A company remaking LSL1has no real bearing on the abandoned status of 7.

The LSL CD collection is a weird one, they only included the floppy version of LSL6, so it's missing the excellent voiceovers and hi-res graphics.

Don't be an ass. Abandonware was made to protect classics from being forgotten, nothing more nothing less. If you want to be an ass about it, go ahead, but to say it's a thing of conscience and the same as piracy is plainly wrong.

I have no problems saying "I'm pirating the game because I can't buy it" , i just don't need the term "abandonware" for doing it. Do you?

I've pirated some games that are not sold anymore.

The piracy is implied in the term abandonware. And as Velvet explained, single words are fine for conveying more complex phrases or ideas.

Ok, you're right, I was being too harsh for the OP.

I think abandonware is a good thing, too. It's just some people forget downloading an oldie doesn't make it any less illegal.

The thing with Abandonware is if it really isn't available first party then how is buying it 2nd hand from some online dealer any better? At the end of the day the company still doesn't receive any money for it... and to developers & publishers nowadays, the second hand market is just as damaging. Plus some Abandonware sites happily take down games when they're available elsewhere and some even advertise by keeping the game page & linking to the website which is a good thing for the current rights holders.

Also remember that a lot of the time with older games only the publisher is getting money for it, a lot of the developers have moved on or moved out & so unless they still work in the studio & the money is put into new games or have an excellent commission deal... they get nothing out of it anyway.

I'm normally pretty anti-pirate, but I'm going to have to side with SV and Red on this one. If a game is only purchasable for hundreds of dollars on Ebay, or not at all, then there's really no good reason NOT to get ahold of it for free. Legally speaking I believe it still counts as piracy, but morally I don't see any problem with it. System Shock 2 is a perfect example. Neither the publisher or developer sees any money whatsoever from System Shock 2 sales nowadays. And used copies can run even more expensive than current releases. So until the game gets hosted on GOG (Until! UNTIL!! DAMN IT, IT WILL COME SOME DAY!!!!), I see no problem with pirating it.

The term 'Abandonware' does get misused a lot, though.

A little bit offtopic, but some of my friends use the same argument to pirate Modern Warfare 3 :P

You're right. Again, I was too harsh to the OP, I am sorry for this.

I hate, hate, fucking hate the people who come here and start going on about how they don't see why people would buy some games from here because they're abandonware. No, you little shitheads, it's not abandonware, it's being sold here, and declaring it to be abandonware damages the very integrity of the idea of abandonware.

But what game is old enough to be abandonware? Is Drakan: Order of the flame abandonware? Is Tomb Raider 4 abandonware?

And the problem with abandonware is as follows: if somebody downloaded the game and finished it, it's not likely for him to buy it, when it's going on sale again.

Are you obliged to buy a game you downloaded as abandonware and then it's being sold again?

That's down to the publisher really. If they didn't keep the game going when there was still demand then tough. Also you get people on GOG buying games they've finished all the time ;). Heck I've finished quite a few of the games I have on GOG before I bought them here. Funny you mention Drakan Order of the Flame, I have that boxed with manual etc :) I would buy it if it came on gog though. It's a grey area, far less black & white than piracy.

Out of curiosity Keeveek do you think it's Abandonware if the game is out of print in your language but available in one you can't read or speak, in which case would you purchase it? Sometimes when the language is in one file you could swap it out for the language from a "pirate" or "abandoned" copy I guess but then would that be wrong? Don't worry I've not got an arguement or counter ready, I really am just interested in your opinion under those circumstances.

Ah, yes, we're that kind of group here ;)

I think that one of the biggest problems in the Abandonware debate is that people see the issue in black and white terms. That there are clear-cut boundaries between what's right and wrong, as far as piracy goes. In reality, the entire issue is a huge gray area. You're right...how DO you decide what game is old enough? And what DOES happen when a previously impossible-to-buy game gets released somewhere like GOG? But on the other hand, how much more damage would it do to NOT keep a game alive while it's in distribution limbo? If I hadn't managed to find a download of System Shock 2 (which I stupidly lost, so now I can't play the game), I never would have gotten to experience it, and the game would have one less fan. One less person to potentially buy it when it finally shows up for purchase again. These are all questions that really need to be considered in specific situations, not as universal guidelines.

EDIT: I don't feel this way about piracy of modern titles, however. I see illegally downloading Modern Warfare 2 or Skyrim as stealing, pure and simple. The difference to me is that in this case, you're potentially depriving the publisher/developer of their hard-earned money the same way you would if you lifted a IPod from a store. In the case of abandonware, nobody is really getting deprived (except perhaps people selling used copies).

I'd like to turn that around, if I may.

I'll stipulate that someone who have never played, or for that matter even heard of, a 15 year old game, is much less likely to buy it when it does become available for sale again, than someone who as a poor youth pirated said game and loved it.

In fact I'll stipulate that the second category accounts for a significant percentage of GOG sales. People who didn't have enough money to buy all these games back when they were new. Now they're adults with jobs, and a keener sense of the need to get paid for the work you do. So GOG is kind of an opportunity to be absolved of the sins of their youth, by now paying for the things they didn't pay for all those years ago.