Remember the good old days of dial-up internet and physical media? When installing a game meant carefully inserting a shiny CD-ROM into your computer? Well, one particular Quake shareware CD-ROM held a secret that even surpassed its primary function: it contained encrypted copies of every id Software game. And, as you might expect, those locks didn’t stay closed for long.
The Unintended Bonus
Fabien Sanglard has unearthed fascinating details about this relic of gaming history in a recent blog post. The core Quake game itself occupied a mere 22MB on the CD-ROM, leaving a massive amount of unused space – roughly 640MB! John Carmack famously joked that a full Doom release on CD would require a “Making of Doom” documentary to fill out the remaining capacity. However, id Software had a different idea: they decided to use that extra room to store encrypted versions of their entire back catalog.
The intended process was simple: users could call a hotline, pay for the games over the phone, and then enter an unlock code provided by the agent. This system mirrored the way the shareware version of Quake itself unlocked into the full release. In an era before widespread digital distribution and reliable internet connections, this seemed like a stroke of genius.
The Inevitable Crack
However, as with most things in the world of gaming, there was a fatal flaw: pirates. Just 39 days after the CD-ROM’s release, Quakecrk.zip appeared on the internet, containing Qcrack.exe – a tool that allowed users to generate unlock codes for every single game.
How It Worked (or Didn’t)
The technical details are complex, but here’s the gist: when attempting to unlock a game, the CD-ROM’s GUI provided a code number. This number was supposed to be relayed to a phone agent, who would then provide a serial number for entry. However, this serial number was merely a confirmation that payment had been made. The unlock program itself could generate valid serial numbers, simply checking if the locally generated serial matched the one entered by the user.
This meant a cracked program could create a valid serial using the same code number, effectively granting access to id Software’s entire back catalog (in 1996!).
A Quote from History
David Kushner, in his book , captured the ensuing chaos: “Gamers wasted no time hacking the shareware to unlock the full version of the game for free. Worse, all the mundane aspects of distribution and order fulfilment were spinning out of control. In a desperate measure, id tried to put the brakes on the retail shareware, but it was too late. They were stuck with almost 150,000 CDs sitting in a warehouse.”
The entire scheme was essentially a disaster. While gamers could purchase the shareware version of Quake for around $10, those “in the know” could use it to access not only the full version of Quake but also a whole host of other games for free.
Even Pirates Got a Better Experience
Adding insult to injury, the pirated experience was technically better than the legitimate one. Sanglard discovered several glaring errors in the Quake shareware CD file structure, including a typo in the filename that prevented access to Final Doom through the unlock center. “There is a typo in SKU.17 which makes GAME-ID 12 correspond to codename ‘Final’ (with a capital F). This makes the serial generation retrieve the wrong doc. The correct value was ‘final’. This created an only-too-familiar situation where illegitimate users enjoyed a better experience than paying customers.”
This scenario, unfortunately, resonates even today. Lessons were undoubtedly learned, and I can only imagine the colorful language used in id Software’s offices when this all came to light. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I might just fire up Quake and relive some gaming history myself. It’s been far too long since I last played the original.
Source: PC Gamer
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