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[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by arlesya

I got this game for free in a magazine back in 1997 in its full version. It's a pretty cool game, but I never understood why it came for free since the magazine was the equivalent of about 5 U.S. dollars.

The way this works is that the magazine paid LucasArts a licensing fee. LA agreed to that, since the sales of the game were dropping (or almost nonexistent), in order to get a little more cash out of the title.
The magazine might have ran a few more ads in that issue to balance the costs.

It's not really unusual - Polish gaming mags do it all the time, with between 2 and 4 full games per issue on a regular basis.