Gabe Newell, Valve CEO, used to work at Microsoft. In an interview with Blumberg Businessweek, he discusses learning that Doom outranked Windows as the most used software application:
“But what was so shocking to me was that Windows was the second highest usage application in the U.S. The number one application was Doom, a shareware program that hadn’t been created by any of the powerhouse software companies. It was a 12-person company in the suburbs of Texas that didn’t even distribute through retail, it distributed through bulletin boards and other pre-Internet mechanisms. To me, that was a lightning bolt. Microsoft was hiring 500-people sales teams and this entire company was 12 people, yet it had created the most widely distributed software in the world. There was a sea change coming.”
The main bulk of the interview focuses around the unorthodox organizational structure at Valve. The quote above seems like Newell’s eureka moment about how alternative distribution methods could work.
(Via Kotaku)