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by dguest 40 days ago
That's true if it was just cheating.

But in this case I was hacking the shareware payment enforcement. Rather than shutting down completely the game would send an invincible and fairly destructive enemy (Hector) after you. It was really a clever trick from the developers to make the game mostly unplayable if you didn't pay after the trial period.
1 comments
stavros 40 days ago
Ahh it didn't click that this was shareware enforcement, thanks. I guess back in those days developers weren't really fussed about payment, because paying was really hard (mailing in checks, and nobody had credit cards).

Many of them (us) made software for the love of it, and didn't care if it was cracked. I never got a single sale from my software but I didn't care.

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dguest 39 days ago
I'm pretty sure I eventually either payed or ran one of those keygen-and-virus.exe scripts. At least I also remember Hector thanking me for paying.

It got me thinking: could I somehow pay them now? There's some sad news here: one of the original creators, Peter Cartwright, passed away [1] in 2026 :(

His project to remaster EV: Override, Cosmic Frontier, was fully funded after his death though!

[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cosmicfrontier/cosmic-f...

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