Line #24 Main/Abandonware


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6	->''"A nice sounding but legally-meaningless term for games no longer sold and thus deemed fair to download for free. Respectable abandonware sites will remove any that return to the market, such as via {{Platform/GOG\|DotCom}}, even if their current rights-holders had nothing to do with the original and ambitiously think a game that nobody actually liked back in 1995 is now worth $10 and nobody involved with its creation should get a cut."''
7	-->-- ''Magazine/PCGamer'' [[http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-gaming-terms-and-their-true-meanings/ describes Abandonware]]
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9	Over time, things get old. It happens to everything; DOS was taken out by its shiny new big sister, Windows, and Windows NT was taken out by Windows 2000, and from there NT's upgrade to XP and so on.
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11	Well, some programs [[TechnologyMarchesOn don't take the aging process well]]. Sure, there's patches, clients, and other assorted whatnot, but over time, the developers just throw up their hands and say "forget this". Technology is too advanced, or maybe the developers just got bored. Or [[CreatorKiller the studio collapses and nobody acquires the rights]]. Or maybe it's planned obsolescence; if you're just patching your old software, you're not buying new stuff.
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13	The program is now unsupported, there are no patches left to release, or compatibility issues mean even ''trying'' to support the product isn't feasible. The program is forgotten.
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15	Welcome to the wasteland of Abandonware, where the forgotten languish in technology hell, since they can't keep up.
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17	Prior to the internet, the only way to find abandonware was to [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes to make and share physical copies]]. Now, websites such as [[http://www.abandonia.com Abandonia]] exist to allow people to play once again games that they used to have for their old 386 but can no longer be purchased in retail or directly from the publisher. Many abandonware websites maintain a semblance of good faith by refusing to allow download of any game still being offered for sale and will voluntarily remove titles if contacted by a publisher. For example, 3D Realms still offers all their old DOS titles (most notably ''VideoGame/RiseOfTheTriad'') for sale from their [[http://www.3drealms.com website]], and as such they're very difficult to find on abandonware sites.
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19	Philosophically, the "abandonware" argument is one that goes beyond the legal sphere into the realm of artistic morality: it is the assertion that a company that refuses or is unable to profit from a work for which it has gained the legal rights, is immorally acting to the detriment of art if they choose to sit on the property and allow no access to it from the world at large, and are behaving as the Miser from Aesop's namesake fable who hoarded gold he refused to actually spend, thus ironically making it completely worthless in practice. The specific obsolescence problems with computer and video game technology have forced the issue. Books, movies, and music can generally make the transition to new media with ease, whereas the rapid evolution of software can render a game completely unplayable. The best movies, books and music from twenty years ago are easy to find, easy to buy, and easy to view, if perhaps in a different format than they once were. Not so much with games.
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21	Additionally, many of the companies that produced such games have gone completely defunct in the years since creating the game in question. There is essentially no one to speak up for or defend the rights to the game. A large number of these companies produced games during The80s and were victims of MediaNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983. Others produced games for personal computers of that era. Because of the cottage industry nature of software and game production at that time, there were many "fly by night" companies producing forgettable games.
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23	Since about 2005, publishers have taken an interest in the desire for old games and have begun actively meeting customer demands. The rise of digital distribution has seen publishers put their entire back catalogue on services like Platform/{{Steam}} and Platform/GOGDotCom, and on several occasions either the original developers or their new sellers even go as far as to develop their own upgrades to them so they'll work on modern computers.
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25	Paradoxically, the rise of the internet has seen the creation of a new breed of abandonware. Games that require access to online authentication or that store game-critical data on company servers are entirely reliant on the developer keeping them running. In the event that the company takes the servers down or is shuttered, it is entirely possible for a game to become unplayable. In cases where the servers hold part of the data required to run, this can render a game permanently dead. For examples of this particular phenomena, see DefunctOnlineVideoGames.
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27	MediaNotes/{{Emulation}} is a related topic, with related problems. The current owners of the Platform/{{Amiga}} brand, for example, have been keen to stress that the "Kickstart ROM" needed to boot an Amiga (or an Amiga ''emulator'') is ''not'' abandonware, thank you very much. Amstrad have said that the ZX Spectrum ROM, on the other hand, ''is'' perfectly acceptable for emulation purposes; and even if it wasn't, plenty of people have hacked their own version together after some crazy nutbags managed to document the function of ''each and every last one'' of the 16384 bytes that forms it, and patched it to deal with the (remarkably few) bugs.
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29	Compare KeepCirculatingTheTapes, when films, videos and music are involved. See also DigitalPiracyIsOkay, though if the creator disapproves it may overlap with DigitalPiracyIsEvil. Contrast MissingEpisode, when the source media itself has gone missing. Not (yet) to be mistaken for PublicDomain; abandonware remains under copyright, albeit often with gray areas around its ownership.
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31	!!Notable abandonware sites:
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33	* [[http://www.abandonia.com/ Abandonia]] (as mentioned above).
34	* [[http://www.abandonwaredos.com/ Abandonware DOS]] is a site dedicated only to old MS-DOS games.
35	* [[https://www.abandonware-france.org/ Abandonware France]] has hundreds of old computer games that were translated into French.
36	* [[https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/ The Collection Chamber]] is a blog that features a relatively small number of abandonware titles (as it's managed by just an Englishman). However, the blog makes up for the small selection by putting the programs in specially-compiled and easy-to-use executables. All the end user has to do is download a program put into a special installer[[labelnote:*]]although sometimes they may have to be downloaded in multiple parts[[/labelnote]] and run said installer to install them on their PC. The installed program is run through a virtual machine specifically prepared and automated for the program, so end users can just start the program and the virtual machine will do the rest to get them running.
37	* [[http://gamesnostalgia.com/en/ Games Nostalgia]] offers free download of abandonware games, all of them tested and configured for PC and Mac.
38	* Home of the Underdogs was, for quite a long time, and now is again, an Abandonware 'museum', where users could find archived copies of many Abandonware and Freeware games. As the name implies, the [[http://homeoftheunderdogs.net/ website]] (mostly) focuses on underappreciated, rare, commercially unsuccessful or just plain ''bad'' games, including the ones still being sold (no downloads in this case, but a link to Steam or GOG).
39	* The Website/InternetArchive [[https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games now has a large database of old DOS games.]] Many older PC games not available through digital distribution platforms such as Steam or GOG.com can also be found.
40	* Platform/{{Macintosh}} users can find applications in [[https://macintoshgarden.org/ the Macintosh Garden]], once directly part of HOTUD but now just link to each other.
41	* [[https://www.macintoshrepository.org/ The Macintosh Repository]] is another site for old Macintosh applications. Also, both this site and the Macintosh Garden are also useful for Platform/MicrosoftWindows users looking for certain games they may have trouble finding on other sites, since a number of "Classic" Mac OS titles happen to be Win/Mac hybrids, meaning that they used the same disc/ISO for both [=OSes=].
42	* [[http://www.myabandonware.com/ MyAbandonware]], another site dedicated to old software, with 18,000 titles from 1978 through 2010.
43	* [[http://www.oldgamesfinder.com/ Old Games Finder]] is a search engine for old and abandonware games.
44	* [[https://www.retro-exo.com/ The Retro eXo Projects]] feature massive libraries containing various emulated classic games and applications released on older Microsoft and Apple [=OSes=]. They are organized into dedicated custom [=LaunchBox=] instances containing metadata for all the games in these collections, allowing players an easy and organized way to get their favorite classics running. There are currently five released projects, four of which are infrequently updated:
45	** [[https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html eXoDOS]] for MS-DOS games.
46	** [[https://www.retro-exo.com/win3x.html eXoWin3x]] for games released for the Windows 3.x platform.
47	** [[https://www.retro-exo.com/scummvm.html eXoScummVM]] for SCUMM games that are emulated on [=ScummVM=].
48	** [[https://www.retro-exo.com/rlp.html eXo's Retro Learning Pack]] for educational games and applications that ran on either MS-DOS or Windows 3.x; this one was made during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic as a one-off.
49	** [[https://www.retro-exo.com/appleIIGS.html eXoAppleIIGS]] for games released for the Apple II series and the Apple II GS.

Context Main / Abandonware