John Romero is auctioning off original Doom 2 floppy disks
UPDATE: Sells for $3150 on eBay.
UPDATE 30/06/2017 2.52am: John Romero's original Doom 2 floppy disks sold for an astonishing $3150 on eBay.
The buyer asked Romero to sign the disks, because why wouldn't you?
"Obviously, they went for more than I ever expected they would. Way, way more," Romero told Shacknews. "The buyer is a hardcore Doom fan, and I'll be throwing in some other stuff for him, too."
The Doom co-creator said the auction wasn't spawned by greed so much as it was a desire to curb the hoarding habits of he and his partner, fellow game developer Brenda Romero.
"Both of us have been in the industry for over 35 years. I saved literally everything, and Brenda likewise saved a lot," Romero said. "For the sake of scale, when we moved to Ireland, our archives filled an entire container. That same container was held by Irish Customs which simply could not believe - and reasonably so - that anyone would have that amount of game stuff and not be a game store business."
Not all of Romero's historical artefacts will be sold for money. The Doom developer said he'll offer some goods to museums and donate more. He simply wanted to give private collectors a shot at owning such relics.
"We've donated some to museums and will donate more, but we also figured collectors would appreciate some of it as well," Romero said.
He further noted that he'll be auctioning off even more goods from gaming's golden age in the near future.
ORIGINAL STORY 27/06/2017 11.21pm: Industry legend John Romero, the co-founder of id Software and co-creator of Doom, Quake, and Daikatana, is auctioning off his original floppy disks for Doom 2 on eBay.
There's no frills included, like a box or instructions; it's just the disks, though Romero noted that he will sign the floppies for the winning bid, should they want him to (which of course they will).
Despite these being ordinary 3.5 inch floppy disks in a world where disk drives have long since become obsolete, the bids on eBay have risen to a staggering $880.
Romero noted in his listing that this is the original launch version of Doom 2 (v 1.7). And if there was any doubt that this listing was fraudulent, worry not, as Romero promoted the auction on his verified Twitter account.
Chances are he didn't expect this much money to be tossed his way. In fact, he began the bidding at a modest $10.
The eBay auction will come to a close Wednesday, 28th June, at 2.13pm BST.