Id Software’s shareware version of Doom went viral upon it’s release in 1993. It was one of the first games that many people could play together on a local area network. An error in the code at launch caused the game to overload unprepared networks at major businesses (the only place one could really play Doom at that time). Networks crashed, big money was lost, and chaos reigned… until Id rectified the problem with a patch, and/or IT managers the world over instituted strict “No Gaming!!!!” rules in the workplace.

At this time I was a reporter at IDG’s ComputerWorld covering the Enterprise Networking beat. I caught wind of the Doom debacle from an IT manager I was talking too and started chasing the story, which landed one page one of the paper when it was done. May be the only time a gaming story was featured as such. The original story, as printed, is shared below. (You can click the first image to go to a high res scan of the issue on Google Books.)