Abandoned Games

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."

Consider yourself corrected

Freespace 2 was a commercial game, produced by the same people as Freespace 1. Several years later the source code to the engine was released.

Re:Yeah, but, that's not the same as...

Actually you can legally obtain FS2 for free - the original EULA actually contained a clause allowing you to give free copies to your friends - took three or four years for people to notice

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]

Leave them "dead"

Personally I'd rather they left them in the "grey" area or released them as freeware. Quite often I've played a game left for dead, found it to be really worth it and hence became a fan of the company. I'd like to hope others have done this as well and hence we're all found some new games and new intrests.

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"

Sonic 2 beta comes to mind.

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?

Dink Smallwood

A plug for one of my favourite games — Dink Smallwood [rtsoft.com]. Two years after the game was published, it was "On 10-17-1999 released the game as freeware, no ad-ware, no spyware and no strings attached." Now that's an example to follow!

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

. . .a terrible thing that prolongs copyrights long after nobody cares.

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

Re:Dink Smallwood

Victim of "It's a wonderful life".

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...

That's an okay idea, but...

I'd much rather have the source code to those games, as opposed to having them go on sale again. You know why? Because when the companies who own those games decide to stop selling them (again) you'll have to go right back and beg for them to sell them (again). If they release the source not only will you be able to obtain it whenever you want, but you can port the code to play on modern systems (meaning you don't need the silly hack of emulators or having an old DOS machine sitting about).

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...

What if 60 years from now you have the source code but you don't have a compiler for the now defunct C language? :D

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."

Re:That's an okay idea, but...

I'm assuming you'd also like them to release the arts and assets in addition to the source code. Otherwise you have yourself a nice engine that doesn't do much until you put together your own models, textures, sounds, music, and whatnots.

Old games were pretty nice

A lot of old games were really nice. The one in that list that really stood out to me was Flashback. I played for ever just to beat it, and it was among the first games I really liked. That along with Another World were really fun games. A few other not noted in the list at the site are the "Space Quest" series (Space Quest 1 was *awesome*! First game where "lick ground" was a valid command!), the "Kings Quest" series, and also the "Quest for Glory" series (Though it's not fun being killed completely randomly by bees.) All fun games, and really entertaining. Comparing them to some games these days will make some say "They really don't do it like they used to". Games these days are a lot more graphics centric.

System Shock 3

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

Speaking of abandonware, there is also the option of taking the old DOS game and optimize it for current hardware and OS:

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.h tm [anotherworld.fr]

Another World is no longer abandonware

Another World (aka Out Of This World in the US), a technological predecessor to Flashback and a great, mythical game on its own, lost its abandonware status a few days ago when a High Resolution Collector's Edition was released by its author, Eric Chahi. It is currently being sold online for 7 euros, a demo is available. You can also play the official Gameboy Advance port, if you have an emulator or a flashable game cartridge.

Official Website (still being translated; download links at the bottom of the page)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.h tm [anotherworld.fr]

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= us [magic-productions.fr]

Official Gameboy Advance Port
http://www.foxysofts.com/index.php?l=content/gba/a nworld.inc [foxysofts.com]

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 . . .

. . . aren't going to be interested in releasing for free old games that might diminish the desire for the purchase of new games (or in the case of arcade/console classics, repurchase of the same games). The effectively perpetual copyrights of these programs have mostly passed to companies with interest in selling current games--the occasional and lauded freeware release of an old game will continue to be rare as hens' teeth.

One example...

This is sort of what happened with my favorite game: Continuum / Subspace.
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= Downloads& [trenchwars.org]

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...

Even if a publisher would want to release one of these old games, they may not be able to due to contractual obligations or practical considerations.

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.

Games are getting ported to mobile devices

It looks like more and more "abandoned" games are being ported to mobile devices, the low resolution, low power of which is a good match to the capabilities of the computers they were developed on, that many years ago.

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

And even with a lot of the code and content ripped out of it (like the music) for copyright reasons, and despite not being under the GPL, it still has a fair number of people modding and improving it. If you aren't going to make money on a property anyway, the good will from such a gesture could help your other products.

Freespace 2

I was under the understanding that Volition had released the source code for Freespace 2 *and* officially classed the original game CDs as abandonware already.

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

There is no major money is the ancient games. There is however small money in them.
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!

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

if I was a publisher (and profits mattered more than games, I know a few for whom they don't). Right now I'm sitting on a stack of 40+ PSX/PS2 games I'm dying to play. There's probably another 10 or 20 'classic' games I want to spend serious time with. Then there's the whole MMORPG thing. And then you've got games like Morrorowind and Oblivion with 300+ hours of gameplay. How the hell is a publisher suppose to sell new games in a market like this? It was fine when the common folk were first getting into games. All those 20-something's buying Final Fantasy VII and Madden 2kX did a fine job driving growth. But pretty soon publishers are going to run smack into the wall that is their own back catalog.

Save the Public Domain!

"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."

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.

general principle of abandoned intellectual props

I think there's a good case for automatically expiring copyrights and trademarks if they're abandoned. For example, if software is no longer supported and sold, it should become open source unless it can be shown that it makes up a substantial part of a newer version which is being actively developed. If music or movies not published for say five years, they should lose copyright protection. If the owner of a patent does not create or license a product embodying the invention for five years, it should expire. Ok, so this is simplistic, but the spirit I am trying to get at is to stop hoarding of intellectual property and denying the public at large the chance to enjoy it.

Some wisdom from spanish proverbs....

Interestingly enough, after I read this article I went and read some spanish proverbs on Wikiquotes [wikiquote.org] (I am [trying] to learn spanish). I came across this one:

Agua que no has de beber, déjala correr.

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

Although I'd happily pay a few dollars/pounds/Euros for "official" releases of Abandonware games, those individuals or companies that still own the copyrights to old games should remember that for a lot of us (myself included), it's about replaying some of those games we enjoyed and legally purchased in our younger years - for example, in my case, since I never owned a console, it's ZX Spectrum and Amiga titles.

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!

No. It's not legal. It's just a law that isn't enforced much, in that most copyright holders of really old games don't bother chasing up abandonware sites, since it's not exactly a huge revenue loss.

Some do, notably Sierra and Lucasarts, though.

WRONG!

Abandonware is NOT legal to copy around as it's NOT legally public domain.

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.

Re:Sounds good

I'd love to get my hands on Vib Ribbon or Rez.

Then go over here [gamequestdirect.com] and buy Rez. They've obtained the rights to repress some rare/in-demand games.