What is Shovelware?

A Mess, That's What

In the 1990s, most homes did not have an internet connection. This led many publishers to fill CD-ROMs with software and add-ons snatched from the internet. These CD-ROMs would then be sold in stores, offering "hundreds" of great games or new levels for existing games.

The reality, however, was that most of these collections weren't curated at all. They were simply dumps of files found online, the focus being on quantity instead of quality.

The term "shovelware" was coined as derisive way of describing these collections, as they apparently made their products by shoveling as much stuff as they could onto a CD-ROM.

The Doom community was particularly hard hit by this trend, as the popularity of the game and ease of adding new levels made it an easy target for people trying to make a quick buck off other people's efforts.

One Side Note

Although "shovelware" refers to any collection of low quality software bundled published in large bundles, some of these collections were actually made with care and are of decent or even excellent quality. Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of shovelware collections that flooded the market, there's currently no way to predict which collections those are.