If it's that bad and has that bad a reputation, why do you think you have to have it?

I actually disagree that each and every crappy game ever made deserves to be archived for posterity. Who is arguing that every garage cover band that has ever recorded an album or that every live concert ever performed needs to be preserved?

So my answer is a clear "No".

If you believe in nostalgia and somehow feel you somehow need to revisit the past and download and play some old game not on sale with the idea that it will never be available again, then I feel should it ever be re-released, you should be obligated to make amends by buying it. It's not your software in the first place. So if you pirate Captain Claw, because it is a game that you think is so good you would be willing to pay for it, but it just isn't available anymore, doesn't it make sense to buy it if it were to return to sale since that is your basis for the argument, right?

I really don't care if the game wasn't as good as you were told or remembered. We all buy games that don't quite appeal. So why are you trying to defend piracy on the basis of the quality of the game? Didn't you do your research?

And again, I go back to the tens of thousands of games created to date. That there are far more for sale than any human could dream of finishing in a 1000 years. There are so many legally free games available and so many inexpensive games. Why do you feel the "need" to be downloading abandonware? If a game has specific nostalgia value, maybe, but then you should be willing to pay for it if/when it becomes legally available since you chose to steal the rights for it by downloading it from an abandonware site.

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newslettter.

I completely understand these points (though I don't necessarily agree that someone might WANT to keep the games from the current marketplace - the cost of getting them out there might be a hurdle they can't surmount). I just don't agree with them as justification for getting them for free after they are no longer available for purchase. This site should help explain that - just because they aren't available now doesn't mean there are no plans or no possibilities for a glorious return to the market; witness the gOg catalog, witness SS2, witness the Gold Box games... witness NOLF if that ever happens.

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The digital nature of these products is what muddies the water. Easily copied, takes no physical shelf space, and reproduction costs are - I'm simplifying here - limited to hosting them and the bandwidth necessary for the transfer of data. So why NOT have them available? I get it.

For those who are in favor of getting these games for free, I don't think I can offer a compelling reason - other than these: A) if it's worth having then it's worth paying for, B) and it's not your right to decide what is free. Just because you don't like copyright law in its current form, that doesn't mean you're justified in going around it simply because the means exist. We expect the marketplace to trust us with DRM-free products, and then post here that, well, it doesn't actually matter because we're going to take the products anyway whether or not they are for sale.

Apparently it's only piracy if someone is selling it? 30 seconds after it disappears from the marketplace - if even temporarily - it's free for all?

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Reflecting further, I think my opposition would disappear if the rights holder(s) are contacted in each case and they give permission for the titles to be distributed freely, with the option to withdraw free distribution if the rights holder opts to sell the game within xx number of years of its original release. Or something like that. But I feel that the rights holder MUST be part of the conversation.

Not sure why my position has to be the opposite of games-as-art. The Mona Lisa is art but my life isn't lacking because I don't have one hanging on the wall; frankly, I don't particularly care for it. My life isn't lacking because I don't have 'abandonware' game XYZ on my hard drive. Of purchase-able games, I have yet to play Planescape: Torment, so...

Know why I haven't played PS:T? In part, because - like so many others here - I have a sizable backlog, and it's swimming among the other games in that backlog. Frankly, if one has a backlog of other games then there is no excuse for downloading so-called abandoned games. At any rate, if one is going to compare the worth of BG vs. CCS, then does that imply there is some unwritten order-of-play for all of the games out there? I can't play Candy Crush Saga until I've played Baldur's Gate? If not, then one can simply pass over the games not available for sale and stick with those that are, with the hope that some of the unavailable games do eventually make it for sale - like System Shock 2 did. suppose BG gets removed for sale and you didn't buy it, but Pillars of Eternity is available... so buy that and play it instead. Can we agree that's a more reasonable comparison than BG to CCS?

The argument is that it once existed so it must be available one way or another in perpetuity. I disagree. That's not how it works - like it or not - and it isn't the downloading-persons' arbitrary right to make that decision. The right way to do it is to get in touch with the rights holder(s) and work toward getting the game back in the market or gain approval for free distribution.

What I think the system should be like is that if a game disappears from sale and remains so for a year, then it would be legally classified as an abandoned media and be free for distribution on the basis that you will not get any form of support or updates for it. After that, if the company wishes to re-sell said product, then it is allowed to do so but only under the moniker of a re-release. Whether previous owners get the re-release for free or not is up to them, but it would be encouraged to reward those who did buy the game and entice those with the abandoned version to get new content, is something I could see working out.

However, it's not always that right holders simply cease the game from selling. They suffer bankruptcy for instance, and soon the rights holder will dissolve, no longer existing. Your own approach of contacting the rights owner is noble and all, but what will you suggest to games of companies that no longer exist?

Furthermore, because of the uncertainty of the future. Let's say GRiD will never be back up on the stores, and that Codemasters will no longer exist 30 years down the line, and that nobody will pick up the GRiD IP and use it in Codemasters' stead. Let's also assume that neither Steam nor GOG let you download the game after it was taken down. In this scenario, what do you think is the better option: uploading the game to online hosting solutions that are going to stay years after the fact so that the game is never lost, or just leave it be lost?

But why do you think this HAS to be available to play? The GRID games have licensed cars and Codemasters owns rights too. Why should you get to use the IP licenses for those cars? Shouldn't the creators of the game have some say in the matter?

The car IP holders would rather you play the new game with the new year's cars. Why can't they be allowed to do what they want with their works? They created it, not you. What gives you the right to play these games for free? Why do you have to have it? You know right now that games with licensed cars expire, why don't you pay for it now?

I used GRiD as an example of a game that might be stuck in this condition for long. Regardless.

I see this mentality often, especially moreso when it comes to operating systems. It works, so why switch? As someone who owns the game, I can see myself saying "No, I won't pay for the new cars, I'm pretty content with the current content, thank you." But that's me as someone who got the game free from Humble Bundle. But you're wondering what if I didn't, right?

The question is not why this has to be available for play. The question is why would you want to erase it to legal limbo? If your point is to make me rather play the new game with the new year's cars, then you will provide incentives to move me out from the old game, be it triple the tracks, better tweaking of the cars, etc. If the whole idea behind banishing the old games into oblivion and not preserving them is so to get me to buy the new game, then that doesn't speak well of what the new game has in store for me. Are you sure you made the game something I would buy into, or are you solely relying on this because you have nothing more in the new game to show than in the old one?

If the creators want to have a say on the matter, that's what the legal system is for actually, along with copyright systems and other such things. To my current understanding, if they want to take down a game that hasn't been on sale for ages for whatever the reason is from abandonware sites and the likes, they can. Now here's this. If it wasn't GRiD but rather Captain Claw, if you desperately want the game banished not just from sales but from existence by going with your say as a creator, why have you released the game in the first place?

Another thing I noticed. So the games in question can be waited out, however absurdly long the time period it is, and sooner or later they will be in the public domain. But your company doesn't want it for sale or even on abandonware sites. How does it transition safely to the public domain if the game no longer exists in any form?


And finally, why this has to be available to play? It's simple. I don't believe it should be lost entirely. However, I cannot read the minds of the rightsholder. If I do contact them today about plans to reinstate the game and they say they have plans to do so, but end up not delivering on it, or vice versa, I still have no guarantee that the game will be brought back to sale. I cannot tell if the IP will be sold off, die with them, never advance, etc, and I also can't trust them to keep a copy of the game for the future. Whether I end up downloading the abandonware title or not is something else entirely, as I'm concerned with the idea of 'keeping it somewhere safe.' It's not that I want this abandoned game to be FREE FOR ALL after it gets out from sale, it's that I want an insurance that the game is not going anywhere. That is it.

Abandonware, and piracy.... IF the product is not currently in production, hardly available anymore in stores; or sold for sick price on second hand market, etc etc... I can understand and "approve" abandonware.

One fitting example; Snatcher, the only localised version of the game out of the Japan shores on Mega-CD... What a hassle to purchase the real thing(s) to play just this one single item, when emulating it for some hours / days, to play it through then delete it clean after, keeping only great memories of one of the best cyberpunks game ever created...

However, to download and still keep on drive stuff is blatant piracy and is... "Wrong".

Such is my relatively, if not legally sound opinion on the subject. Regards.

Really?

There is a whole "video" game system (really cellphone) witch we no longer have that games for it. I read that 30-40% of pre-smartphone era cellphone games is lost forever. The Nintendo DS a recent system already "lost" 8 games when Nintendo shut the DSIware shop down. There is almost no gaming system where there is all the games available for it, maybe only the newst gen PS3 and up (but I'm not even sure about it)

And how does this affect abandonware exactly? A game can have a following, or not, and I still don't see how having a following means the game will not be lost if the producer in question went under either way. No, what I want to ask specifically is how do these games with significant followings survive? If we assume that game is Captain Claw, the game is not sold anywhere and by your compromise shouldn't be online in the first place because in its current form it's "free-for-all". Either way here, I can play this game with fixes on Windows 10 thanks to abandonware That's the very foundation of GOG! DOS gaming obviously isn't 70 years old yet, but old titles like DOS titles are something in the realms of what GOG is about. A million different games were already produced and here we celebrate for the return of old classics, with a lot of it being particular titles from the 90s or even earlier. 70 years later I don't see the difference. If there is one game I'd replay and replay and replay, it's the Spyro and Crash series on PSX. I don't even recall how many times I cleared either games. These disks don't stay at fixed prices, and eventually, they'll jump from being manageable to AAAs of today to outright collectors' items costing tons of money. As for source codes, I'm not going to limit the area of lost games to just the source codes that companies didn't keep around, as that's a frequent occurrence and not every game is left with the source code for us to use. Square Enix loses their source codes every so often, for instance.

I personally don't.

1. If it is so bad that you don't want to pay for it, then why would you want to play it either then? If there is any reason you want to play it (be it even to see if it really is so bad as everyone says), then I feel the publishers/developers deserve to be paid.

If someone said he wanted to play a game but not pay for it because he knew it was so bad, to me that sounds nothing but an excuse not to pay (cheapskate), except rarely as anyone is free to determine when a game is "good enough" to pay for it.


2. It is a slippery slope. What constitutes as "trying"? You play 1% of the whole game? 10%? 50%? 90%?

If you want to know about the game, read reviews, watch gameplay videos, and if available, play a demo version. If you want to play the full version even a bit, then buy the game.

Do you have similar arguments for e.g. movies and music? No one would possibly want to see or hear some ancient piece of music or movie (even for curiosity or for its historical value, like Akalabeth on GOG) because millions of newer pieces have been made afterwards?

As for the argument that any "important" game certainly will be available and re-released in some form, this isn't a popularity contest. Maybe you played and liked some old game on some rare gaming system as a kid that didn't get a cult following among others, or is just curious to see certain title, for instance because it had a certain voice actor or piece of music or graphics artist.

Also for the argument that for any "important" game, the original discs can always be obtained second-hand even 70 years from now... first of all, physical media doesn't survive forever. The original PC game CDs and DVDs I have now will most probably be unreadable in decades.

Also, physical medium usually is locked to certain piece of hardware. Nowadays it is less and less common to even have an optical drive, so it doesn't help you if you have an original CD of some game, if you have no optical drive to read it. Abandonware sites, as well as GOG, at least have converted those original physical games into digital form that is easier to archive and keep alive.

It is a bit like if some certain piece of music or movie was only available on a limited amount of CDs or DVDs. If and when people can't use those CDs and DVDs anymore, then that music/movie would be lost forever, for everyone.

Or, if you still have some original Commodore 64 or Amiga 500 floppies from the 80s in your archive: do you think they are still readable, and do you even have a suitable floppy drive to read them?

Good point!

If the piece of media in question has been lost from everyone, including the rights holder, the game in question will cease to exist even if the rights holder wants to make a legit re-distribution of the original game. If the rights holders can't be trusted to keep around the source code of their games, can they be trusted in keeping the compiled game, as well?

Abandonware might suffer from its "free-for-all" nature, but even they can help a smart rights holder if they plan to release this classic in question, or even better, make a remake based on the original that they have lost. A rights holder who tries to take them down might as well be possibly tearing a future backup plan apart because they're too concerned that a game they pulled off will always exist in some form or another.

Yes, because those works that people really valued, have been saved by people, the best of the best. It's why over half the old movies have been "saved" as people put it. Someone loved it enough at the time to make a copy. Those that were not saved were clearly not loved as much or a combination of accidents and a limited audience was a factor. You give Akalabeth as an example, but it too had been preserved on a newer compilation disk of Ultima games.

Even the best of old music and plays have been preserved by the best means of their time if it's just the written music which is left. While no one might have bothered to preserve a child prodigy's work when they first started (for the historical value) it's because it had no value at the time. While people might be curious now, it was deemed not that valuable at the time.

I go back to my analogy to garage/cover bands. Virtually no one is crying about the loss of their missing demos except maybe the band members themselves. And if they cared enough it would have been preserved. Virtually every major Amiga and C64 game has been preserved but please don't credit abandonware sites who were created as a "legitimate" excuse for piracy as they make money off ad revenue, subscriptions, and/or clicks. There are some historical preservation groups which accept submissions but do not make the entire catalog available to the public.

The lost cell phone game argument, again, who cares? If someone would have cared enough, they would have been preserved. Certainly the most popular games could have been taken off digitally. If they weren't, I don't see the point of crying over it.

At some point, things get lost because its silly to think "everything" has to be saved unless you are one of those hoarders...

the whole point of preserving games go beyond abandonware/roms, software preservation is about people caring enough to make sure that games don't get lost.

Your example of the Amiga/C64 their preservation started with sites like BTTR, which was seen as an "abandonware" site even though they took the time to contact the owners of the games, and yet had to shut down their site each year for a few days while the "Piracy Police" did a sweep for pirate sites, else they would have lost their site. Also most of the "preserved" Amiga games (SPS) is public available.