Abandonware: Good, Or Evil (Or awesome)
I know this is something that a lot of people are always talking about and i also know that there may be a lot of people who are going to call me filthy pirating scum for this and ALSO that there may be another thread much like this hidden elsewhere in the forum but basically, what do you think? Abandonware good or bad?
Personally, having been born back in 1990 i missed out on all the classic games such as Maniac Mansion and whatnot. Also i was a little too young at the time to think that most of the games around then were any good. Where were the explosions? now days though i find my self spending vast sums of money continuously buying classic games. Some games though are impossible to find (at least in NZ). The point is that i download a lot of abandonware. Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis being the latest one (please, no links). I am aware that some of the people at telltale game may have worked on some of these classic games but i'm sure they know what i'm talking about. Once again, what do you think? should Lucasarts etc. continue saying that i shouldn't download their games despite there being no other way to get them or not?
Personally, having been born back in 1990 i missed out on all the classic games such as Maniac Mansion and whatnot. Also i was a little too young at the time to think that most of the games around then were any good. Where were the explosions? now days though i find my self spending vast sums of money continuously buying classic games. Some games though are impossible to find (at least in NZ). The point is that i download a lot of abandonware. Indiana Jones and the fate of atlantis being the latest one (please, no links). I am aware that some of the people at telltale game may have worked on some of these classic games but i'm sure they know what i'm talking about. Once again, what do you think? should Lucasarts etc. continue saying that i shouldn't download their games despite there being no other way to get them or not?
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Comments
Most people are just looking for free games and will download anything they find on the internet. Whatever happened to supporting the developers?
But I'll let you know right now If I see them in stores I'd buy them. I'm still looking in pawn shops etc.
Also I already own Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max for Mac. But I don't have a mac anymore, so I can't play them sadly.
At least I can still use the hint books that came with them.
On getting Lucasarts games to work on WinXP: Once again Summvm is the way to go get it here -> www.scummvm.org
I would have absolutely no problem giving a quick PayPal payment of a few bucks to any game owner/publisher who still makes an old, favorite game available for download without draconian DRM. But if no one cares enough about protecting its copyright, they will by default lose it (at least in the U.S.). You should look up the legal history of the Thermos company to see proof of that.
I used to make software about 10 years ago. I would not be surprised if some of them are still going around. I gave up developing them years ago. So, am I supposed to be incensed if something that I abandoned is still being distributed? I think not.
Sorry for the extended rant, but the "stealing is stealing" attitudes have been a hot button of mine for a l-o-n-g time.
As to awesome vaporware, a few weeks ago I rebuilt an old Pentium 350 w/ PC-DOS 7 (legal) and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (legal) just to play Magic Carpet (legal), which AFAIC is one of the best games every released. (I even have the TCP/IP stack installed! I can surf the Internet through my DSL connection using Netscape 4.08! How's *that* for geeky?
Yeah, ok. I'm going to march into my local Best Buy and demand that the DVDs for all TV shows and movies that are older than five years old be given to me free of charge. The solution is not to start giving games away, but to sell older games. I think it's grat when compaines support their old games by selling them on their website. Geez, it's not like you're going to pay full price.
Abandonware is not judged by its age but by whether or not it is no longer made available commercially and whether or not its copyright is actively enforced by the copyright owner. Technically, if a game is made available even for a few dollars by the copyright owner, it cannot be categorized as abandonware. In that circumstance the game should be purchased and distribution can be classified is illegal.
However, if the game is no longer available for commercial purchase, the publisher is no longer in existance, and the curernt copyright holders (if any) are voluntarily not enforcing their copyright, that most certainly categorizes it as abandonware. The game should be made available to whomever wants it without fear of "you evil pirate" guilt-trippers on his or her tail.
Who's guilt-tripping? He's the one who brought up the arbitrary five year rule. Of course my argument was absurd. That was the point. I completely agree with everything else you said.
What company? What if they didn't make a lot of money? What if the game sold 30,000 copies?
Why not? Because they're old? Because they're graphics are outdated? They're still a lot of fun to play. Casual games are very popular right now and they have outdated graphics and simplified gameplay. Why can't ID charge casual game prices?
Well, some do. Revolution recently released their older adventure games into the public domain. It's great when companies do that, but it should be left up to the company what they want to do with their games. In a perfect world all games would either be easy to buy, or freeware. Unfortunately this isn't the case. I have no problem with abandonware (Ive got an abandonware site in my favorites). What ticks me off are the people who download an old game just because its old, even if its available to purchase. That isnt abandonware. Thats stealing.
Edit:
I really hope I don't come off as one of those guys. I'm not.
Trust me, I tried that site many a time but they refuse to sell games to anywhere that isn't in the USA or Canada. The point i'm trying to get across is that sometimes it is actually humanly impossible for some people to get games unless they spend a vast sum of money moving to USA. or possibly making a time machine. before i download anything i try to find somewhere that actually still sells the game but as has been pointed out, most people don't think of New Zealand as a real country. I support the developers alot as i don't actually support piracy (except of course for when i there is no other option and i really NEED to experience a game) and spent a large sum of money on Sam and Max, Day of the tentacle, Broken Swords 1 and 2, Monkey Island 1 and 2 and many more but it was a long and painful journey to get each of these games. The only reason i actually got any of them was because of a stroke of luck. Revolution was clever and released Beneath a Steel Sky and Lure Of The Temptress because they realized that it was near impossible to find these games anymore and they wanted people to play these games. Not just hear about them. For Broken Swords 1 and 2 they provide links to a few websites that ship about the world. If all the old games publishers would do this, I wouldn't use abandonware. But they don't so i will continue downloading these classics as it is the only thing i can do to play these games. especially seeing as Lucasarts seem to not want to have anything to do with their actual good game licenses.
I did cheat however, like grabing Zak for FM towns (i got this one on C64) or loom CD (mine was a floppy one) to refinish the game with discovery. I bought DOTT twice however (floppy version and later the CD version when i got a CD drive)
I don t feel guilty at all.
I also have abandonware versions of Loom and Zak McKracken, for the same reason...I'd like to buy them, but LucasArts doesn't sell them.
So really, there's no legal way to download a game that isn't already offered for download by the copyright-holding party. I mean obviously people download games all the time, but the fact that companies don't sell the games anymore doesn't really matter or make it any less illegal.
You are correct Udvarnoky in essence. Obviously there are many games termed abandonware - but even the people who host abandonware sites acknowledge that what they are doing is technically illegal. They typically have a policy that although it is illegal they will continue to distribute the games until the copyright holder makes some noise, at which point they pull the games off their site. Obviously since many of the copyright holders don't care that their games are being distributed for free since they are out of business, the game is so outdated, or for other reasons abandonware will continue to exist.
Basically it is like rolling slowly through a stop sign without stopping. Where I live in California, even if a police officer sees you do that they will rarely stop you. Technically I break the law every day doing this - I don't have a problem with it. I also have to understand that if a cop does see me and decides to give me a ticket I have earned it and can't argue.
The same goes for Abandonware - it is sometimes nice that these games are there, but as soon as someone gets upset about it, we don't really have the right to be mad. It sucks that certain companies can't see the light and release these games for free themselves, or declare them freeware, but the bottom line is that the copyright laws are fundamentally very good and important and we should be happy that they are there.
Sorry for the long post.
1)Everything is legal unless a law says it is not.
2) We have two kinds of laws a)local/country laws and b)international laws
3)International laws can be only applied in a country if the country agrees and signs some kind of legal document.
4) sometimes there are conflicts between international laws and local/country laws because one law's content may negate or oppose the content the other law has, this is usually very messy when it happens and things simply get "stuck".
5) laws can have "legal windows"( I translated that term directly from Greek so it might not make any sense- I'll try to explain) these "windows" are parameters/situations/conditions that might occur that the people who made the law have not thought of or the law is badly written or confusing that does not cover those cases or the law enforcers can't understand if it does or does not cover those cases.
6) for certain issues, like the legal/illegal download of games, there are no laws and in order for the law enforcers/courts to deal with those issues they have merged them with other issues with which they have some common characteristics and for which laws exist, but since these laws are not made for those issues the amount of legal windows is huge
now to get back to the abandonware issue, there is no specific law for that issue(in Greece at least, and I am sure in many other countries too) so what has happened is what I describe in part 6 above, which i don't want to write again, and this other law under which this issue falls, says in simple words "it is illegal to download a game that is commercially available" nothing else. the legal window here is that downloading games that are no longer commercially available is legal because the law does not make it illegal
and the really wicked part in this legal mayhem is that if a Greek abandonware site has some non commercial games on it the only way they can be removed is if the copyrights owner wants them removed (international copyright law etc) but this can only happen if the country accepts that international law( Greece does) however the "wicked" part in our case is that the site can put the games up again seconds after they are removed because the Greek law in this case permits it not by legalizing but from not illegalizing it, that is case of law conflict. Funny eh? Anyway since this post is getting huge and i have enough material to write a book I will stop here with a small summary an apology and a hint for those who might have though "what do we care about Greek laws etc". Summary: Abandonware sites and downloading content from them is not software piracy and it is not illegal not because it is legal but because it is not illegal. Apology: sorry for the size but I really had to get it out of my system, Hint: websites(some or all, need to do some more research on this issue) are treated in the same way as commercial airplanes/ships and embassies are treated.
I think people just wanted to have peoples opinion apart from how legal it is or not.
But I'll try to bring the thread back into that particular topic. It's clear that if Udvarnoky and I do not just agree to disagree, this will become a much hotter thread than it should be. We're obviously going to end up polarizing the thread if the legal discussion continues. I suggest we deviate from that course immediately.
The value, of course, depends on the game, just like anything else. But for the most part, the over-complexities of today's games often make the simplicity of older games very appealing when the focus was on the game more than the "oohs" and "aahs" that seem to push today's games. There were some games that were utter crap while some still stand the test of time, IMHO.
Abandonware that I still enjoy from days long past, many from companies that have long since vanished:
- "Magic Carpet" (PC DOS - Bullfrog)
- "Defender of the Crown" (C64 - Cinemaware)
- "Jumpman" (C64 - Epyx)
- "Space Taxi" (C64 - Muse)
- "Arctic Fox" (C64 - Electronic Arts)
- "Stellar 7" / "Nova 9" (PC DOS - Sierra On-Line)
- "Tank Wars" / "Scorched Earth" (PC DOS - Unknown)
- "Airborne Ranger" (C64 - Microprose)
- "LHX" (PC DOS - Electronic Arts)
- "Su-27 Stormovik" (PC DOS - Electronic Arts)
Great, great stuff. All of it. So-o-o-o many hours spent playing these games.
And sometimes -- sometimes! -- I actually get a hankering to fire up the old Atari 2600 emulator and have an adventure going after that blasted duck ... er ... dragon.
Clearly you have a knack for misinterpretation and overreacting. I'm out.
By the way, the whole "(or awesome)" thing was just something that happened after spending a little too much time watching strongbad cartoons. Doesn't mean i think piracy is cool because i get to play games without legally obtaining them. or something
The US Copyright Office is currently reviewing the law as it applies to "orphan works" and "abandonware". The question is how to treat works (books, films, software, etc.) for which the copyright owner cannot be found so that permission can be granted to republish or create derivative works. "The issue is whether orphan works are being needlessly removed from public access and their dissemination inhibited. If no one claims the copyright in a work," they write, "it appears likely that the public benefit of having access to the work would outweigh whatever copyright interest there might be."
This is why I love the internet - it shows how slow beaurocrats are at getting things done.
This whole debate just makes me smile.
Freeware doesn't exist from a legal standpoint either. A game is either Public Domain or it's not, most freeware games aren't. Freeware and abandonware are both terms invented by gamers.