I have no idea if this topic is appropriate here or worthy of being locked. If it's locked I won't be offended.
I've been thinking about downloading/playing an abandonware game. This game came out in the late 90s and was a huge hit. I've never played. It's since been abandoned by it's developer apparently. I've looked on Amazon ($300), Steam, Direct2Drive, Gog.com and Google. Aside from Amazon, I found one other place selling it for $60 and another place selling it for $90. I'm obviously not going to pay those prices for a 10 year old game and these were all from 3rd party sellers. I went to the developer site looking for some place to give them my money and all they've got there is patches for the game. Support ended nearly a decade ago.
So, I'm left in a quandry. I want to play this game. There's no question that the publisher owns the rights to that game. Neither they nor anyone else is currently trying to make any money off the game. There's no support for the game so if I had a copy today and called them today for support they'd tell me to go pound sand.
Now, copyright is one of those things that, legally, only applies if it's enforced. You can actually lose your copyright if you don't enforce it. So, I can either not play the game (boo!) or download the game someplace without paying for it which is technically illegal, but I'm not sure if it's immoral or not as there is no way to give anyone money for the game. If the publisher/developer or anyone out there was still trying to make money on the game I'd absolutely pay them for it. But no one is. Is it immoral to pirate abandoned games when there is no one out there actually trying to profit from them?
I've been thinking about downloading/playing an abandonware game. This game came out in the late 90s and was a huge hit. I've never played. It's since been abandoned by it's developer apparently. I've looked on Amazon ($300), Steam, Direct2Drive, Gog.com and Google. Aside from Amazon, I found one other place selling it for $60 and another place selling it for $90. I'm obviously not going to pay those prices for a 10 year old game and these were all from 3rd party sellers. I went to the developer site looking for some place to give them my money and all they've got there is patches for the game. Support ended nearly a decade ago.
So, I'm left in a quandry. I want to play this game. There's no question that the publisher owns the rights to that game. Neither they nor anyone else is currently trying to make any money off the game. There's no support for the game so if I had a copy today and called them today for support they'd tell me to go pound sand.
Now, copyright is one of those things that, legally, only applies if it's enforced. You can actually lose your copyright if you don't enforce it. So, I can either not play the game (boo!) or download the game someplace without paying for it which is technically illegal, but I'm not sure if it's immoral or not as there is no way to give anyone money for the game. If the publisher/developer or anyone out there was still trying to make money on the game I'd absolutely pay them for it. But no one is. Is it immoral to pirate abandoned games when there is no one out there actually trying to profit from them?