Maybe. It depends on whether a person simply wants an official-sounding soccer game or if he's sincerely interested in rosters. The heavier fans, the ones to whom the FIFA series caters, are probably not that interested in playing with pros from a decade ago. Given the choice, they'd likely opt for the current teams.

You could make an argument for downloading an older game to see if you like how they present the series, however. EA's known for changing relatively little between iterations, so the differences between FIFA 03 and FIFA 08 are probably not that grand.

It is - but not in its original form. There was a lot of interior re-management that affected the site's materials and policy. They lost a shit-ton of great games for refusing to resign with EA.

Dear Sir (or Madame),
You may be right.
Sincerely yours, HL Mencken

Or, you know, one could be a subset of the other.

Abandonware seems to be an internet buzzword. Do you see it mentioned on a website like CNet when it comes to their download section? I can't remember ever hearing the term until 2002, and only then on the internet.

On the other hand, Public Domain appears in all sorts of legal records and offical paperwork. It has an actual definition to it and can be discussed in places like courts or criminal justice classes.

But they have SYBERIA. Also PSYCHONAUTS. FOR FREE!

I have heard that a person/company can lost rights over something over a (very lengthy) period of time if those rights are not renewed. However, it takes a long, long time, unless they give them up themselves.

I always understood Abandonware as something the publishers will say "Hey, here ya go. We aren't responsible for anything you do with this and good luck with it, but we still retain the rights to it all". I think that over time, people have modified that definition so that a publisher isn't "required" to blatantly say "here you go, guys". Of course, that doesn't legally mean anything as NoA has actively gone after ROM sites for NES/SNES roms despite everyone saying that they were 'abandonware'.

Now, in the long scheme of things does this hurt anyone? Presuming there aren't any remakes, revisions, ports, re-releases, "Classic Online Gaming Networks" (see Nintendo) or "collection series", then no. Yet, that doesn't make it legal.

Consequently, some of this may all be quite a topic people will discuss on in the future. If Nintendo were to ever REALLY open up it's gaming library to encompass retro-gaming, then all the talk regarding NES/SNES roms being abandonware will fall to the wayside (well, maybe not ALL).

I remember the rumors of NoA opening the entire released SNES library for the Virtual Console.



I remember being happy that this might be really nice.





I remember being sorely disappointed.

To take this argument perhaps in a little different direction, what I see in our society today tells me that the general populace doesn't concern itself with concepts such as "abandonware," and simply downloads what it can, even if the title was only released hours earlier or is in fact a pre-release version that hasn't even hit the shelves yet. Enthusiasts that frequent forums such as this one are more nuanced than that, as evidenced by this thread for example, but are far fewer in numbers.

The recent writer's strike illustrates how important getting compensated for Internet downloads is to content creators. I wonder at times if the iPod generation has a strong concept of what IP actually is, or if they are blind to such issues? I remember we used to record cassette tape mixes of our favorite songs off the radio. Is this the same thing as downloading songs for free off the Internet? I'm not sure. When we recorded songs to cassette, we were listening to the live radio feed, which included advertisements. So, the songs were generating ad revenue. However, since we didn't tape the ads the ad revenue was not being generated upon repeated listening.

On a similar note, does it make a difference if I borrow a friend's copy of a song, movie, or game, if that copy was purchased at retail or copied for free off the Internet? Either way, it is not generating revenue since I'm only borrowing it. But in this case if the first step of the process is illegitimate, is anything derived from it de facto illegitimate also?

If I'm downloading new games, I'm not paying for them. If I'm downloading old games, I'm not buying as many new games as I otherwise would and therefore not funding the development of new games or the industry in general. So, does downloading games of whatever state of "abandonment" one wishes to define, hurt or help the industry? Industry sales are up overall in 2008, even with this crazy economy, yet many smaller development houses are folding for various reasons. Similar to the movie industry, we are seeing a collapse of the "middle," with only giant titles (GTA IV, Halo, etc.) or freeware being released, with less and less in between.

One could argue, I suppose, that freeware is similarly problematic. By downloading games that were never offered for sale, one is also not providing development capital to the game industry. I think where this argument fails, however, is that I have not yet seen freeware of the quality of titles like Half-Life 2. Various alternative models have been tried before, such as ad-supported titles, but these haven't been proven as viable alternatives to the tried & true retail model (whether B&M or Steam-type models) thus far.

I wonder, given the current state of the economy, if there will be a drastic uptick in "questionable" downloads vs. retail purchases?

I'm trying not to paint any strokes too broadly here, as this is a complex topic. This is a good thread for discussion, and I hope we never see the day where such topics are not discussed...

American Copyright laws allow things to fall into public domain if its over 50 years old and only if theres no estate involved. Other countries have similar laws though the time for it to fall into public domain varries.

I don't know why I'm even responding to this - but you have to be a giant goddamned idiot to ever think this happened by a company looking to make any sort of money.

Dear Sir (or Madame),
You may be right.
Sincerely yours, HL Mencken

08 let you control offensive players off the ball and had almost unrecognisably better AI than 03 (Called Road to World Cup technically) although RTWC had a dive button and the silly spins and other tricks. All Fifa games allow you to edit your own players though and most have classic teams included on the roster so nobody would ever buy an old one to play as old teams.

I appreciate this is pretty off-topic but I think I'm backing up Crash's first point in that nobody ever, ever buys a Fifa game more than a year old so I imagine EA stop accounting for them and write off the stock after a couple of years.

Wait, what? Companies HAVE released games for free years after they have sold them. Sometimes it's because they feel they have already received the most profit they can from the game, sometimes they do it to be nice, sometimes it's to promote an upcoming sequel, and sometimes it's a combination of reasons. Here's a simple example:

Rockstar Classics - Free Downloads

GTA1 and GTA2 were released waaaay back. They were very popular and resulted in a great deal of sales. Now, years later, they have been released to the public for free.