this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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This is a fun question!
So, in the mid 00's I worked for a pretty large software company doing mid level tech support for enterprise customers. One unassuming weekday, we get a notice that the building is going in to lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out.
Not long after we're told to contact our families and anyone that may be depending on us after work. There's a communication stating "we have a strong reason to believe anthrax was released in the building and no one is leaving until the CDC takes a sample and tests it". Awesome.
After the initial chaos wears down the dawning realization that there are a few hundred (well closer to a thousand of us) now stuck in a multi- building complex with fuck all to do sets in. This is before YouTube really had anything and Netflix was barely serving up a few streaming movies. Plus, there's no way I'm installing Silverlight on my production box. Dark times indeed.
In a stroke of pure luck, I stil had a couple of burned "backups" in my backpack from the previous weekends LAN party (jesus, this story just keeps getting more and more ancient).
A few short moments later and the ISO's were dumped and it was game time. Now, we were all saddled with Dell Optiplexes of some random flavor (620's maybe... this was pushing 20 years ago, details are a little sketchy) so there wasn't much we could really run but anything in a pinch, yeah?
Long story long, I'd spend that time playing C&C Renegade, Quake 3 Unreal Tournament and maybe speed run Duke3D one more time. All while listening to some flavor of Scandinavian metal to truly flesh things out. If that got boring, I'd likely watch Ricky-O again or maybe throw on whatever else I happened to have dumped at the time (likely something from Tartan Asia Extreme or an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Despite what an utter shit show this moment was, I have so many vivid memories of playing those games on the test network with a bunch of other 20 something people barely navigating through life while being scared to death that we may never see our families again.
That and trying to teach Ted how to copy a crack to the install folder... again... wtf man, directions are right there in the readme.nfo
So eh, obviously you survived. But what about the rest?
Ted is now paying every last dime he makes for entertainment and gaming streaming services
Goddammit Ted.
Actually checking on Steam that appears to be a pretty accurate statement. My man's got a hell of a library built up.
Hahahahaha poor guy
Ended up being a hoax. The crew is still around and we occasionally get together to golf or drink at tailgaters when it's football season. Time and children have taken their toll on the LAN's and other drunken tomfoolery of those days. That's always the thing about the "good times" they just seem like life when we're in it.
What a ride. Someone asked what they get for doing this. I guess the answer was not killing your family or being arrested.
It ended up being some jackass on the SoCal sales team sending a "joke package" to one of our local sales guys. As far as I remember he was let go and no criminal charges were pressed. I think everyone involved was just relieved it was a hoax.
That's one hell of a story, thanks for sharing!
Absolutely! It was a pretty fun moment in my early years in this industry. Now, after 10 or so years working from home, I almost get nostalgic for an office.