 During the 1990s, indie games were most commonly distributed as shareware or shared from friend to friend and therefore known as "shareware games".As the industry grew during the 1980s, publishing a game became more difficult.Chris Crawford said in late 1984,

Before the mid-1990s, commercial game distribution was controlled by big publishers and retailers, and developers of indie games were forced to either build their own publishing company, find one willing to distribute their game, or distribute it in some form of shareware (e.g.