The early 1980s saw the emergence of a new breed of software developers who gave their games away for free (usually through dial-up BBSs) in the hope that some players would enjoy the games enough to ...

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. Before software, purchases generally worked like this: You walked into a store, ...

With Apple’s introduction of an iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) last week, it seems everyone and their brother is hopping on the iPhone bandwagon or considering the jump. There are still some ...

I had no idea how important shareware was, and arguably still is, to the gaming industry until today. To me, shareware represented the few games I managed to play for free throughout the '90s. In ...

All the Latest Game Footage and Images from Diplomacy Is Not an Option: Shareware Diplomacy is Not an Option: Shareware is a free prequel to the original game. In a medieval fantasy world, you are to ...

Back before fast broadband internet came to most homes, game developers released their latest titles through shareware CDs so gamers could try them out before buying. And that's what id Software did ...