When DOOM was released in 1993 it spread like wildfire across bulletin boards and early FTP services. But the vast majority of players got it from a floppy copy at their local computer store - it was shareware, and so copying the floppy was fine. They even encouraged stores to charge for the shareware game, they wanted it distributed as widely as possible.
And if you paid the $40 for the full game, you got floppies mailed to you.
There was no easy way for the company to let you know there was an update available (the early versions had some well-known bugs) so the user would have to go searching for it, or hear a rumor at the store. If you called id, they'd have to mail you a disk with the updated executable on it. This was all confusing, time consuming, and was only for a game.
Things were much worse with operating systems and programs.
Now almost every piece of software is either distributed via an App Store of some sort that has built-in updates, or has a "Check for updates" button in the app itself. Post an updated build and within days a huge percentage of your users will be running the latest software.
This makes me saddest in the game market with day-one patching. I'm old enough to remember bringing a game home, plugging in the cart and playing it, but if I was to do that now with a disc or cart, there is likely a download in my future. At least some of the game publishers will pre-download so I can play when the game is made available, but I miss the days (not the bugs) of instant playing once the game was acquired.
> if I was to do that now with a disc or cart, there is likely a download in my future.
The newest Call of Duty (was released this past Friday) was released on disc as well as the various digital forms. Apparently, the disc was only contained ~72mb of data for a game that easily cleans 100gb when fully installed.
And if you paid the $40 for the full game, you got floppies mailed to you.
There was no easy way for the company to let you know there was an update available (the early versions had some well-known bugs) so the user would have to go searching for it, or hear a rumor at the store. If you called id, they'd have to mail you a disk with the updated executable on it. This was all confusing, time consuming, and was only for a game.
Things were much worse with operating systems and programs.
Now almost every piece of software is either distributed via an App Store of some sort that has built-in updates, or has a "Check for updates" button in the app itself. Post an updated build and within days a huge percentage of your users will be running the latest software.