DOS Games Discussion

I download if I find interestin' one, but am still for.

Duh, man! Of course! The companies don't care about it anyway!

I'm pretty sure that about 99.9% of all of the votes are going to be either the first or the last.......................that's just the kind of people we are

It doesn't make a difference to me. I just download.

Abandonware should be just left as abandonware, just not anywhere near this forum.

If I want it I will just d/l it. If you look hard enough on the net, you can find just about anything.

Nobody has the right to make abandonware freeware except the current owner. Its like if I sold special rims for cars and decided I didnt want to sell them anymore. Just because I have a set on my porch doing nothing doesnt mean you can go and get them free just because I dont have them for sale anymore.

People stuff cd's full of freeware/shareware and sell them. Most of the people who argue it should be freeware just want to feel better about bootlegging the game.

I'm sure people will argue that its just code and not a physical thing. Remember quite a few people spent alot of time typing into a computer and testing the code before they tried to sell it (usually anyway).

I think a better name for this topic is "should abandonware be legal". They have petitions for that, ya know. The nasty Australian dogs link to it.

Here is my view on the subject...

If a company makes a game, but no longer supports it (either on website, order form, or any other way) then they obviously don't care about it and it should be released as freeware, after all, they wont make anymore money off it if they arent selling it. And it is their loss if lots of people are downloading these games that are no longer supproted by the company.

Freeware all the way!

Richard

Ok Ill make the case this way. I use to play this online space shoot em up game called Subspace. It was one addictive game. Just about the time I was really getting into it Virgin decided that they no longer wanted to support the game and were going to take all their servers down. Of course this wasent good news for us SS junkies. Well a few SSers called up Virgin and told them that they wanted to keep playing the game and they wouldent mind running all the servers themselves and handle all the administrative stuff. After a few weeks of taking Virgin coughed up all the code for the servers and client stuff. Not only did we get to keep playing SS but some people even fixed quite a few bugs. I havent played in a while but Im sure there are still people playing.

-w00t- you bet people are still playing it (like me). The game is now known as "Continuum".

Continuum != Subspace. Continuum is just the front-end of Subspace.

i just download but it should be freeware

Like all abandons.

I got an idea:

The authors and companies should get together, have all commercial DOS software (games, utils, the whole shot) made from 1981 to 1994 on a CD-ROM or two, sell it for $50.00 or more, then split the money between all the authors/companies.

That would destroy the abandonware movement and provide an easy way to get hard-to-find classics (legally). Then the ESA can finally relax. Also, Internet bandwidth would be saved and less legal battles would come.

(hey, maybe this would be nice for old game consoles! Nintendo could put all its 8-bit games on a CD-ROM and sell it too! Then include emulators for DOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.)

I don't download abandonware, I buy it on ebay.

I've bought freeware games on ebay. I just like to own the disc itself and all the packaging. I obsess over my collections.

wardrich: It ISN'T the company loss if ppl download unsupported games.
it's their gain cuz the co gets more popular

Unknown_K: What if you threw them on your porch saying you no longer cared?

abandonware shouldbe freeware. If it isn't, how the hell'r ppl gonna get it?
plus it's not sold by the company so they dont lose money.

null

I suspect some abandonware is better than the replacement! Therefore the only way to get the citizens to payup is to abandon the old ver. A few vers of Windoze come to mind....