Got any links to the full story about this?
I don't, but I can tell you what I know. I got one back when it came out in the mid-90's. It had like the first 10 levels or so of Quake, just like the old Doom demo which was very generous. I played those levels to death, and then at one point I realized that if you just put the disc into a CD player you could listen to the amazing Trent Reznor soundtrack as well, which was already a huge bonus.
Also on the disc was the full version of Quake, and the full versions of Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, and all of the add-on level packs for those games. This was before digital distribution, so the idea was you could call ID and pay them for the games you wanted and they would give you a code to unlock them. One of my friends found a key generator online that would spit out a code you could copy and paste in and we had the entire ID catalog like 5 minutes later.
*please don't ban me for talking about piracy this was like over 20 years ago and I'm now an honest adult with a job who buys my own games*
But for real it was like the 90's version of the Orange Box but even better because it was free.