I saw a walkthrough on YouTube. Weird, gross, historically significant, etc.

I agree. I'd prefer to see a game on GOG, DRM free and legal but I think abandonware does have its uses. Even if it's a central library for games you wouldn't find elsewhere.

I prefer to get my games legal, and the convinience of not having to do too much manual configuration is worth the cost. I would love to get my hands on System Shock 1 and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream if made available legally. System Shock 2 was a day one instabuy for me.

atm i own around 40% from the catalog.
and yes, most of the games i bought here were because of fond memories.
sadly after playing them again many of them falls into *why have i ever thought
they were good*
But back than they were fun.....like my first rogue game were my character
was an "X" fighting against "A B C D ...."

Some years ago i had a whole room only for the retail boxes....now i have
a shelf and some HDD's thats far better.
For me GOG is a nice and cheap way for getting those old games...even if
i don't play them.

I'd agree with weird and gross, but "historically significant"?

Syndicate was better off abandoned. Look what they turned it into :(

Not at all, no. You are not forced to buy anything.

And there is no legal difference between downloading an abandoned game before or after it's re-released on GOG or somewhere else. It's still a piracy, so it shouldn't make any difference to you at all.

To put it neatly, that depends on the context. A company can have abandoned software in its holdings and do jack squat with it. I'm one of those evil leftists who'd change IP and patent laws so that you'd have to actually do something worthwhile worthwhile, instead of using it to spite competition and prevent others from engineering better solutions for humanity. Failure to use IP and patent would result in it returning to a great pool of templates. But that's another rant for another day.

In the classical sense, I'd want abandonware to be picked up and dusted off, before being set upon a pedestal, as a historical entity. If someone wishes to base a game upon said software, one would not contact the company, but rather the content creators themselves because PR, legal departments, and marketing teams can go teleport themselves into a nearby wall for all I care. If the creators wish to sell their software amore, I'd simply ask that they be realistic about the age of the product and price accordingly.

* sigh *

Yes. Game preservation, "abondonware" and bundle key abuse are dealing with exactly the same issues. I have now completely changed my stance on bundle key abuses.

As a new convict I am now going to shout my new message from the rooftops -

PEOPLE SHOULD ABUSE BUNDLE KEYS BECAUSE THEY CAN NOT BUY THE GAMES ANYWHERE ELSE, AND IF WE DO NOT DO IT THE GAMES IN A BUNDLE WILL BE LOST FOREVER. ABUSE THE KEYS, OR THESE GAMES WILL DISAPPEAR.



(that was snarky and sarcastic, by the way. I may have lost you at "it is always best if the games can be gotten legally, I can not think of a single instance where this may not be the case")

No. Either a game can be released on GOG for a price or it can be released on GOG for free. There's no reason for it to not be on GOG.

Oh and a game is abandoned if the rights holder says it is. But more often than not that's not the case with 'abandonware'.

Not to be advocatus diaboli here, but when you share steam keys, the person who gets the key is using Valve's assets, and if the game has non steamworks multiplayer, you are using the publishers assets as well.

When you pirate something from torrents, you don't use anyone's assets. And if the game is "abandoned", you don't even "steal" their probable profits.

So yeah, there is a difference between pirating abandoned games and sharing keys. But I don't care, share your keys if you want to. I usually ask indie devs if they are ok with key sharing first, but it's up to you to decide.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

LOL no!
If abandonware sites attainted any sort of veneer of legitimacy it would be bad for GOG in my opinion as it would devalue old games

Also, no one has mentioned it yet, but in the little experience I've had of abandonware sites, they are often butchered and basterdised version that have their, for example, cut scene, FMV or otherwise hacked out to save bandwidth (maybe still from when it was originally hacked when current)

The only caveat is that its unclear how much GOG actually uses abandonware sites as a resource, its certainly true that the companies that allow the games to be sold often no longer have even the compiled software, let alone source code to give to GOG and those 'no CD' cracks that GOG has to incorporate have to come from somewhere, saying that though, I've never started a GOG to be greeted with bouncy bubble text telling me which group of |337 h4)(0r5 this release comes from...

Took the words out of my mouth ;)