HAY GUYS

mortis · Jan 7, 2009, 09:51 PM

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).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

mortis · 09:11 PM

Originally Posted by LeHah

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.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.