• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

On the morality of abandonware

This reminds me of what happened with the Fallout series. It was potentially dead like B&W there was a mobile version being created. The rights to the game ended up with Bethesda and they decided to make a new version and shut down the mobile version completely. Just because a game is no longer supported doesn't mean it is dead, if a new version of B&W goes in the works (even if it on a different platform) I am sure Lionshead will not appreciate people running pirated copies of the game ;)
 
^ Luckily Fallout series (old) was released by Interplay as a collection! Best $16 I ever spent! Put way more than 20 hours into Fallout 2, and if I didn't get so into it, I'd have just as much in Tactics (unfortunately, I get too worked up with it, carefully plotting my every move... takes too long lol).
 
Slug said:
That's a completely different issue. No one is "forcing" you - you could simply either wait for release in your locale, or pre-order it online from elsewhere if you were that desperate to play it rather than deprive the developers of the reward for their work. The issue here is a decade-old game, long out of both production and support, that the developer no longer even acknowledges.
Click to expand...

That's not feasible in my case. Some shops here just tell me they won't get it because it seems not enough demand (a lot of new games have higher spec'd units in mind and there aren't many of those here), while others just plain never heard of the game.

And no, pre-order is not an option here because e-bay and similar sites don't deliver here. Heck even the biggest bank in our country doesn't support paypal.

Generally, I wait for 6mos to a year to see if shops will stock it, if not, then go ahead.

As to the OP's case, I reiterate, if the developer isn't making money of the game, I'd torrent that without waiting.
 
I find it difficult to believe that it is impossible to order a game online somewhere and have it shipped to you. You're telling me if you wanted Skyrim or Batman Arkham City, there is no way at all for you to legally purchase those games?
 
  • Like
Reactions: B2L
Yeahha said:
This reminds me of what happened with the Fallout series. It was potentially dead like B&W there was a mobile version being created. The rights to the game ended up with Bethesda and they decided to make a new version and shut down the mobile version completely. Just because a game is no longer supported doesn't mean it is dead, if a new version of B&W goes in the works (even if it on a different platform) I am sure Lionshead will not appreciate people running pirated copies of the game ;)
Click to expand...

Would they care if it was the original B&W? I mean does Maxis care right now if you pirate the Sims? They've got the Sims 3 and the Sims Medieval out now. The original Sims is archaic (although you can probably still purchase it legally so the point is kind of moot in that case). They'd care if you pirate Sims 3 or Sims Medieval and they should. But they're not making money or supporting the Sims at the moment.
 
A.Nonymous said:
I find it difficult to believe that it is impossible to order a game online somewhere and have it shipped to you. You're telling me if you wanted Skyrim or Batman Arkham City, there is no way at all for you to legally purchase those games?
Click to expand...

There are legal ways, but ways which are very limited. For example, yes there are a few online order sites that deliver here, but I need to use a credit card. Problem is, to get a credit card here, i need to have a bond equivalent to somewhere between $2000-$3000 in the bank, separate from my own savings account, which being a med student at the moment I can't afford. The only remaining way at the moment is to find someone coming back from overseas and ask him/her to get one for me. However none of my acquaintances or relatives are coming back in the near future.

I got Skyrim, but so far haven't found Arkham City nor AC: Revelations in stores at the moment. So far they tell me they don't know yet if they will stock it.

All in all its more trouble for me to get a new game here than to torrent it. I do however try buy it as soon as its available (which can be anywhere between 3months to a year after release, I actually have never found a legit copy of Crysis 1 here, ever). After all, if I torrent it I don't get patches and other stuff for games like Starcraft and Skyrim.

For some of my friends who live outside of the capital, they torrent it because its more expensive to travel to the store than the game itself. Heck there are cities here with more than 200k in population but has never seen a Starbucks branch, let alone an updated game store.

EDIT: Just to make a point, if I want to order Arkham City for example, I need to seperate from almost $3000 in cash. The bond will stay in the bank untouched as long as my credit card is active, so lets say I give a $2000 bond which I will basically probably never see again. Then I have to pay for both shipping and the game itself. That's just robbery in my book, especially when I waited for Starcraft 2 for example. It just cost me $50 and around 3 month delay.
 
A.Nonymous said:
What country are you in? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Philippines. Though its been about a month spent playing Skyrim last I checked if Arkham or AC: Revelations was available. LOL. I'll probably be checking again at the end of March, since I really can't play much due to school at the moment. But generally, games don't get released here at release date, and depending on demand, delay can reach up to a year. Mostly really the problem with buying legit games for me comes from that stupid bond my bank asks if I want to get a credit card.

EDIT: Now that I think about it though, the main difficulty comes from the stores themselves not really doing very well. While there are many rather well off families here, the majority of the population can't even afford to have a decent PC for gaming at home, and resort to playing in PC rental stores, who also don't really provide much decent rigs. My school use laptop outstrips the rental PCs performance by a mile, let alone if I compare them to my desktop at home. Outside school (my friends in school have similar dilemma, so we usually get out legit games near Christmas when relatives are coming home, and we torrent the rest of the year unless we find a legit copy), where I have some acquaintances in the neighborhood, or in church, some of them like puke rainbows when they see my laptop. Heck they don't even sell 4GB RAM sticks here, you'd have to order from overseas to even get one, so its not possible for many people to go over 4GB RAM (using a couple of 2GB sticks).

The most popular games here are like 5 year old games or more recent ones but less demanding on resources, generally Warcraft, DoTA, AC2, LoL, Ragnarok, HoN, the like. And gaming in general is frowned upon here.

Games like Portal 2, Crysis, SC2, Skyrim, Arkham aren't very popular mainly because the mainstream population either don't have a PC, or their PCs aren powerful enough to run it. Those who have money to buy powerful PCs on the otherhand, don't game much. My parents don't believe in credit cards since it creates debt, and as a student I still can't afford one LOL.

Lets just say for every 10 persons here, 4 don't own a PC, 4 does have PCs but arent powerful enough to run such more recent games, and the last 2 are pulling their hair out in annoyance why they can't find the games they want here.
 
Here's how the moral compass spins in my head on the topic of Abandonware: Can you pay the developer? Yes? Then do so. No? Then download. Nobody's been sued for downloading games yet. They've done it on music, on movies, and adult film. And software, but mostly business-to-business and foreign countries, as opposed to individuals.

If you buy it from a third party, you're not buying it from the developer. The people who made the game aren't getting paid. There is no moral superiority in buying secondhand over pirating. The only difference is, the latter shafts people who have no right to profit from the sale. Oh, they have the right to try under the first sale doctrine, but they can't hit you up for costing them business, because they wanted $300 for a game they paid $10 for.

I have played the original Black & White. It's not very good. Then again, you and me may disagree on what makes a game good. It's Peter Molyneux, so you know it's made of hype and broken promises. Don't get me wrong, I respect the guy as a dev, but what he says and what his customers get are quite a far cry from one another, and, while they're fun at times, the Fable games are terrible games. They're beat-em-up games dressed up as RPGs, and they, Fable 2 in particular, seem to be marketed to children, but they have some very mature themes. Look, I'm a pretty open guy, but a game where your dog can dig up a condom, you can have a spouse of either gender in each town, and have unprotected sex (or protected, if you have a condom) with a partner of either gender should not have an art style that looks like a Disney movie. It just feels weird all around. Make it look more like Oblivion if you want adult themes. But enough about what I think about Lionhead and Molyneux.

Oh hey, did somebody say Fallout? For what it's worth, probably not much, but Bethesda won the lawsuit against Interplay. Surprise surprise, Interplay sold the franchise and wanted to renege on Bethesda. Stupid move. Anyway, Bethesda won full rights (I wanna say custody) to the franchise, including the first two come 2013. I'm thinking maybe Fallout 1 and 2 come to Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, as well as re-released on Steam with some bonus content and, if we're lucky, some HD textures. I'm not talking about redoing them in the Fallout 3/New Vegas engine, but they could put a fresh coat of polish on them, just so they look good on HD monitors and TVs. I've played both Fallout 1/2 on XP and Win7, never actually finished either, and they take some work.

Also, check Good Old Games (GoG) for B&W and the Fallouts, if you haven't already. Their releases Just Work in XP/Vista/Win7. Maybe shoot them an email, see if they can work with Lionhead on a re-release of B&W. Most of what they sell are old games.
 
Nice, I was following the Beth v. interplay suite for quite a while, then stopped (around the time my F2 character got stuck).

I can't imagine that those games would be too fun on consoles, ;) I guess I'm just used to the mouse on this issue :D
 
Dark Reality said:
as well as re-released on Steam with some bonus content and, if we're lucky, some HD textures. I'm not talking about redoing them in the Fallout 3/New Vegas engine, but they could put a fresh coat of polish on them, just so they look good on HD monitors and TVs. I've played both Fallout 1/2 on XP and Win7, never actually finished either, and they take some work.

Also, check Good Old Games (GoG) for B&W and the Fallouts, if you haven't already. Their releases Just Work in XP/Vista/Win7. Maybe shoot them an email, see if they can work with Lionhead on a re-release of B&W. Most of what they sell are old games.
Click to expand...

There is a high resolution patch for fallout 1 and 2 makes both the game looks great on modern displays the 2D art looks fantastic in high resolution. Its pixel based like windows desktop so the higher you set it the more you see onscreen at once given the original was only running at 640x480 running at modern pc resolutions you get a huge zoomed out overview of the maps vs the claustrophobic default view. Text and ui also scale down in size so its harder to read the text but you can also set it to a lower resolution then your native resolution if its to small still looks alot better and infact I had to at one point during fallout 1 as setting it to my native rez 1920x1200 broke one of the essential quest in fallout 1 when your in the sewer my character couldn't walk to the edge where you find the water chip. Also for fallout 2 the restoration mod besides fixing bugs left in the game adds alot of new content(6 whole new locations as well as new quest,characters, and items in existing locations) that was supposed to be in the game but interplay didn't have time to complete so they left it out.

Fallout 1 high Resolution mod
Fallout 2 High Resolution mod
Fallout 2 restoration mod
 
Now as for the original question I agree with the sentiment that old games that have gone out of print and aren't available for purchase for a reasonable price online and the only option is overpriced new copies/secondhand copies that won't benefit the original devs I don't see much shame in downloading it through other means. If the game ever gets released on gog and you enjoyed it then you can buy it to from there show your support will only cost $10 at the most.
 
So I went back to the PC store and they had a big ass poster of AC Revelations! Cool! But they still don't have stock, good think I still have a couple of months before summer here to wait for a legit copy (school takes up to much time). Unfair distribution of games in Third World countries actually do increase the levels of piracy.
 
chanchan05 said:
So I went back to the PC store and they had a big ass poster of AC Revelations! Cool! But they still don't have stock, good think I still have a couple of months before summer here to wait for a legit copy (school takes up to much time). Unfair distribution of games in Third World countries actually do increase the levels of piracy.
Click to expand...

Even in here in the U.S stores have very limited selection of PC games and are those they do carry are usually overpriced. So I just buy all my PC games digitally on steam or a physical copy on amazon. Of course here its much easier to pay online here even without a bank account or credit card you can buy prepaid visa giftcards for $25-$100 to buy games online with which is what I used to do when I was younger. If all I had was retail stores to rely on it would be hard to get all PC games I want besides the most mainstream ones and alot of games would be impossible to get since there download only.

Sent from my Atrix 2 with Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom