We’re not demanding the release of thousands of back catalogue games for free as such things would require time and effort from the company that currently owns the rights to the titles. However in these days of high-speed internet connections, surely those companies could make their games available online, and have gamers pay a small fee to cover the cost in order that they might recapture the glory of a particular retro title?
Alternatives could include specifying a retailer where gamers can buy these old titles cheaply, and/or download them (devoid of box, instructions, technical support and any kind of warranty) for their own use – it may not give gamers the chance to play old games for free, but it would guarantee that the games are not lost forever. In no way do we want the Company to relinquish their copyrights – the game, characters, artwork, music and anything else related, will still be entirely theirs – all we want is a chance to play the games again.
A further possibility would be for companies to announce the release of their titles as ‘freeware’, and then leave it up to gamers to locate a copy of the title and host it for download – or perhaps gamers could send their (now freeware) game to sites such as Liberated Games who are dedicated to hosting all games that have been released by the company and made free in a playable form to the public - sites which are separate from the entire ‘abandonware’ issue.
Any of the above suggestions would be an improvement over the current situation, where gamers who want to play such classic games from the past have to scour eBay for the title or search the internet for one of the many Abandonware sites that are in operation, regardless of the legality of such things.
With this campaign we intend to highlight the plight of these ‘Abandoned’ titles, if we can rescue just a few of these titles from their current obscurity it would be worthwhile.
World of Spectrum have attempted similar things, but aimed entirely at titles that were released for that machine, they’ve achieved some success – and have a list of both Individuals and Software Houses that have responded to their campaign to allow gamers to once again play Spectrum titles. This campaign and the one that they’ve been pushing for a few years have more than a few similarities, the difference being that they’ve only asked for old Spectrum games (long past their retail days), whilst we’d be hoping to liberate some more recent PC titles that are nigh on impossible to obtain through conventional methods.
Where can you help? By emailing game publishers and asking them to take the time to consider our proposition, by posting this message on other websites in an attempt to gain further support for our cause – and sign the petition we’ve set up to show the publishers how much support there is for this kind of thing.
Major sticking points that have to be noted include the rise of mobile gaming – developers will want to gain as much income as they can for their titles, so are unlikely to release a game for free (or at a reduced cost) when they can remarket their title for mobile phones, it just wouldn’t make good business sense. Other points to consider include the popularity of systems such as the Xbox Live Arcade, and the potential of Nintendo’s new console to use something similar – if companies can still get money for their titles, then there’s very little chance of them releasing them for free, but maybe there’s still the odd title that will slip through all of these nets, and still be an ‘abandoned’ classic – and maybe it’s these games that we should aim to rescue from the gaming abyss – I’m sure that people would still pay to play System Shock 2, the question is, will they get the chance to?