Wizard works discussion

[Lord of all demons]

Hello there all of doomworld, I have heard little of this company called wizard works, who sold doom wad compilations on disks in stores, I also have this to ask you all, how did they get away with it is what I wonder

[Kinsie]

WizardWorks put out a lot of things, including a bunch of officially licensed Duke Nukem 3D expansion packs, although their main claim to fame was putting out the Deer Hunter franchise of casual hunting sims.

 

As for "how they got away with it", simple: They read the readme files.

Quote

* Copyright / Permissions *

Authors may NOT use the contents of this file as a base for modification or
reuse.  Permissions have been obtained from original authors for any of their
resources modified or included in this file.

You MAY distribute this file, provided you include this text file, with no
modifications.  You may distribute this file in any electronic format (BBS,
Diskette, CD, etc) as long as you include this file intact.  I have received
permission from the original authors of any modified or included content in
this file to allow further distribution.

 

 

[Jello]

Pretty much that. They weren't distributing the original .iwads, and anything created for Doom was free use. So you could charge money for the packaging and distribution, but most people at that time had no way to actually charge for, or really mass distribute, anything they created for Doom. As long as you weren't distributing the doom or doom2.wads themselves, and people had to actually have the .iwads on their computer, it was fair game. They weren't charging for the content, they were charging for the convenience of having everything put together in a box, along with the individual .readme's for each file. Remember, this was back before most people had even heard of the internet. At the point they were coming out with these things, 28k would've been considered fast. And that's a max of 2.8kbps download speed at the best of times.

 

Yeah, it sounds shitty, but it seems like it slid along a very slim, slimy, but legal line.

[Gez]

It's funny because back then shovelware publishers were reviled as people making a cheap buck selling the work made for free by others; but nowadays the outlook is a lot more positive from a conservation standpoint because some of the works saved to shovelware CDs are no longer available anywhere else. "Only for distribution on the Compuserve action forum!!!1!"

[Jello]

3 minutes ago, Gez said:

It's funny because back then shovelware publishers were reviled as people making a cheap buck selling the work made for free by others; but nowadays the outlook is a lot more positive from a conservation standpoint because some of the works saved to shovelware CDs are no longer available anywhere else. "Only for distribution on the Compuserve action forum!!!1!"

It is amusing. At one point I looked at my D!Zone and Q!Zone discs with derision, they were just leeching off the creations of others. Years later I realized I should probably hang onto them for preservation. I don't exactly know everything that's on those discs, but it wouldn't hurt to hold onto them.

[printz]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

"Only for distribution on the Compuserve action forum!!!1!"

You mean that a lot of PWADs are doomed to obscurity because they can't be legally distributed? Maybe either their authors can be reached out to maybe volunteer making them releasable, or, if it's legal, create your own forum and call it "Compuserve action", then make a thread in it and attach the PWADs.

[princetontiger]

I've played thru so many countless D!Zone levels. What a waste of time. It's fun to kick back one and put a level on, but it gets old after a while... But... in the mid-90s, I still had dial-up so there was no choice.

 

Boy are we spoiled today!

[Devalaous]

The exclusive content in later collections is definitely interesting, albeit usually riddled with bugs. NightFright got Heretic's 12 exclusive episodes all ported to GZDoom for modern audiences for example. Duke has exclusive stuff too, I recall someone painstakingly porting them to the World Tour source port, one level at a time.

[Liberation]

I had some of the wizard work stuff, Maximum Doom and another called "Wads for wads". In the 90's shovelware was kinda cool. Internet speeds sucked, I remember getting pissed off trying to download WolfenDoom, 3.5mb file, iirc took 15 minutes to download and alot of the time the connection dropped.

 

So for the time shovelware was a bit of godsend.

[slugger]

On 8/13/2021 at 2:28 AM, printz said:

You mean that a lot of PWADs are doomed to obscurity because they can't be legally distributed? Maybe either their authors can be reached out to maybe volunteer making them releasable, or, if it's legal, create your own forum and call it "Compuserve action", then make a thread in it and attach the PWADs.

 

They mean that a lot of PWADs are doomed to obscurity because they're lost forever. Their authors died or stopped Dooming, the servers shut down, nobody downloaded them and kept the file for 20 years. If some sleazebag were to slap 'em on a disc and sell 'em, then ironically, that sleazebag's disc might be the only place they exist anymore.

[Devalaous]

Its a shame we only started feverishly archiving everything much later, but hey, how were we to know the game would last forever? I recall some guy having some kind of melt down and wiping all his Doom works everywhere, but thanks to archival, people just reposted them for others to share, as it should be. There was also all that drama over the Odessa series too..

[Nikku4211]

It's funny how we never got the importance of preserving our silly little WADs back when we were making them.

 

I'd often think none of my stuff was ever worth preserving, but then later, desperately look for said old stuff to relive old memories.

[Lord of all demons]

I remember watching it on a YouTube video that it was no doubt illegal and shouldn't be done

[Kinsie]

12 hours ago, Lord of all demons said:

I remember watching it on a YouTube video that it was no doubt illegal and shouldn't be done

I watched a Youtube telling me that I should read the replies to my own thread before replying to it.