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Al Lowe to auction off the source code to the Leisure Suit Larry games plus other titles.
Al Lowe is planning to auction off a lot of his work on eBay including the source code for Larry 1-5 and The Laffer Utilities.
It’s all explained in this amazing video:
Al Lowe’s eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/usr/al_lowe?_trksid=p2053788.m1543.l2754
This will not be the first rodeo for Al as his eBay store reveals that he sold off a lot of his Disney titles about a year ago with one bidder purchasing a sealed complete-in-box copy of The Black Cauldron for $835.
I would love to pick something up here but I suspect many of us will be priced out by the zealous Sierra hoarders. Nonetheless, I hope whoever nabs the source code releases everything online!
Didn’t watch the vid, but could this have something to do with the new LSL game’s success? Maybe after the previous couple of (dreadful) titles like Magna Cum Laude, Al sees that some good might come from newbie developers after all?
God damn, I was sniffing around to see if I could nab something for myself while everyone else knife fights over the source code and just saw what Bop-a-Bet is going for:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183562092536?_trksid=p2471758.m4704
This is a rich man’s game now. It seems adventure games are beloved among Saudi princes and evil CEOs at least.
I am curious. Isn’t the source code of the games you work on while at a company the property of that company? That is how it is these days at least.
Didn’t watch the vid, but could this have something to do with the new LSL game’s success? Maybe after the previous couple of (dreadful) titles like Magna Cum Laude, Al sees that some good might come from newbie developers after all?
I think Al sees this as a great opportunity to sell his junk, as LSL has gained (a little) publicity thanks to that new game. Other than that, I don’t think there’s any connection, I might even guess he hasn’t bothered to play the new game.
I am curious. Isn’t the source code of the games you work on while at a company the property of that company? That is how it is these days at least.
That’s how it is, unless agreed otherwise.
The thing here is that when Sierra closed, their stuff was literally thrown into garbage. First point you can argue here is that something that was thrown into garbage obviously isn’t something that anyone considers valuable.
Secondly, Sierra’s IPs have changed ownership many times since then. As source codes were thrown away, whatever was legally transfered was something other than that source code. So who really is the last legal owner of that source code may be a bit more complicated thing to solve.
Then again, if those codes have any value at all, I’m sure this move will get some lawyers working on it.
Lastly, Al made a disclaimer somewhere that he doesn’t own anything other than those physical storage media, so I think he can always claim that the source codes just happen to be on them.
It also needs to be taken consideration what kind of contract Al had with Sierra considering the code itself. While the IP is owned by someone now, it might be, that the source code was never actually owned by Sierra, only the end result, which was the games themselves. Or it might have even been tied to time.
Considering Al said, Sierra never was very keen at archiving sources, it might stand to reason, that Sierra actually didn’t put much emphasis on owning the code, only the IP and the game. This also means that the new owners got the rights only on IP and the games, not the source code, as those were never a part of the purchase as they have been believed lost.
And finally, as Al points out, the IP or the commercial usage of the code isn’t transferred with this purchase.
God damn, I was sniffing around to see if I could nab something for myself while everyone else knife fights over the source code and just saw what Bop-a-Bet is going for:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183562092536?_trksid=p2471758.m4704
This is a rich man’s game now. It seems adventure games are beloved among Saudi princes and evil CEOs at least.
It is a rare game, so that tends to jack up the price. I have never seen a disk image of that floating anywhere, so it might be that not that many of them were even sold or preserved to collectors market. Tie that to that it’s been made by a well-known game developer, it isn’t really that surprising it is going with top dollar.
Some of his item descriptions crack me up. Especially this part from Dragon’s Keep auction:
“The front of the package says that this game requires 48KBof RAM. If you have less than that, please don’t bid! Otherwise, “bid early,bid often!””
Larry 1 source code is already over 10 000$ 
Playing: 1) Broken Sword 5 2) Road 96
Sources for both, 1 and 2 are over 10k, as it Bop-A-Bet. It seems like Lowe is getting a pretty decent Christmas bonus this year. It is pretty amazing, how much collectors are willing to spend on these, but then again, it is rare to be able to buy actual source code, so there is some novelty value there.
It does make me wonder when other old devs start doing the same. I can see some people go gaga over the sources of original Pitfall or Arkanoid.
I do find it amusing, that the condition states that the sources are “brand new”.
Very funny and nice guy, Al Lowe.
Just an update on this.
Al Lowe ended up closing the auction for the Larry 1 and 2 source code before they ended. I assume he received an offer greater than the $20k or a cease-and-desist letter.
Bop-A-Bet went for $10,200.
Dragon’s Keep, Al Lowe’s first game, sold for $1,525.
Even if he didn’t end up selling the sources for Larry games, that Bop-A-Bet is a nice little Christmas bonus for him. I doubt he got anywhere near as much sales for it when it was new.
He got stopped by Activision. From Facebook’s Sierra Gamers group.
[Al Lowe] received a letter from an outside law firm hired by Activison that ordered him to take it down. He said in the letter Activison understood they don’t own the IP to LSL but that the source code probably contained shared code to Kings Quest and Space Quest. For that reason they sent him the letter.
Al and I agreed that he was right, but by the time you hire an attorney to prove you’re right, it would have cost more than what he would have got from the auctions.
If I had to take a guess, this is one of those scenarios where Activison is compelled to act. You can’t pick and choose when to enforce IP rights. If they chose not to go after Al and then someone else releases source code that they actually care about, attorneys can point to ALS scenario and say Activison is being partial and selective in their enforcement of their IP rights, which you can’t do under US law.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/273746983994/permalink/10156340968788995/
I expected some lawyers to get active, but really didn’t expect it to be like that.
So basically he was stopped by a company who don’t even own any rights to those games? 
I’m not sure I can agree with that reasoning, especially when that source code is so old that nobody is going to use it anymore, it has been reverse-engineered many times by third parties, and that code (presumably) doesn’t contain any assets directly related to King’s Quest or Space Quest, so some very active lawyers they have there.
Anyway, we can still ask, did Al actually think he could sell them without anyone with legal interests noticing? He’s been in the business for decades, he probably should have known better.
(In the end, I think he’s going to sell them anyway, just not publicly.)
He got stopped by Activision. From Facebook’s Sierra Gamers group.
[Al Lowe] received a letter from an outside law firm hired by Activison that ordered him to take it down. He said in the letter Activison understood they don’t own the IP to LSL but that the source code probably contained shared code to Kings Quest and Space Quest. For that reason they sent him the letter.
Al and I agreed that he was right, but by the time you hire an attorney to prove you’re right, it would have cost more than what he would have got from the auctions.
If I had to take a guess, this is one of those scenarios where Activison is compelled to act. You can’t pick and choose when to enforce IP rights. If they chose not to go after Al and then someone else releases source code that they actually care about, attorneys can point to ALS scenario and say Activison is being partial and selective in their enforcement of their IP rights, which you can’t do under US law.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/273746983994/permalink/10156340968788995/
I can’t say I understand the logic here. A law firm can’t ‘order’ Al to take it down. They need a court order for that. If Al and whoever this person writing this thought they were right, then they (Activision) wouldn’t have been able to get such an order anyway. So no need to hire an attorney.
Member of the NAALCB - (North American Anti- Lobster Cop Brigade) since 2019.
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