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Simple Optimization Trick
(lemmy.zip)
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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
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He was an analyst at Microsoft who was tasked with finding out how many computers ran Windows to determine market share. Part of the question involved asking what other software was installed and the only software used more than Windows was Doom. This made GabeN realize the market potential of games and he left Microsoft shortly afterward.
See, I've heard that story, that he basically ran ... well, arguably, a worm that did network analysis on what was installed on every computer in the MSFT internal network, realized more people had DOOM installed... than Windows...
... and I have also heard that he actually ported DOOM to... either MS DOS, or Win95... ?
I genuienly do not know which is true, if they're all true, if they're all false... I can't remember the source for each of these, but I know I've heard or read all these semi-close variants from somewhere, over the years.
Just saw this article recently. Gabe was part of a team trying to convince developers that they would be better off writing their games with more abstracted code/libraries instead of writing their own interfaces (some of which were written by people convinced they were being really efficient but were actually terrible). One thing they did to prove their point was going to id and offering to have Microsoft port Doom to Windows for free. But the experience and seeing the success id was having distributing their own game led Gabe to launch Valve.