chapters able to be purchased through mail order. This unique distribution method caused Doom to sky rocket in popularity in a very short amount of time.

The shareware model was not reused for Doom II: Hell on Earth, partially because many of the more casual players assumed they had finished Doom upon completing the initial nine levels of the first episode, and thus didn’t bother purchasing the other two episodes.