From the «sharing is caring» department:
Feed: Daring Fireball
Title: ‘Shareware Heroes’ by Richard Moss
Author: John Gruber
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 22:35:21 -0400
Link: https://sharewareheroes.com/

From Richard Moss, author of the excellent The Secret History of Mac Gaming[1]:

Shareware Heroes takes readers on a journey through a critical yet long
overlooked chapter in video game history: the rise and eventual fall of the
shareware model.

As commercial game distribution professionalised in the 1980s, independent
creators with scant resources or contacts were squeezed out of the market. But
not entirely. New technologies and distribution concepts were creating a
hidden games publishing market — one that operated by different rules and
that, at least for the first several years, had no powerful giants.

It was a land of opportunity and promise, and a glimpse of the digital-first
future. This is the story of the games and developers who relied on nascent
networking technologies combined with word-of-mouth marketing in an era before
social media.

What a fun website Moss made for this. It’s just perfect. He’s got a preview
from the chapter on Id Software’s Doom[2] to whet your appetite. The book is
available in hardcover, paperback, audio book, and e-book formats.
★ [3]

Links:
[1]: https://secrethistoryofmacgaming.com/ (link)
[2]: https://sharewareheroes.com/doomed.html (link)
[3]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/04/13/shareware-heroes (link)

--
First rule of Usenet: you do not talk about Usenet