| | Old games & IDSA (lite spam pls)
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06-08-2003, 11:49 AM
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I've been around old game sites lately. From my observation it seems there are lots of old games which the company not produce anymore and to make things worse the game already out for more than 5 yrs. Yet the company who release it not willing to let the game to be distributed freely in the abandon ware sites.
I'm not trying to promote piracy or what ever they call it. But it sounds a bit too much. Does the company who release hat game still earn from second hand game sales ? I don't think so - please correct me if I'm wrong on this matter. What are they try to protect from a very old game ? Sometimes people need to find an old game just because his/her collection disk got busted due storage and other factor 
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Last edited by KidD01; 06-08-2003 at 11:55 AM.
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06-08-2003, 11:53 AM
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Some companies release the rights on their old games, @Kid, like Sierra has done for Betrayal at Krondor. You can actually download it for free from their website. Other game companies just let the rights lapse into benign neglect. If you do a search on "abandonware," you can pretty quickly find reputable sites that offer downloads of these games; and they're very careful not to provide products which are still in production, or provide revenues to companies.
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06-08-2003, 12:09 PM
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yes, it's good to see what Sierra done with BaK. Yet, when the rights lapse into benign neglect those abandon ware still got hunted by IDSA anyway. Sometime I can't even understand which is right and wrong.
Anyway, when Sierra gonna have Metal Tech series released for free ? That game is very old and seems lots of people like that too.
Lastly how long the game rights mostly registered ?
<EDIT>As for RPG games there are : Ravenloft series, DarkSun series & Dark Lands.
Sad news, fable. I check again on Sierra site. Apparently BaK not avaliable anymore for download in their site. But thank god, HOTU got it anyway 
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"Chikara wa seigyo dekiru kedo, sore ni, tayoru tsumori wa nai."
"I can control my power but I have no intention of relying on it."
"Is there anything you want, anything at all. Come to me, I'll be your guardian angel"
Last edited by KidD01; 06-08-2003 at 01:28 PM.
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06-08-2003, 05:02 PM
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Yes, you're right. BaK was available no further back than 3 weeks ago at Sierra's site, because I checked. It appears they've removed it, and as you suggest, Underdogs has it.
SSI games? I honestly don't know who has the rights to the more than 100 products they turned out. I suspect in most cases, they act as abandonware.
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To the Righteous belong the fruits of violent victory. The rest of us will have to settle for warm friends, warm lovers, and a wink from a quietly supportive universe. | | |
06-08-2003, 05:06 PM
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Well I know that SSI got acquired by Ubisoft. Yet dunno about how their old games status now.
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"Chikara wa seigyo dekiru kedo, sore ni, tayoru tsumori wa nai."
"I can control my power but I have no intention of relying on it."
"Is there anything you want, anything at all. Come to me, I'll be your guardian angel" | | |
06-08-2003, 05:08 PM
|  | Exalted Member | | Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: Soviet Canuckistan
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Actually, many old ROM's and Emulators have been allowed to continue distribution, minus the more popular series of games (Legend of Zelda, Mario, etc... ) And many sites that offer said programs clearly label which are alright, and which are not, and the ones IDSA protected require a fee to download, which goes towards paying for hosting license of said ROM or emulator.
It would appear that major companies are begining to relax on older games. Now, if I can only find myself a second copy of Final Fantasy Tactics....
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06-10-2003, 08:08 AM
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| |  Quote: Originally posted by KidD01
Well I know that SSI got acquired by Ubisoft. Yet dunno about how their old games status now. | But remember, SSI published literally more than 100 titles back in the 1980s. Some of that stuff is ridiculously simplistic by contemporary standards, involving ASCII graphics (if you want to use the term graphics in that context). Does Ubisoft own the rights? Almost certainly. Would it care about the downloading of such games? No more than SSI, which never cared in the past. A crackdown would probably earn the company more negative attention than net it anything positive.
I'm reminded of what I've read about Fox Network's attempt to close down Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfiction websites a few years ago, claiming they "infringed upon copyright." The result was a massive amount of bad publicity and a huge angry write-in campaign from the very people that watched the show--and presumably bought the products that were advertised on it.  Fox supposedly did a complete 180 degree reversal on its attitude. The moral, I suppose, is that you have to look at your longterm goals, and decide whether pursuing a tiny amount of control is really worth upsetting your consumers. In the case of abandonware, I strongly suspect it isn't.
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