Adventure Gamers - Forums

Hello all,

I was watching YakWaxLips who mentioned that there was some murmers of the Discworld games receiving a revival to stores. Whoa! Personally, I only ever was able to find Abandonware downloads of the Discworld games. It made me consider the role of abandonware in sustaining aspects of perceived value. Indeed, some members of the the abandonware community have worked hard to make some of these old games playable on modern systems. There is definitely a challenge to make old games install or run on modern systems. I cannot remember the last time I accessed a floppy disk. Nightdive and Beamdog have basically made it a good chunk of their business to formalize the process of making old games run again. Not so long ago, for replays of the Sierra games, I relied on SierraHelp’s installers. Furthermore, ScummVM has made running old games so much easier. For instance, playing Segasoft’s Obsidian was recently made possible through ScummVM. Obviously, not advocating for piracy and recognize such discussions are against forum policy.

I guess this topic is a bit of a two-fold:
One, what is the place of Abandonware as an informal institution? I think there were/are websites that suggested there was a right (open) way to do it. HoTU and MyAbandonware would take down downloads and replace them with store links to games as they became readily available at places like GoG - and maintain those entries. Thus, they became a database that could function to increase sales of old games. Naturally, there are problems with when a game becomes abandonware and defining it. Are publisher disputes really abandoning the properties? (Likely no). I recognize the AdventureGamer’s policy and am NOT asking for links or formally advocating for abandonware - I am more curious what people’s relationships are to it.

Second, what games would you really like to see come out through official stores that may be classified as abandonware? Do a lot of you rely on finding old games through E-Bay (which, to my knowledge, does not actually give publishers any money - so is it encouraging the industry?).