My book club at the videogame company I work at read it a few months ago. Results were fair to positive. I agree, it was pretty interesting for the first half, or maybe two thirds. Then things went into la la land, at least from the perspective of a videogame programmer. The author apparently was much more interested in advancing a narrative than paying attention to the remotest bit of technical feasibility, which was kind of disappointing to the group. Funny story: our server programmer, who had extensive MMO work experience, claimed he was "deeply offended" by that part for it's sheer hubris. Up until that point, it seemed like the author had done some pretty good research, as I only had a few nits about technical aspects, but overall pretty spot on.
The characters were very... interesting, which is good, and actually, fairly accurate. But I had a hard time with the book because none of them were very *likeable*, and I have tons of very likeable colleagues - most of us are not nearly that edgy. Oh, and apparently, almost everyone in videogame development is bi or gay, and we all do a lot of drugs. I had no idea. Well, okay, creative license and all that, or maybe I just missed out somehow. We definitely have a lot of very interesting characters, certainly, so I'll give that a pass.
For me, the best part was the sense of nostalgia the book invoked, as I started my game development career right around that time as well. So all the references, I totally got them all, and it was a lot of fun walking down memory lane like that. I think it's a worthwhile read if you can put aside a few of the technical quibbles (hard for me as a videogame programmer), but the nostalgia trip is worth the muddled direction near the end, if that's your thing, or are interested in a fictional historical narrative about videogame development.