There's an unfathomable number of games that were released on the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and most famously DOS that were made by one or two people, self-published, and have now completely fallen into obscurity to a point where it's not 100% clear who owns the copyright and who to give money even if you wanted to, which has led to the "probably-illegal-but-not-really-enforced" term of "Abandonware".
I honestly kind of think that Abandonware should be codified into law in the same way that trademarks are; if you're not actively giving me a legitimate way to buy your game then I don't think it should be illegal for me to get it illegitimately.
>unfathomable number of games that were released
One of the problems is that there are too many and hard to find curate to separate the good from the meh.
Fred Haslam was apparently also at Maxis and worked on Sim City 2000.
If you're reading this Fred, I loved Blast Doors and love it still. https://archive.org/details/BLASTSE2_ZIP
It's not ideal but it's better than losing it.
I think I found a PDF scan once, though even with OCR it wasn't exactly copy-pastable into a BASIC interpreter. I'd like to clean up the programs and put them on github, or something. Might end up just re-implement the algorithms (which are explained in the book), because there's no copyright on algorithms.
Mostly unrelated but if you are looking for this "effervescence" in modern times, don't hesitate to take a look at Pico8 games and Ich.io.
On Pico 8, everything is free (except the one time pico 8 licence).
On Itch.io I bought a ridiculous 400 games pack for a few dollars a few years back.
You have to dig a little but I found more gems in both those libraries than I expected.
Ruffle is getting good enough where I think we might be properly archive all the Flash stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos
He intentionally samples less than 5 seconds iirc, and they still ding him, take all profits from the video, which took many many hours to create, and he cannot afford a lawsuit. It's absolutely ridiculous.
Seems intuitively difficult to implement changes to the law to get this, but I can dream.
Youtube has very little leverage, and Google/Youtube is very invested in not ending up in court over this kind of disputes, and the corps making claims know that.
The only actual fix is reforming or abolishing copyright.
> What I do not understand is why that process is not being followed here. Why is Google not insisting that the big media companies follow the law and use the process laid out by the DCMA?
Because the DMCA and copyright in general proved to be a massive hindrance in actually having Youtube be workable, so they made their own system which functionally bypasses it, by giving in to the corps. The corps can either misuse the DMCA and make life hell for Youtube, or they can get in on the system with Youtube and make some cash on the side. There is no middle ground where the DMCA isn't misused, Youtube gets to exist and the corps don't get paid.
On top of the shenanigans we have seen recently about revoking paid licenses to watch movies.
I guess I do understand it from the business perspective - I never buy a physical release myself - but ... 20 years later, it will be impossible to get these games.
Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Software_Associa...
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/3053050/how-one-company-is-bring...
It seems petty to me that copyright holders (or their legal proxies) aggressively sought to shut down abandonware sites without any plan to make the software available in any shape. I mean, these were marginal pieces of software, no longer money earners, and the abandonware sites served as digital museums.
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I refuse to believe this train of logic. By the time copyright expires AI will be able to handle removing copyright protection and making it able to run on modern hardware. The only point of doing it now instead of later is so that people commit copyright infringement.
This must be some powerful combination of magical thinking plus a lack of awareness of the context. In the early 2000's, the time I'm recounting, nobody thought of AI. And it wasn't about copyright infringement since the people in the abandonware community I'm talking about owned the goddamn games, they were trying to digitally preserve them and make them available to others. You really need to be familiar with these people and their goals before you "refuse to believe" anything; uninformed opinions just won't do.
It helps to get a perspective about both the time and the type of games we're discussing. In fact, if you were at all a participant of the community back then, you'd know in which little regard warez kiddies were held.
In many cases, all that remains of these games is the cracked digital versions, the physical versions don't exist anymore. The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release, AI or not.
Also, a lot of "legally available" software from today (say, via GOG who do own the rights) has the fingerprints of crackers who made it possible for the software to run today.
> And a lot of pirates who share copyrighted material had that material originate from a legal purchase. That doesn't make it any less worse.
Regular pirates distribute recent games, which is obviously an entirely different matter. The abandonware community is/was concerned with preserving digital artifacts and games for posterity, and making old stuff playable today. Games that otherwise would have been lost, forgotten, or simply impossible to play. Those are completely different goals, and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement".
I don't want to offend you, but your initial claim that abandonware crews decades ago should have somehow foreseen AI would make cracking/fixing easier is the most deranged thing I've read in a while. It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
It was the means towards their goal at the very least. These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
>The abandonware crew did all the preserving, without them there wouldn't be anything to release
Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere. Just because a pirated copy is more accessible that doesn't mean that pirates should get all of the credit.
>and it's wrong to claim they did it "to commit copyright infringement"
You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
>It also doesn't address that something you cannot play in your lifetime is effectively unavailable and lost to you.
No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
If you replace software with book, music or movie, would you still claim that? That would kill a lot of culture and cultural studies. Are software that different? More specifically, are games that different?
If you think copyright is a goal rather than a means for culture, then you're wrong and everything you say stems from something misguided.
We can do better than that.
Which one is it? Before, you claimed it was their goal (what they wanted to do). You cannot have it both ways. The actual goal matters.
> These people could be maintaining a private archive of this software and other material in a temperature controlled room to preserve it until copyright expires. The legal paths of archiving exist, but these people choose to do it illegally often knowing that other people are going to down and use the software.
As I said, this just shows you are unfamiliar with the goals of abandonware. They were preserving the games in playable form, and they needed them to be played, because games are not static artifacts; they must be experienced. Besides, asking them to keep copies in temperature controlled rooms is ridiculous, these were passion projects done on a budget, out of commodity hardware and rented servers. This started before torrents by the way, and some abandonware communities frowned upon the notion of just downloading a big file of everything anyway.
> Usually there is a copy or backup somewhere
No, there often wasn't. Resist the urge to reply "well, theoretically..." and consider that maybe I know about this a bit more than you.
> You are taking this too literally. "Regular pirates" don't want to commit copyright infringement either. It is just the means they achieve their actual goals.
I'm taking this the way you wrote it, how else? Don't backpedal. The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different (though, of course, there was some cross-pollination).
> No one has a right to use anyone else's software. I don't have a right to use Windows 3.1 in my lifetime. I don't have a right to play some random game from the 90s that only had 100 copies made. It's okay for software to be unavailable or be lost.
"Right" is a made-up thing (often broken by the industry that later enforced similar rights; do you know the history of Hollywood studios?). And no, it's not ok. Just because you think some made-up legal right trumps human cultural experience doesn't mean you're right.
It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost. It matters. Just not to you. I think basically 99% of your argument boils down to "I don't care enough about games preservation, and therefore I don't see the problem".
You are the only ones talking about goals so I'm not sure how to even answer this. I believe that pirates use the idea of preservation to justify why they pirate things and to make them feel less bad about breaking the law and stealing from others.
>out of commodity hardware and rented servers
Those servers were likely more expensive than properly storing it at their house.
>No, there often wasn't.
In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
>The goals of pirates and abandonware crews were different
But both of those groups distributed pirated software.
>It's not ok for software (or books, or movies) to be lost.
Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
No, I'm not the only one: you mentioned what you thought was the goal in your initial comment (copyright infringement) and you're restating it now. Again it's very telling this is your "belief", but you acknowledged tacitly that you are unfamiliar with how abandonware projects worked, never having talked to the people. But I have. Do you think it would be maybe wise to acknowledge your beliefs are not based on actual knowledge?
The goals matter. In fact, they matter to you as well, because you've been arguing from a position of belief about the goals ("justify why the pirate things") that is simply incorrect. Why not update your knowledge instead?
> In practice there tends to be. If you are in the retro hardware / software community you will see rare things come up on auction. The idea that all copies just disappeared does not match reality.
This is simply false. I don't think you are into "the retro hardware / software" community at all, I dare you to claim otherwise. Also, rare things do come up on auction, but this doesn't mean as a norm they exist! And the people involved in these projects are breaking all kinds of copyrights and have always been persecuted for this, which you'd know if you were involved in those communities.
> But both of those groups [pirates and abandonware groups] distributed pirated software.
I talked about goals. Your answer is a non-sequitur, because it argues about something that wasn't in dispute. Please try not to do this.
> Then I would encourage you to preserve archival copies of things you want to see preserved.
You haven't the faintest idea of what I do or don't do. More importantly, we're not discussing me, are we? Please try sticking to the point.
At this point you're sounding like a mix of dishonesty and willful ignorance.
The more important point of copyright is 'to promote the progress of the useful arts'. The 'securing for a limited time to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their writings and inventions' is just the means. Do the means in this case seem to work well in achieving that goal?
> Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.
Except the 70+ years it takes before you're legally allowed to publish it, or even just adapt it. If I'm going to play things by the book, even if I archive it when I'm 10 years old, sales stop on day two of the copyright period, and the rights expire the day after it's 70 years years old, I will be 80+ years old when I'm legally allowed to let people download it, or I myself can publish an adaptation (or more likely, I'll have died and my archive version will be lost in the estate sale).
The original game might be stopping people. It's not like games have a good track record of continuing to work for decades. DRM of all kinds poses a huge problem in this regard, but so does garden variety technological change. The GOG preservation team has quite a few videos about deeply technical work they needed to do to make e.g. Prince of Persia run properly on modern PCs. Sure I can just pirate a copy for PS2 and run it with PCSX2, but thats “piracy" (even though I still have a working original disc!).
So, no: there's a lot stopping people, especially copyright law, from keeping around working copies of their games.
> copyright expires
Not in your lifetime. 70 years after death if the author brings us out into centuries. Books written 60 years before my kids were born won't be out if copyright until they are in their 40s, for example.
It really took away from the game experience
I ended up scratching out my original CD copy of the game, installing version 1.0 of the game. It had all the music and better visuals
The patches removed visual features for performance, not GoG's fault here, not sure why GoG hosts an inferior version, its quite a downgrade. The music removal I do not understand.
(This all was particually obvious in an early mission, where you have to beat up some parked cars with baseball bats, the patched version show minimal dents and zero scratches, and the radio sitting in the corner make no sound. This completely changes in the V1.0 copy, so much more atmosphere)
I mean, it's obvious: copyright seeks to create a mechanism to compensate creators by creating scarcity. They succeeded.
It turns out archiving those creations effectively is in direct tension with that scarcity. So we made a system to incentivizes creation, and then destruction of the creation. This is visible with the "copyright cliff" in books, but also the incredible difficulty of legally keeping computer programs running over the decades. Copyright's restrictions on derivative works, coupled with the insanely long copyright term, create a sort of digital wasteland, with only those willing to go underground having great collections of old programs.
Which people? In the case of abandonware, the original software is often not in the hands of the copyright holder anymore, due to neglect or lack of interest. Sometimes all or most relevant physical copies have become damaged. All that remains is a (cracked) file download in an abandonware website. Thanks to the abandonware community it gets preserved.
Besides, a piece of software history only serves its purpose if you can experience it. With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it? You cannot always wait it out, you might die first due to how long copyright lasts. Or is this nebulous concept of copyright more important than human experience?
>With no way of legally experiencing it (you cannot buy it) how do you propose to experience it?
You don't need to be able to experience it. There are many things in life that I can't experience and that's okay.
No, that's the point. "Can" doesn't mean they do; only "pirates" kept copies. Copyright owners didn't care, only got involved on the legal side of things. When copies became "legal" again, they were often cracked copies.
I know you keep ignoring this, but that's just because you're unfamiliar with how the abandonware community worked.
> You don't need to be able to experience it. There are many things in life that I can't experience and that's okay.
Games are not static works of art. A game needs to be played in order to be preserved. If you were familiar with the abandonware community you'd know this was their mission. Just because you don't care about this doesn't mean it's not important.
All your comments so far boil down to: "I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights." Which is a you rather than us kind of problem.
So why can't those "pirates" keep legal copies instead of an illegal one.
>A game needs to be played in order to be preserved
Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
>I don't care about old game preservation, and so I don't see the problem with copyrights.
My opinion boils down to:
* Preservation does not justify piracy
* Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
Often those copies are legal (as in purchased; e.g. the abandonware archive of Home of the Underdogs started with the personal collection of legally purchased games of the owner; she also scanned manuals, cover artwork and whenever possible any goodies that came with the games; as much as possible from the game was preserved). Other times the legal copy just doesn't exist. In either case, the goal of games preservation is that the games are played; these are paintings hanging on a wall.
> Does a bottle of wine need to be drunk in order to be preserved, or does storing it in a wine cellar preserve it. The idea that you have to be able to play something for it to count as being preserved is not accurate.
Games are not wine, and you're wrong.
> Preservation does not justify piracy
Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation. You went as far as claiming that it's ok for games/software to die; do you realize anything else you claim about "using AI" or "keeping copies somewhere" and "temperature controlled rooms" is more or less nonsense? The fundamental thing is that you don't care about preserving games. Everything else you're saying is a red herring. If you're ok with games being lost forever, then of course every measure to preserve them will seem excessive or pointless to you. (Please don't insist with "copyright holders surely have a copy...", I've already explained that they often don't. Do me the courtesy of not rehashing refuted claims).
> Preservation is often used as a euphemism for piracy
Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight. Also, you more or less didn't dispute you're completely unfamiliar with abandonware, only basing your opinions on prejudice (and some deranged nonsense about AI), so it's very hard to take your arguments seriously.
If their is a goal to allow people without a license to play a game protected by copyright to play the game, I can not support it.
>Games are not wine, and you're wrong. But both can only be experienced by taking it out of where its being preserved and playing / drinking it.
>Yes, it does. It's just that you're not interested in preservation.
I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
>Wait, before you claimed it wasn't. Now you claim it is. Keep your story straight
This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
> I do support preservation but not the flavor of preservation which is piracy. For example someone finds "lost media" and since it's "lost media" that means they can just upload a TV episode protected by copyright for others to watch for free.
As established previously, this all stems from you not valuing preservation. If you value copyright over culture, you don't value culture. "Piracy" and "copyright" are arbitrary terms, and copyright is not a goal in itself; it sometimes gets in the way.
> This confusion is intentionally done by pirates to make what they are doing sound legitimate. There are 2 flavors of preservation. Legal preservation which follows the law in how one preserves the work and illegal preservation which is essentially piracy.
The confusion is only created by you. Out of malice, I must assume at this point, since you've implicitly acknowledged you didn't engage with abandonware communities and therefore can only infer (incorrectly) what their motives were. I, in contrast, did engage, talked to the owner of HOTU (one of the largest ones back in the day) and know how they collected games and what their motives were. Having no counter to this, you keep ignoring it and instead rehash the same debunked points.
There's only one kind of preservation: the one that actually preserves stuff.
At this point I know you understand this, you're just willfully ignorant or maliciously distorting the argument.
You're being wilfully obtuse if this is your genuine opinion about video games. Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.