[Rant] LeHah's Abandonware Emporium

Originally Posted by LeHah

Its called infringement. There are many ways to do it. Mountain Dew and EA had an exchange of legal status things to have that promotion happen - its vaugely similar to walking into a Bestbuy and buying a copy of Halo.

Stop dwelling in the realm of ideals and get practical. Nobody is losing anything concrete in this equation.

Let's say I download an ISO of FIFA 99. EA is no longer producing material copies of this game; they are no longer estimating and calculating revenues from purchases of this game. EA is no longer paying royalties to Sega for sales of FIFA 99. All transactions involving this game are on the secondhand market and use a system of exchange so arbitrary that there's no way Sega or EA could even begin to calculate perceived losses. It is, for all intents and purposes, a game obsoleted by subsequent versions and technology itself. There's no real stake in the FIFA 99 market.

As for Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and any other tie-in product, they should shut up and be glad people are still being exposed to the ads in these games, downloaded or otherwise. They know there's no such thing as bad publicity so it's extremely doubtful that Mountain Dew is going to up and launch a proprietary suit against leechers and ISPs who facilitate piracy.

Likewise, it's not in Sega's better interests to formally go after pirates. That would alienate the existing fanbase who would happily support any future console endeavors on Sega's part. The people who download Dreamcast ISOs do so because there's really no other practical and/or affordable way to play those games. Sega receives no compensation from secondhand sales; you're not supporting the company by purchasing off Ebay or at a flea market, so why pay through the nose for something so discardable as an ideal? Does paying $120 for a hard copy of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 make you a better man? No, it makes you a silly man.

Here's a good analogy for Abandonware: It's like the public library. It sometimes takes a while for popular titles to become available, but they eventually do. In the meantime, there's plenty of older and forgotten titles for everyone to enjoy. The purchase fees and royalties have already been handled, nobody is going without.

Why are you so worried about the legal holdings of companies in which you have no stake, anyhow? Do you not watch TV and/or movie clips on YouTube because the studios, actors and distributors aren't getting their cut, also?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.