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Abandoned Games
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Apr 23, 2006 08:29 AM
from the something-to-think-about dept.
from the something-to-think-about dept.
Ghost Pig writes "The people of Exiled Gamers have put together an Abandonware Campaign with which they hope to be able to convince game publishers to rescue titles from their current 'Abandonware' status, and make them available for the public to play (legally) once again. They have made mention of quite a few titles that have slipped into the status of Abandonware (titles that it's no longer possible to buy at retail, and that are near impossible to locate on sites such as eBay), which includes System Shock 2, Freespace 2, as well as older titles, such as The Chaos Engine, Alien Breed and Flashback."
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Leave them "dead" (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to pirate games I can't get any other way. If I could buy them then I woukd, but with the current market there just isn't space on the shelves for older games and the retailers would make no money off them so wouldn't even want to stock them.
Leave them where we can get them for free. That way we can check out the history and decide if the latest one would be worth investing in or not.
Re:Leave them "dead" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Leave them "dead" (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think that the people who worked on and made Gunship actually got any semblance of a reasonable cut of that $40-$50 back then?
At any rate, you obviously missed the point of the parent's post. It wasn't to financially compensate the developers. What exactly was he supposed to do? Hunt them all down (since they've all undoubtedly changed jobs many, many times since) and pay them individually? If any have died, should he write a check to their estate for the 2 cents that they would have ear
Re:Leave them "dead" (Score:5, Insightful)
Many really quirky Japanese titles you've never heard of which become legendary among small communities.
Many Japanese Playstation games. Dreamcast games in the same way.
You have to remember, some of us don't believe in credit cards. We also don't trust handing money over to someone who has a name like Superhappyboy9982 with top "karma", that his friends could of given him. Remember a lot of people are dodgy and I can't be bothered to trust them on a number you can easily manipulate.
Amazon is a good source for new stuff. But if I can't open the wrapping fresh from the factory I won't order it without checking it out in person. My "good condition" could be "Mint condition" to someone else just as easy as it could be "I threw it to the dog and he only sort of ate most of it.. but you can still read page 38 to 42 without any problems".
I live in England where we get royally shafted on the Japanese market. Getting most the stuff I want is extremely difficult, let alone trying to find a limited run Japanese SNES game which no one has even heard of outside the small community it's built up. I have at least 50 SNES games in a cupboard behind me from all over the world, just as many Mega drive/Genesis and such.
You could argue that because fans translated the old Shin Megami Tensei games on the SNES (and hence I pirated them), that ATLUS now have made 6-7 game purchases out of me. There is no way I would of found the Megaten series if they hadn't been pirated and translated, hence I wouldn't of taken any notice of ATLUS, hence I wouldn't of bought SMT3, DDS1, DDS2.
In the same way I couldn't get Super robot taisen. Now ATLUS has picked up the rights to the only 2 games they can release.. Guess who has both on pre-order?
So yea, maybe once in a while I decide to be cheap and "steal" a game. Maybe some times I can't get hold of them. But I see no problem with a little underhanded dealing as long as we both win in the end.
I suppose you've never done anything even remotely close to illegal. You're a regular perfect human being with no faults and everything right?
Parent
Re:Leave them "dead" (Score:3, Informative)
Frogger was by Konami/Sega (1981). Donkey Kong was by Nintendo (also 1981). See Videotopia's arcade games page [videotopia.com] for more.
Never Fear! (Score:2)
Just like all the old arcade games, these will be preserved by users like us. As for being available legally, I don't see any company really caring. Look at all those Mame games floating around.
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]Dink Smallwood (Score:5, Interesting)
That was one cool and wicked game [wikipedia.org], and because they included the source of the original game (the map, etc; not the engine, IIRC), I was able to recompile the game so that I started with 500 Strength, 50000 money, etc and have lots of fun
You should check it out, it's the funniest (in a wicked sort of way) RPG I've ever played.
Re:Dink Smallwood (Score:5, Insightful)
The very reason that copyright used to require renewal. If the holder didn't care enough about his rights to fill out a form and send it in introduction to the public domain was accelerated.
It was a simple plan; and it worked.
KFG
Parent
Re:Dink Smallwood (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. Someone at the studio forgot to register/renew it, so it passed to the public domain. TV networks started airing it at christmas because it was royalty-free, and it became a big hit. The studios got pissed that they weren't making money, and lobbied congress. The irony is if the movie hadn't gone public domain, no one would have ever seen it...
Parent
Re:Dink Smallwood (Score:3, Informative)
That's why after 1990, you only see the movie broadcast on NBC (Who pays for exclusive broadcast rights).
Re:Dink Smallwood (Score:3, Interesting)
Heck, if those companies were smart, they'd be offering NOW to bundle their games with the cheapo $299-$499 computers. I doubt they'd get much money per unit, but that isn't exactly the point.
That's an okay idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Source: Ensuring that my kids don't have to listen to Dad tell the same "Oh man, when I was your age I played this great game, but we'd need to find an old binary and a goddamn 60 year old computer to play it..." story over and over again.
Losing information is serious business. Games are quickly becoming part of our shared culture. Think of how much our culture loses by losing those games to time? I can still read ancient Greek and Arabic poetry but I can't play Master's of Orion on my PPC Linux box? I don't know, something seems really fucked up about that.
Re:That's an okay idea, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:That's an okay idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wrote a commercial game back in 1989, and as far as I know the source code is GONE. A backup on floppies survived until the early 1990's, but I sure don't have a copy anymore. Even if I did, I don't own the copyright - the publisher does, and they got bought out by a bigger firm a long time ago (which in turn was itself eaten). The publisher owned all the art and sound copyright also.
Re:That's an okay idea, but... (Score:5, Funny)
When you said that I was suddenly reminded of a scene from Star Trek: First Contact. It occurred on Earth, shortly before Zefram Cochrane went on his first warp flight. Geordi La Forge, excited about meeting his idol and seeing the first warp ship is gushing. While looking at parts of the ship he's saying things like "Wow, I haven't seen something like this since high school!" To which Cochrane replies, "Wait, High School?" "Yes, in the future we learn about warp drives in high school. In fact, I went to Zefram Cochrane High School."
Then I thought about the increasing abstraction of my field (which happens to be computer science) through time ( For example, I could write a simple chess AI in a couple of days that would have been a major research effort maybe forty years ago. ) and came up with this: A group of GNU hackers from the early 22nd century, in a freak compiling accident, are transported through time to the late 80s. While there they meet a desperate RMS (revered as a god in the early 22nd century) who happens to be furiously hacking after losing all his source to a platter crash, freak tape backup fire, and an inappropriately emptied trash can accident which took all his notes on the compiler to a trash heap grave. The compiler hacker, BLT, has been left behind to assist RMS whilst the other hackers go off to rescue un-free code long lost to the ages. "Oh no, what am I going to do, future GNU/Disciple? I've got a talk in three weeks about my fancy new compiler, but all I've got now is a few source files that bootstrap themselves to say 'Hello, oppressed people of proprietary systems!'" "Don't worry RMS, I can code a C compiler in about 20 minutes. I did it in junior high" "Wait, junior high?" "Yeah, well, in the future a C compiler is usually a required project in the opening week of computer science classes. Pretty much anyone can do it, to various degrees of success; sort of like most people can do algebra now. In fact, I went to Richard M. Stallman high school. There was a statue of you out front. The shadow of you beard shielded by lily white skin from the evil day star at lunch."
Parent
Re:That's an okay idea, but... (Score:3, Informative)
We have a second year coursework to implement a compiler for a subset of C targeting a machine that is relatively
Old games were pretty nice (Score:3, Interesting)
They need to be released on the DS or PSP (Score:2)
These companies are pretty much morons for not trying to squeeze more out of their games that sold well from the past and these portables are the perfect place for them.
System Shock 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, EA recently renewed the trademarks on System Shock 3 [gamershell.com].... although they have probably done this just to sit on it (and stop fan made successors?). AFAIK the IP relating to the SS series is owned by different companies (this was in an interview on one of the SS fan sites).
Bioshock the spiritual successor to the SS series, so we'll just have to see how that lives up to expectations when it comes out.
Another world Hi-res (Score:3, Informative)
On April 14th 2006, a Windows XP/ME/2000/98 version of Another World, with high-resolution support and more detailed background graphics, was released as a tribute to the original game on the Another World website. The port is shareware; to unlock the full version, a special key must be bought from here for 7 euros.
You can download it from:
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.
Another World is no longer abandonware (Score:5, Informative)
Official Website (still being translated; download links at the bottom of the page)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.
Official Website in French (lots of very interesting details about the making of the game)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/ [anotherworld.fr]
Buying the Game
http://www.magic-productions.fr/aw/index.php?lang
Official Gameboy Advance Port
http://www.foxysofts.com/index.php?l=content/gba/
An Excellent Review (from an excellent site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=13 [idlethumbs.net]
An Excellent Interview (from same site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=44 [idlethumbs.net]
Most game companies . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
One example... (Score:3, Informative)
Subspace [wikipedia.org] was one of the first massive multiplayer games for the internet... I played it first in 1995 with a 24k modem... and I continue playing it year after year, still my favorite game.
Virgen Interactive released the game after it gave up on selling it (I guess it was too much ahead of times). The most popular client for it is Continuum. [wikipedia.org]
Download Continuum / Subspace clients at:
http://www.subspacedownloads.com/ [subspacedownloads.com]
http://www.trenchwars.org/Trench/index.php?action
Give it a try & join the hundres of players online!
I hope other abandoned games can find such a future as this Virgen abandoned product.
Even if a publisher would want to do this... (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance they may have to pay royalties to the developer or licence fees for a software component or trademark for every copy distributed (even if for free). This is particularly troublesome if the party to pay is now defunct or if the current owner of the rights is unknown or disputed. The original contracts may even be missing.
If there was serious money involved they could perhaps be compelled to sort such issues out, but since that isn't the case, most publishers really don't want to go through all the hassle.
A damn shame for sure, but that's just the way things are.
Re:Even if a publisher would want to do this... (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, suppose a game was developed by Company A in 1990. They then signed a 5-year publishing contract with Company B. Everyone remembers the game being released by Company B. My under
Games are getting ported to mobile devices (Score:5, Interesting)
Check this page for example:
http://www.magic-productions.fr/mobile_games.php [magic-productions.fr]
Currently, it mostly contains classical Amiga titles, ported to Symbian-compatible phones. I guess in a couple of years it will also contains PC games from the mid-nineties, as mobile devices keep improving.
If I was owning the rights to a famous computer game of yore, I sure would be very cautious, today more than ever, not to miss an opportunity to license it again. Today is a bad day for abandonware.
Activision released Civ-CTP2 this way (Score:3, Interesting)
Freespace 2 (Score:4, Informative)
The ISO images (capable of being put through Alcohol 120% or so) are VERY readily available online with what looks like a real blessing. The FSOpen project is one of those better game-source-code efforts where some real, even impressive improvement was done to the game engine to bring it up to scratch..
Online redistribution (Score:5, Interesting)
Selling these games online for a couple of bucks doesn't hurt anyone. It's pretty much 99% profit. They don't need to produce "expensive" cdroms. Support? well.. none, make that very clear when people buy it. Afterall, it's ancient software that often doesn't run well on current systems. In turn the distributers could donate money to projects that offer support for their ancient games. Projects like DOSbox, which is pretty much required for a lot of those older games.
So in short:
- online distribution of the game AS IS
- including optional scanned manuals
- low price
- percentage of the profit to projects that make it possible to run the old game
it's a win-win situation for everybody
Bring back Betrayal at Krondor! (Score:3, Interesting)
This doesn't concern me personally. I have three legit store-bought copies of the game already.
But why oh why oh why did the folks at Vivendi "We put the 'Battle' in Bnetd" Universal decide to pull (well, rather, not re-arrange the redistribution [liberatedgames.com]) the Betrayal at Krondor from freeware? It's a wonderful game, one of the greatest RPGs ever made for PC. And there it sits, dusty, once again doomed to be "abandonware". I may sound a bit silly when babbling about the mythical Golden Era when people could download the game, legally and all, from Sierra. But it is a nice game. *sigh*
I'd kill Abandonware (Score:3, Interesting)
Save the Public Domain! (Score:3, Interesting)
Woah woah woah, hold the phone.
Abandonware is a godsend for gamers. It allows you to download your old favorites for free if you can spare the 5 minutes to Google for them. Licensing these games back from abandonware status does nothing to help consumers! The public domain is an endangered public right...music , games, movies...even our very childhoods...are being made illegal to re-visit unless we pay a tax to the information slave masters. When you revoke abandonware status you make it illegal to download games for free, and you end up paying $39.99 on amazon for M.U.L.E. or Space Quest.
STOP ADVOCATING THE PILLAGING OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, WE NEED MORE PUBLIC DOMAIN RIGHTS NOT LESS.
Re:Save the Public Domain! (Score:3, Informative)
Most "Abandonware" is still legally under copyright, it's just a copyright that is not currently actively defended. There is no law that says "It's okay to do anything you want with this", only an understanding that you probably won't get sued for doing it today.
It's like sitting on the grass when the nearest police officer is having lunch, or parking in a pay lot
general principle of abandoned intellectual props (Score:4, Insightful)
Some wisdom from spanish proverbs.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which roughly translates to "water that you are not going to drink of, let it flow". It seems like game companies (not game developers, though as it would seem by the article) don't get that they're not going to get any money on these games, and insist on suing the pants off anybody who tries to relive the old days by downloading an old adventure game off bittorrent. Some people are saying, "Well, they could be ported to mobile platforms and sold for money!". This sounds like a great idea, if I do say so myself. Heck, I would buy them if some old games got ported to the PSP/DS or cellphone. The problem is, they're not doing it! And even if they were, what if I didn't happen to own the platform which the companies choose to port it to? Would it really hurt their revenue if some people were playing it for free on PCS while some were paying to play it on the DS? No, it probably wouldn't. Because the people who would play these old games on new portable platforms wouldn't be playing at home. They would buy it because it's PORTABLE, first, and it's NOSTALGIC second.
The bottom Line? why are you game companies hoarding water (old games) and not drinking it (selling it)? It's not doing ANYBODY any good, and releasing it as abandonware would improve your image.
One Point Worth Noting (Score:3, Insightful)
Consequently, I've already paid for the rights to play a lot of games already where the floppy disks or tapes they were supplied on have long since deteriorated and have been binned.
So those who are anti-Abandonware should bear this point in mind...
Re:Thats what abandonware is! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thats what abandonware is! (Score:5, Informative)
Some do, notably Sierra and Lucasarts, though.
Parent
Re:Thats what abandonware is! (Score:3, Insightful)
While that is an interesting rule, it still is not the law.
Re:Thats what abandonware is! (Score:2)
Donkey Kong.. yeah, that game never amounted to much. *cough*
WRONG! (Score:5, Insightful)
Something goes into the public domain when:
1) The rights owner explicitly places it there.
2) The rights duration expires.
Unless either of those two happens, it's still Copyrighted and the rights to publish (i.e. make and distribute copies) belongs to the rights holder or their successors in interest.
It's infringement, through and through. What the "abandonware campaign" seeks to do is to get the status changed on those titles or get a publishing permission so that they can be distributed legally under whatever conditions they can manage to get the rights holders to grant distribution rights on.
Parent
legal abandonware (Score:2)
The only situation where you can truly expect it to be legal is when the company holding the copyrights went belly-up and even then you would need to find out whether anyone bid for the copyrights.
You could try to construct a moral or legal argument involving abandonded property, but a bona fide effort to find out whether the holder of the copyrights really gave up his rights might involve approaching the holder with an offer of 1
Re:legal abandonware (Score:3, Insightful)
But that describes the core problem, and the reason we have "abandon"ware in the first place...
Consider a game produced by a privately-owned company, consisting of one person with no offspring, no known relatives of any degree, and no outstanding debts... If that person died, no one could "own" the copyright,
Re:Thats what abandonware is! (Score:2)
Consider yourself corrected (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Consider yourself corrected (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but, that's not the same as... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, but, that's not the same as... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a developer on the source code project and i write some of the major modding tools.
Some Important URLs:
http://scp.indiegames.us/ [indiegames.us]
http://hard-light.net/ [hard-light.net]
Parent
Re:Sounds good (Score:3, Informative)
Then go over here [gamequestdirect.com] and buy Rez. They've obtained the rights to repress some rare/in-demand games.
Re:Freescape2 license (Score:5, Informative)
This software product, FreeSpace 2 (the "Software"), is
intended solely for your personal noncommercial home entertainment
use. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, or disassemble the
Software, except as permitted by law. Interplay Productions and
Volition, Inc. retain all rights and title in the Software including
all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives
thereof. You are granted a revocable, nonassignable limited license
to create derivative works of this Software solely for your own
personal noncommercial home entertainment use and may publicly
display such derivative works to the extent specifically
authorized by Interplay in writing. A copy of this authorization, if
any, will be provided on Interplay's World Wide Web site, located at
http://www.interplay.com/ [interplay.com] or by contacting the legal department of
Interplay Productions in the US at (949) 553-6655. The Software,
including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters,
images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all
other elements of the Software may not be copied (except as provided
below), resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or
otherwise), used on pay-per-play, coin-op or other for-charge basis,
or for any commercial purpose. You may make copies of the Software
for your personal noncommercial home entertainment use and to give to
friends and acquaintances on a no cost noncommercial basis. This
limited right to copy the Software expressly excludes any copying or
distribution of the Software on a commercial basis, including,
without limitation, bundling the product with any other product or
service and any give away of the Software in connection with another
product or service. Any permissions granted herein are provided on a
temporary basis and can be withdrawn by Interplay Productions at any
time. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
etc. etc.
Parent