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Originally Posted by Ninth
Abandonware is illegal, but widly acccepted. I'm not sure why links to the underdogs or some such should be forbidden, since this kind of site obviously does a lot of good to the adventure community. Oh well...
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There is a very good article on Brass Lantern about this and you can read it
HERE
But it simply boils down to this:
Imagine that 5 years ago you spilled a lot of blood, sweat and tears creating a game and eventually managed to sell it commercially. Over time, as tends to happen, the sales dropped off gradually until you decided to stop selling it any more due to the costs involved and moved onto other projects. Then today you find out that someone is selling (as some sites do) or giving away your game (possibly in a cracked format, so that errors might occur, just as they did to the game in this thread, thereby compromising the good name of the game).
How would you feel ?
You'd probably feel a lot better if someone contacted you and expressed their interest in the game and asked you to release it as freeware or shareware so that today's game players would have a chance of playing your game the way it should be played. It is a fact that on many occasions this technique has actually worked. There are of course many software houses who just can't be bothered to do this and I totally agree with the argument that the onus is on both sides (both those who want to play, and those who own the copyright).
So what's the answer ?
Good question. One possibility for a more positive route would be for someone to set up a liaison group that could help bridge the gap between the two parties (e.g. interest is expressed in a certain game, the group would then attempt to track down the copyright holders to try to get their permission to re-release the game in question).
Well, just a thought...
