Legal Opinion: Abandonware is the best argument for DRM you’ll ever read
By Patrick Vuleta on February 28, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Do you remember the Amiga? No? It was, for almost a good decade, the flag-bearer of the Glorious PC Master Race. The Amiga was competing with the NES, SNES, Master System, and Mega Drive—all at once. Against these consoles, the Commodore Amiga had the supreme gameplay, sound, and graphics capabilities, because Nintendon’t (I’m so clever).
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Commodore made a series of downright stupid decisions, and lost their entire grip on the home PC market. Had it gone differently, you could have been reading this on the Amiga operating system Workbench, rather than Windows. Now, your only views to past greatness are Ebay, YouTube, and emulated abandonware.
This sums up why we need DRM quite nicely. Tis a tale of obsolete hardware, abandoned software, and loose morals.
Abandonware and the greater good
The Amiga was one of the original platforms for the genre-starting Dune 2. Yet your best chance to play this today is to illegally download a DOS version from one of the “abandonware” websites. Not that I’m condoning such actions—just giving the facts—you’d be hard pressed to find a working Amiga copy in 2013 (there’s an online emulator here, too… I have no idea of its legal status).
Abandonware is a catch-all term for when publishers stop caring. No more profit comes from the game, so it gets dropped. Sales aren’t made, and copyright isn’t enforced. Publishers turn a blind eye, and websites are “allowed” to offer illegal downloads in plain sight.
This abandonment is used to justify abandonware (hence the name). While downloaders recognise their actions are technically illegal, they claim it’s a victimless crime.
First is the claim that playing abandonware doesn’t hurt anyone. The publisher isn’t offering the game for sale, and so you didn’t take away from sales. When you download Dune 2, your actions won’t be used as the centrepiece of Ubisoft’s anti-piracy rants.
Second is the claim that without “archiving”, the games will simply be lost to history. If EA dismantled Westwood, and no one bothers to sell Dune 2, how else will you play this classic?
Both these arguments have a grain of truth. That’s what makes them so compelling, on first glance. However, abandonware is illegal, and we need DRM to stop it—for the good of gaming.
Do you want games to live forever?
Justifying abandonware assumes that no market for old games will exist in the future. This, however, has been caused more by retailing methods than anything else. In days past—you may not remember—you’d ride to the local store on your penny farthing, hand over half your weekly earnings of two dollars and one cent (in coinage), and walk out with an Amiga game in a box the size of a large cereal carton. The large boxes, of course, were to occupy shelf space, for this is how games were sold in the Dark Ages.
The problem, though, was that stores had to maintain inventory turnover. Keeping your store stocked costs money. Old games quickly become discounted in a desperate attempt to clear inventory to make way for the next flavour of the month. Popularity is fleeting. Games that leave the store, never return.
Online distribution changes this. It costs but bandwidth to keep an online store stocked. You have no pressure to clear inventory, because you have none.
And digital games can have extreme shelf lives. Doom still sells on Steam. The oldest games at Good Old Games were released in the late 80’s—Police Quest, King’s Quest, and Space Quest. These continue to sell today, despite coming from a time with a distinct lack of imagination for naming.
Only DRM will make this possible
If online stores can stock so many old games and charge for it, what stops them? Obsoleteness. The reason you can only find the DOS version of Dune 2 is that we don’t play Amigas anymore. Even if you had an original game disk, it wouldn’t work in that PC floppy drive you threw in the trash ten years ago.
And what stops obsoleteness? Money. As long as a business case can be justified for keeping old games working on modern systems, they will be. But if they don’t earn anything, they’ll be dropped… abandoned when it becomes convenient. Patching and porting costs money.
So what ensures money? You know where I need to go… DRM. When you’re selling such old games, profits are low. Most of Good Old Game’s stock sells for $5.99.
The argument that “piracy does not cost sales” gets weaker the lower the profit. While you may correctly scoff at Ubisoft’s claims that piracy cost a hundred bajillion dollars of Far Cry 3 sales, it’s harder to claim that an abandonware website offering Shadow Warrior for free didn’t cost Good Old Games $5.99. With prices well below impulse buy level, every Google search for an old game that leads to an abandonware website becomes a lost sale.
Stripped of all its hyperbolic, negative connotations, DRM is simply a means for asserting ownership. You cannot sell something you cannot own, and this is the original point of copyright—that the law protects ownership rights, so the owner can sell and profit, free of unreasonable competition. However, it’s hard to sell a $5 game when you’re competing against freely available downloads. In turn, that means it’s hard to make a case for patching games to be compatible with current systems.
DRM gives publishers the ownership rights that copyright always intended, and hence the small profit needed to continue to offer games past the point when games have previously been abandoned. With DRM, we’ll no longer lose games to abandonment.
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I will pose the following scenario. Game has always online DRM of some sort or periodic online checks. Company owning said game goes under for whatever reason and doesn’t sell the rights to it or can’t due to third party lock in from the DRM or other tech in the game. Official DRM removal patch never released as the company no longer exists.
Legit game no longer works. No where for potential new players to buy it. So now what? The only truly legal option here is nobody can play it, even those who have purchased it.
Also Good Old Games only sell stuff without DRM as far as I know.
I’d like to counter this with the fact that DRM also means having to maintain authentication servers. If a publisher (most notably EA) decides that it’s not worth maintaining said servers, you won’t be able to play those games in the future when you want to reinstal them.
This is where GOG.com comes in. By offering titles that are free of DRM, there’s no need to maintain any authentication servers (which, in turn, means less hassle for reinstalling games in the future).
Also, the ownership of some old titles is up in the air. An example of this is Croc and Croc 2 on PC. Both the publisher (Fox Interactive) and developer (Argonaut Software) are dead and the titles are very hard to find (even on eBay). The up in the air nature of who owns the rights to those games makes it impossible to list on GOG.com or any other DD service. In short, your only real option to get the games is through piracy or abandonware sites.
EDIT: First point ninja’d by Otto.
The cynic in me says GOG sells games without DRM because they need to compete… just about every one of their titles can be had for free. Sure it is a good selling point for them, but I bet they’d love it if the abandonware websites were closed down.
I think the scenario you posed is valid, though, but the severity of the DRM is also a whole other issue. I’m not so sure abandonware websites have a good role as an insurance policy… as the support they give for new systems can’t be guaranteed.
Meanwhile we have something like XCOM which has changed hands four times and the originals are still offered on Steam. This is due to the exact trend I wrote in the article… XCOM is bankable, so will forever be available (at least as far out as I can imagine). So there’s good outliers and bad outliers.
This article makes little sense to me. Are you arguing around current abandonware titles or the potential for current new releases to one day become abandonware? I agree completely that Digital Distribution is a good thing to stop Abandonware from being a thing (though it’s clearly not perfect as titles can still be removed like Fahrenheit from Steam) but that doesnt’ change the fact that tons of decades old titles have already been abandoned and these are the only ways to play these games and I don’t feel that’s unfair.
You also seem to imply that piracy is the only thing that causes games to become abandonware (you say why should devs keep a game updated if you can get it free elsewhere) yet all current abandonware like Dune 2 would beg to differ given piracy wasn’t the force it is today back then.
I agree completely that once a game comes back from the dead it’s no longer abandonware and thus it becomes piracy if people still go after free copies but devs/pubs need to take the first steps to bringing the game back whether via gog or something else (were you trying to say that many still consider the games available on GoG as abandonware? if so I agree that that’s terrible).
Again I might not understand what exactly you’re arguing. Are you saying that we should stop using all currently available abandonware titles in same vain hope that pubs might then release them on gog? Because that would be silly imo, these titles have been abandoned, pubs wouldn’t care let alone know if people still downloading abandonware suddenly stopped because it might lead the pubs to rerelease the games.
Man, ive still got my old Amiga Commodore 64… Still got about 200 games for it too, but the screen doesn’t work any more :( would love to set that up for my daughter when shes older.
It came from the desert scared the shit out of me as a young boy… that and Road Raider, with those glowly zombie guys…
Good times. Damn good times.
i would agree only if i could purchase those old games and have the work flawlessly on they current system on which i got it. when i dusted off my old theme park cd months ago, to get it to run i had to trawl throguht then net for half a day at least. get dos box, configure that, then find the exact cycle speed that the game could run at (still too fast year went by in 3 seconds).
I like many gamers i suppose have got old boxes full of some of my old favourites. eg quest for glory, sim city, biohazard, dukenukem dn3d and those same engine clones, syndicate. ect ect. the only thing that stops me from playing them again is that it can take a day to get up and running, by that time my whim to play it one more time has gone.
Now if i can buy these old games from steam/origin/ubi whatever for $1-$5 and have them run straight away with no fucking around i would probably purchase them again, but considering to play sim tower again i had to find a copy of win 3.1 and install that and then run that throguht dosbox with cd drivers installed if i had to pay and still do all that fucking around they wouldnt get once cent off me.
BTW i have all these games and win 3.1 i just dont think that the floppys would even work anymore.
-sorry for the rant
PalZer0,
I have Croc 2 on PC original discs. Does that make me special? :3
Just like the ads you get regarding piracy on DVDs, DRM only affects those that actually purchase the program. The manufacturer has tried and
convicted the customer as a thief that can not be trusted. Meanwhile there are any number of sites that the software, movie, etc can be downloaded from that the DRM has been removed from. In short treat the customer like a thief and you do not have the right to complain when they steal from you, especially with the contempt of some of the drm forcefully installed(like root kits)
It does not have to be this way. Companies are making money without DRM. The witcher series and every game sold by GOG, something you seem to have avoided in your article.
Personally I prefer a bought game to one acquired via other methods. My steam library and numerous games disks prove this. Reward me, don’t treat me as a thief
Can’t do anything about the old titles because the cat’s out of the bag. But that’s no reason to just throw up our arms and just accept that the only way to have access to tomorrow’s games once they stop being fully supported is to rely on piracy.
I’d rather EA keep Mass Effect in Origin for years rather than palm it off to hackers. I don’t really understand why that would ever be a good thing, but is the direct result of no DRM.
1. EA stops supporting it, abandons it.
2. Only way to play it is by relying on pirates.
3. No guarantee of it staying current.
If EA has a guaranteed exclusive revenue from Mass Effect due to keeping tight DRM control, then they won’t abandon it in the first place.
exe3,
When did you first get it? If you got it when it was new then you’re not really that special (much like if I bought it today through GOG.com). I’m talking about buying it now given that both publisher and developer are dead and nobody seems to have the rights to the games anymore.
Patrick Vuleta,
There still comes a time where it’s not economically viable in the eyes of a publisher to maintain the DRM authentication servers for titles. EA is notorious for closing off MP for titles that don’t even make their 2 year anniversary. What’s to stop them from turning off the authentication servers when they feel that it’s not economically viable to keep them running?
EDIT: In a similar vein, will MS stop supporting activation of Windows XP when its support ends later this year (and, by extension, turn off the authentication servers related to XP activation)?
Heh, don’t they do that just to release sports games which are functionally the exact same game but with a different celebrity sponsor?
I’d say that’s no big loss. :p
Windows is in the same boat. Windows 7 is an objectively better OS, so not sure why anyone’s still wanting to use XP… there has to be a market for the product in the first place. There is still a big market for old games… not so much clapped-out operating systems.
As for other titles, I’d hope that they switch to another form of DRM.
For multiplayer generally… it’s really very hard to play any old game multipler. Try to find a game of SWAT 4 today. There are other things in play other than publisher profits… player interest is to blame too.
Patrick Vuleta,
Personally I don’t think this has anything to do with DRM but instead distribution channels. Back in the day you could only buy games via retail, once retail stopped stocking your game for whatever reason that was it, your revenue was gone because there were no other avenue’s to continue selling your product. Thank to Digital Distribution however ( not DRM) this is no longer an issue.
PalZer0,
Otay. :( I thought merely having a copy when the game is now completely rare would make one special.
Doesn’t that go hand-in-hand with DRM, though? Just say your game is so old you’re limited to selling it for $2 a copy. At that price, you need enough volume to make it worthwhile. The viability of that I’d assume would be hurt bad by having your game freely downloadable on ten different abandonware sites. That’s mostly where the DRM comes into things, in my mind.
Hence while abandonware claims to be making games available for long periods of time, they’re also hurting the viability of selling games at razor thin margins.
Patrick VuletaIf EA has a guaranteed exclusive revenue from Mass Effect due to keeping tight DRM control, then they won’t abandon it in the first place,
I am in the rare position of agreeing with exe3. I don’t think EA retaining an exclusive revenue stream on a title is justification enough that they will support a game in perpetuity. In 10 years time it may become prohibitively expensive for EA to continue maintaining compatibility of Mass Effect (for example), particularly in comparison the relatively low income it will generate. That is why GoG has carved such an excellent niche for themselves (plus engaging with indie devs pretty nicely too), they employ people whose sole job is to make sure that those games are compatible with modern systems. Over the last few months they have added Windows 8 and OSX to many titles.
Where is the incentive for EA, a publisher, to hire people to make their old games work instead of say more marketing people to push another iteration of Medal of Honor?
I’d like to think that at $2 the vast vast majority of people would buy it, especially if supported properly of which abandonware wouldn’t be, or at least not to the same extent.
Also while I don’t know their sales figures I think gog shows that DRM isn’t needed for digital distribution.
Finally does it matter if their profit margins are razer thin? You yourself in the article said that having these games up online costs nothing but bandwidth so what harm is there for keeping them up anyway? It’s a fact that eventually, one day, you will stop selling copies because theoretically everyone will already have the game, would that be a reason to remove it from sale online?
Why would anyone care about the legality of downloading a 20 year old game like Dune 2? Command & Conquer and Red Alert are freeware.
As for Dune 2 still being available, there’s numerous faithful remakes that run on the latest Windows (or straight out of a browser). The Golden Path even has modernized multiplayer/skirmish gameplay where you can actually select multiple units at a time.
http://forum.dune2k.com/topic/20346-list-of-dune-ii-clones-and-remakes/
Patrick Vuleta: You are a muppet
The first two C&C’s are freeware, Dune 2 is not.
As to why would anyone care… there is an awful lot of interest in such an old title around the net. ;) While the publishers don’t seem to care in this case… shouldn’t developers/publishers in similar positions have the first say in what happens?
I just can’t agree with the prevailing opinion that just because something is old means it’s common property. In Dune 2′s case, I’m inclined to believe that it’s more a case of the cat got out of the bag due to the popularity of the game and is now too hard to put back. But popularity does not dictate ownership.
Sure, but they’d earn even more money under what I’m proposing… I don’t see how that’s a bad thing. :P
GOG isn’t entirely do-as-you-please, either. The contract you enter into with them when you buy their games states you are absolutely prohibited from doing anything other than copying it to your machine. Not in those exact terms, mind you, but that you must respect the wishes of the publishers, which mostly include EA and such forth.
They just trust you to live up to it, which is a separate point in itself. But it does not change that GOG is not supporting abandonware. They’re not comrades in arms, so to speak. :P
I used to run a pirated copy of Balls of Steel way back when. Got rid of it a while back when I upgraded to Windows 7 from XP.
It went up on GOG.com at the beginning of the month and I bought it immediately. Admittedly I could’ve also bought it on the 3D Realms website but there would’ve been no guarantee that it would run on Windows 7 (unlike the copy I bought from GOG.com).
You want to hope that His-Supreme-Douchebag, King of the Internet Ben Kuchera doesn’t come across this article and demand your career be ruined.
Sounds like Steam.
Platform support. If I purchase a game, there must be an assumption that the platform still exists to operate said software;
In many cases here, those platforms do not exist, and emulation IS the only option available. Windows is not safe from this kind of extinction, and being the main PC platform forces software constraints, such as DirectX, that are not useable on other systems like Mac and Linux, let alone the fact that the x86 -x64 CPU platforms by themselves are very likely to be replaced, making any current software obsolete.
The most significant term here is “support”. If “support”, be it hardware or software does not exist, it doesn’t matter if a company/individual thinks otherwise because they, or any other faction are not supporting the software in question.
All a company needs to do, and do on regular occasion recently, is modify + compile for a different platform to make it viable.
Patrick Vuleta,
Seem to be conflating DRM with online distribution, The only way steam/EA will stop selling a game is if they turn off the servers and stop taking our money, that will never happen.
It may end up on gog or its equivalent (ie drm free) but that’s a good thing.
so…
Worst Article I’ve ever read on G.O.N. (I saved the best comment for the end)
Easily. This is pure propoganda and sounds like someone is employed by ubisoft.
How quickly is DRM Circumvented? Usually within hours of it’s release. Therefore, if someone wanted to not purchase a game, it could be easily downloaded. Therefore Steam would never make a sale. (yes, I know steam has some unobtrusive DRM)
If DRM is required to make games profitable, then Good Old Games would be unprofitable.
How often does DRM break the game? ie: you can’t login to ubisoft’s servers, therefore you can’t play your own game. Anything above zero is too high.
Lastly, Copyright was NEVER intended to protect the profitability of content producers. It was initially intended to control the flow of information when the printing press was first invented. (Read about “Bloody Mary”). To this day, in the American Constitution it states that copyrights SOLE PURPOSE is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”
This argument has a number of holes in it.
1 – If a game has been resurrected and is being sold on a site like GOG, it is no longer “Abandonware”. Under any definition. That makes those taking part in downloading it illegally pirates – and they can be dealt with under existing laws and methods. A DMCA take down request to an Abandonware site will generally be enough to scare the site owner into getting the link taken down.
2. DRM does not prevent piracy. Its primary goal is to simply delay it in the earliest days – giving publishers extra time to make sales before the negative impact of piracy is felt. Given games and movies make the vast majority of their profit in the first few days/weeks of launch, this extra time – so the argument goes – leads to better sales. This is why some publishers have even removed DRM a few months after release – it has served its purpose and has been assessed to no longer serve a purpose. This quote from a Kokatu article with an “industry insider” -
This entire model does not apply to a game that is so far past its release date no one remembers what it is any more. ;)
2 – GOG.com is the primary example of monetising dead titles. It is DRM-free – makes a lot of noise about this, in fact – and yet it still makes a very successful business out of distributing these titles, so suggesting that DRM is an imperative just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
3 – “If online stores can stock so many old games and charge for it, what stops them? Obsoleteness. …And what stops obsoleteness? Money. As long as a business case can be justified for keeping old games working on modern systems, they will be. But if they don’t earn anything, they’ll be dropped… abandoned when it becomes convenient. Patching and porting costs money.”
Actually, DRM and veiled attempts to disguise DRM such as only allowing official servers for multiplayer etc guarantees obsolescence. Oh the joy of trying to play an older game, only to find the server that it needs to contact to verify your purchase is down or no longer available. When this sort of thing happens – where to many go? Back to that pirated version you were trying to prevent them using in the first place. Most won’t bother giving you the chance to screw them this way – they’ll just refuse to buy your product in the first place. Some will go on to pirate it. For a percentage of users, you’re encouraging the very practice you’re trying to stamp out.
4 – “So what ensures money? You know where I need to go… DRM. When you’re selling such old games, profits are low. Most of Good Old Game’s stock sells for $5.99.”
And DRM is expensive. Unfortunately, no one wants to talk about the figures – there’s very little out there. But obviously, the constant tug of war between cracking DRM and newer DRM schemes coming along to thwart them is going to cost a lot of money. Is it really worthwhile to be doing this for a $5.99 game? I highly doubt it.
A number of insiders have stated over the years that things like DRM, BitTorrent poisoning etc are undertaken primarily to stop piracy in the first couple of weeks of the release of a movie or game. When ~70% of your profit comes in the first few weeks of launch, getting even a few days of breathing space before the cracked version of a game turns up on the torrent sites is – so goes the argument – enough to make the difference and pay for the DRM costs. This is for new release, AAA titles. The ones selling for ~$80 in Australia (and around $60 in most other locales ;)). Such a costly exercise doesn’t make sense for a $5.99 20 year old title.
5 – I have bought a number of games from GOG that I know for a fact I can get elsewhere because I don’t have to faff about with emulators, I am supporting their efforts to bring out more titles out in the same way. Heck, I’ve bought titles I know I have the original disks for buried in my cupboard somewhere because of the convenience of having them ready to run on modern hardware and not having to go rooting around for an old disk that no longer lives in its CD case.
If these games carried DRM, it’s highly likely they would cost more money. It’s also quite likely they’ll be more of a hassle. To me, that would change the equation under which I decided to buy them in the first place and I would probably not have bothered.
Of all the possible examples to pick, I’m surprised Patrick chose EA – a company that already has “guaranteed exclusive revenue” due to tying multiplayer games to their own servers – DRM by design – when that same company has been newsworthy for deliberately turning those servers off – due to insufficient revenue!
EA abandoned those games. DRM means they stay lost. Patrick’s witness torpedoes his argument.
Is…is that Police Quest?
This is just silly. I can’t speak specifically for ME because I bought it myself and have never bothered looking, but tons of games come with DRM day one and are cracked on day 2. To suggest that DRM will somehow preserve the game for prosperity and prevent people from acquiring it illegally is…well…wrong.
If we go back to the ME example – EA can choose to continue to sell ME for the next twenty years on Origin, but there will still be pirated copies of it floating around. The two facts are not mutually exclusive. There is the unproven argument that for a 10-20 year old game, having DRM will lead to increased profits – I’m sceptical, given the additional cost of the DRM in the first place – but there’s the equally unproven counter-argument that if the version being sold has more restrictions than the one you can download for free, people will gravitate to the free option.
Allow me to quote Gabe Newell here –
Couldn’t agree more. Concentrate on offering something people want (In GOGs case, hassle free gaming through being able to be run on modern PCs without the worry of DRM) and people will gladly pay money for it.
I use a computer store in Sydney called Arc, they still offer Windows XP OEM…clapped out or not.
sar84,
Which one? I know the Liverpool store is trash. Was supposed to get a video card from them but they screwed the order around and wouldn’t give back the deposit. Had to get serious mode before they gave back the deposit. Now I have no video card and a ton of wasted time. T_T
exe3,
Croc on PC and PS, manuals too.
Do *I* win :P…
Ridiculous.
stay current? yeah because in 10 years they’ll still be patching it, right?
EA will stop supporting it, its just a matter of time.
They aren’t going to run those authentication servers forever.
Old stand-alone titles might still sell a copy here and there from time to time but its not going to pay for ‘always on’ DRM servers.
and requiring some sort of back-end connection [so the client doesn't have enough information to be hacked and run on its own] is the only way DRM actually works.
With what you’re saying, every time a publisher/dev team goes under and either doesn’t sell on the rights or the new owner doesn’t feel like running the auth servers then the game is dead, forever.
abandon-ware is always available somewhere on the internet, someone will always be hosting it.
companies only do they think is good for their bottom line, so 9 times out of 10 is the game isn’t selling enough to copies any more to pay for your always on DRM servers then your game will no longer work.
If a game is available on GOG, it is no longer ‘abandonware’. I am out of that scene for quite a long time (I find the nostalgia for old games better than actually playing them with modern sensibilities), but I remember most serious abandonware game sites will act to remove a title if there is a legitimate source found for the game.
GOG is the best answer to abandonware that we have seen, and it is DRM free.
Hell I have the original disk’s in 3.5″ PC format (all 4 of em…). Does that make acquiring a copy of the internet that works illegal? Some companies would like it to be seen that way for more profitssss.
The other flaw in your argument is GoG itself. GoG does not apply DRM to it’s products. They are also the least pirated versions of popular software of each type unless they are the sole working version. GoG itself maintains a zero DRM approach for the very reason that transparency and trust is what is needed. To suggest that DRM is required to protect an owners rights in this scenario in particular is contradictory to GoG’s very mission statement.
Not to mention that DRM itself is responsible for the spike in pirating software in the first place. Not the place for this argument, but a lot of time legal fiction is exactly that. Fiction.
the money required to develop, test, patch, upgrade/advance and maintain DRM makes it counter productive.
Considering the majority of games on GoG were big back in the day, the extremely low cost involved in having them out now would make them pure profit.
No physical media production costs, no instore/media/etc advertising, nobody employed to patch and build new content for the games. Developers have also been paid off long ago so the only people taking a cut are those with a royalty agreement in place and the store front itself.
There’s more to be made, per unit, from that $6 with zero maintenance/effort from the developer/publisher side than the massive overhead of any given major release these days that comes with a much larger price tag.
I’m instantly reminded of the website “Home of the Underdogs” which was a massive abandonware site. What was cool about them was that if they found the game up for sale somewhere they would take down their own download link and replace it with a link to where you could obtain it legally. If they were approached by the copyright owner to take down a game then they’d keep the page related to the game (usually lots of screenshots and a nice review of the game) but removed the download link and replaced it with a comment why they couldn’t legally offer it. I’d bet if they still existed HotU and GoG would work really well together.
I’ve downloaded a tonne of Abandonware over the ages. Not so much recently but it occurred a lot in the past. I kind of think if the games have zero hope of ever being published again, and the rights to the game aren’t tied to a company that’s functioning any more, then Abandonware is a good thing. If a game is tied to a publisher who is willing to give it new life then I’ll be there with my wallet, ready to spend. Simple really. Publishers/developers should know who GoG is by now, I hope more publishers will see this as a good way of getting their stuff revived.
Sorry if my opinion has been said before but I have not had enough time to read all the comments.
To me I believe you article is totally going down the wrong track and DRM is not the answer. In my opinion all abandoned software should be released under and opensource license which would both remove anything possibly illegal about distributing it and also create a way for enthusiast to work on the code of these games and could release patches to keep the games working. If remuneration is sought for this work then I would think asking for donations is a far more effective way that beating everyone with the drm stick.
I am also of the belief that ALL software should lose its copyright after 20 years and possibly as little as 10. This is likely controversial idea but I believe after that time the company who wrote the software should have more that adequately been remunerated for their efforts and then it should be made freely available for the community to enjoy. Disney etc have ruined the copyright laws and some rebalancing should happen.
Of course, this is why no old music is available for sale anywhere and all music companies have gone bust, right? Because, after all, CDs are (mostly) DRM-free media.
Oh, wait.
And of course companies that made games for DOS and early Windows without DRM are all bust now too.
Oh, wait.
And GOG, which sells games from this very era for a nominal free without DRM is going out of business.
Oh, wait.
What a pointless, silly article.
Except that most of GOG’s titles can still be found on the major abandonware sites. The sites are pirates who do not respect legitimate copies of the games being available.
Regardless of whether GOG makes *a* profit, I believe the market viability of old games could be much higher if abandonware did not exist. I do believe that this problem is at least partly due to the opinion that abandonware is A-OK.
While piracy is often derided as bad, abandonware websites are seen as doing a public service, and that is one stance I wanted to criticise.
Still, I’m definitely appreciative of all the interest shown in discussing this topic. :)
Patrick Vuleta, please crawl back into whichever publisher’s arse you came from.
DRM needs to die along with AAA titles that charge $60, and then have DLC + microtransactions. This industry can go bust for all I care, maybe then we might see some actual good games and INNOVATION again.
I’m not being paid by any publisher. And a few weeks ago in this column I wrote an article that was heavily critical of publishers, to the point that the whole Aliens: Colonial Marines contract saga called my views into question by illustrating their are some dev houses that really have no idea about project management.
I genuinely do believe in my opinions, here, but I also want people to discuss different sides. :) Whenever DRM comes up, it’s often discussed in the context of “Greedy AAA publisher wants more money.” But does that hold true for the other end of the market?
Sure, we do have lots of indie devs and retailers advocating DRM free games, but I also wonder whether that’s just a natural response to piracy competition, and whether the industry would be better off with more sane DRM that did not infringe on end-user enjoyment, but did prevent free games being offered in plain sight.
As an aside… DRM has existed in games since time began. My very first Amiga game, FA 18 Interceptor, had this funky code wheel thing. If you lost it… tough luck!
Ah codewheels. I remember those. My friends used to photocopy me them when they copied the floppy disks for me. :P
Ax xwaste pointed out most of the major abandonware distributors like to remove games that can be legally obtained. Have you actually tried to find some of these titles? I remember a short while ago a friend asking about x game that we remembered playing 15 years ago. We had a tough time finding a demo version of the game, let alone the full thing. Most of the major websites will remove games that can be gained legally, the rest just march you around in circles from pillar to post until you give up. If a game is on GoG it is honestly easier to go there and buy than try the myriad of Abandonware sites.
Patrick Vuleta,
I guess right there is also an issue in how you define DRM. Many consider CD keys to be DRM (from the sounds of it you would too) but for myself and many others DRM are things like Steam, online activations, limited installs, always online, pretty much anything that requires the internet. Maybe it’s an “incorrect” definition but the term DRM certainly didn’t start getting used until these schemes showed up and as such many define DRM only in the above mentioned situations.
That has got to be one of the biggest loads of tripe I’ve ever had the misfortune to read…
The reason why GOG (which is DRM free, kinda undercuts your argument) is successful is because it’s convenient. Similarly with Steam and other online delivery options, particularly here in Aus where the default RRP is “Gouge!”.
If I feel nostalgic about a game, I can pick it up cheaply, guarantee that it will install and work on my system without trying to tweak dosbox or find a scan of an ancient decoder wheel. It “Just Works”.
Digital delivery, particularly GOG, shows that people will choose to buy when the option is presented at a reasonable price.
Never mind that abandonware is not only abandoned because of lack of revenue, but the company doesn’t want to support it anymore. How many titles are still completely bug ridden long after the company wrote them off? Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines rings a bell (actually all 3 Troika games ring bells…).
GOG proves that DRM isn’t necessary. The games GOG sell all work out of the box on the latest OS with no messing around with emulators, Dosbox etc. Their business model works (as they exist & have done for quite some time) and they seem to be having no issues sourcing more and more ‘new’ games.
The same arguments apply whether the game is a new release or a twenty year old gem. Either people will be willing to pay for it or not. If not, they will source it elsewhere and DRM won’t make an ounce of difference other than inconvenience the legitimate customer.
Finally – the idea that a publisher or developer is going to support an older game because they are still personally able to retail a few copies here and there is really stretching reality. Most older games that retain support either have a monthly cost or the devs are just terribly nice chaps who really believe in their game.
GOG does all the hard work and the dev/publisher gets their cut for little to no effort – can’t see anyone wanting to change that relationship for a few bucks extra a copy.
Jimmah
It’s okay to call something tripe, but I’m not sure on that just because *one* seller manages to make sales of old games means it’s not hurting the market overall. :)
And GOG has what… 500 games? Out of how many that could be sold? One of the hurdles to getting stock is very likely the lack of DRM – that they rely on an honour system to avoid people sharing the games around. This arguably makes many publishers uncomfortable with the idea unless absolutely nothing else is happening with the games.
For better or worse, publishers believe in DRM, which is why I specifically framed the article in terms of a business case. :) Without any kind of copyright control, they don’t have any real incentive to offer old games, or make them available except for the few drip feeds they want to test the waters with.
I did address the issue. If people want to pirate, the option is there. DRM has never, will never solve this issue. The only way to stop piracy through DRM mechanisms is to either have the entire game online (ala GW2) or make the game based around multiplayer which requires a legitimate key/account. There isn’t a single piece of DRM other than these two examples that has prevented people from getting games either at release or shortly after.
Code wheels, manual lookups, bizarre colour charts (The Mars Saga on C64 had one of these which was made from materials which couldn’t be photocopied) etc all died out because it was obvious they didn’t stop people, they cost money, they hurt legitimate customers (when their code wheel died) and generally if people were going to pay for a game they would.
You are ignoring the fact that GOG has a requirement to test games on various OS’s, provide scanned manuals, support docs etc. Each game takes time to prepare for sale. This isn’t a case of –
1.) Get game from IP owner
2.) ???
3.) Profit
This stuff is freely available anyway so why not make some money out of it. There are no dev costs, no support costs, the game either made money back in the day or not. Anything now is just gravy. You can’t retro-DRM your entire back catalogue when it exists everywhere anyway.
I would argue that the success of GOG is that it doesn’t require any DRM or introduce other IP management tools to screw with the customer. I personally own physical copies of Dune & Dune 2 for example but I would buy them on GOG because they just work and I don’t have to screw around with Dosbox.
Again, the incentive is making money out of something which requires zero effort and they currently don’t make any money from.
Jimmah
By non-engagement, was referring more to the post directly above yours that I was replying to (you posted as I was typing) my reply. Hence I then edited my reply to make it more general as soon as I saw yours. :)
I’m not sure how relevant old examples are simply because they have had time to make their way onto abandonware sites long before they were on GOG. So we’re playing catchup. I believe as DRM is more entrenched, we’ll see longer periods of publisher support. :) Committing to DRM is at least a commitment to a game greater than what was required before, and the public backlash against shutting down online authentication servers may stop them doing so.
Or alternatively they could eventually patch out the DRM from the game after a certain period of time. Let’s face it, no matter how popular a game is, how many people play it, at the end of the day it costs money to keep these DRM servers running. Why would they when they can use those servers for the latest greatest game instead? Why not just do what companies like iD and Epic did in the past and remove the copy protection in an official patch a year or two down the track, when everybody who would have bought the game at full price legitimately already have? It saves companies coming back several years later turning around and going “well we’re shutting the auth servers down now, you want to keep playing? Tough!”
Why is DRM, that doesn’t include a mechanism to terminate with the expiry of the protected work’s copyright, not regarded as a breach of the publisher’s legal obligations under the Copyright Acts?
After all, copyright’s purported rationale is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
DRM, as currently implemented on any title I’ve ever heard of, secures exclusiveness with no temporal limit. You can hoof it to a remote tropical paradise with all our money, and we’re screwed. Sure, maybe we can expend enough resources to break the DRM, but that is not part of copyright’s deal.
Not a bad point, and honestly one I can’t answer as of now. I’ll look into it.
First guess is that right does not equate to means. So even if you’re entitled to copy something, doesn’t mean you can in practice.
Sure, except I would hold that what the publisher sold during the term of copyright is not what society received upon the term’s expiry.
If I gave you a tour of a vault full of poetry, subsequently entered into a contract to sell you that vault full of poetry, accepted your money, and then the vault locked shut as it detected I no longer owned it and I refused to provide the only key that could open it, would you consider that I had upheld my end of the contract?
After all, if you can afford the expensive services of a professional safecracker you’ll (maybe) have that vault open soon enough, right?
If someone deliberately designs their published work such that it relies upon an unpublished work for its value, then if they want the protection of copyright they should be required to provide a means by which the latter work shall enter the public domain alongside the former work. Indeed, such a means already exists and is in common use in other fields: escrow.
Because right now DRM makes the publisher’s consideration an illusory promise, if I’m using that term properly: “I will give you the vault key if I feel like it.”
Alternatively, perhaps DRM’d work should be to Copyright as Trade Secrets are to Patents: mutually exclusive.
It would, after all, certainly seem analogous: it consists of information which reasonable measures are taken to protect and which derives independent economic value from not being publicly known (paraphrasing wikipedia’s “Trade secret” article; I’m not a lawyer).
So i am assuming therefore that my DRM protected Tie Fighter will work when I load it up? I still have pages of there stupid on load protection keys.
What about Xwing versus Tie Fighter. it had a CDkey protection and physical CD checking DRM?
Wait, they have both been abandoned by the publisher…OMG WTF BBQ
DRM isnt a “2010+” situation, its been there for many years, hell, Windows 95 was “DRM protected”, yet its been abandoned! (by its publisher no less!, and the rest of the world…)
DRM will NOT protect products from abadondware. I actually think we should reverse the role:
DRM for new products, fine, but they must have a mandated “after 10 years” expiry or something.
As a interesting legal question (totally spitballing here, I know its not really relevant!): products that are copyrighted have an expiry, though in AU its fairly loltastic @ 50 or 70 years if Wikipedia is to be believed. Doesnt DRM violate this? As it wont be “removed” by the publisher,as they may not exist, and as such, restrict the “now” public domain work? (ie in 50 years)?
There has to be a future market for products. There isn’t a market for these old titles because they were never made with that in mind. Windows 95 was planned to become obsolete by its very nature, so that doesn’t really prove anything.
There may be a market for new titles protected by DRM planned at the start to have longer shelf lives. Good examples are the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. These will never become Abandonware because you don’t invest hundreds of millions into creating a franchise then forget about it 10 years down the track.
And with proper copy protection, the titles can continue to exist in stores for those wanting to see how the game universes began. Hence there is a viable market.
Interestingly, musicians (not publishers) just petitioned the British Government recently to have copyright for their songs extended from 50 to 90 years, because many of them getting older are finding they are outliving the copyright on songs that are still commercially viable… if we were to put copyright expiration at 10 years of all things, it’d be like saying to these people “Thanks for what you did 40 years ago, but you no longer deserve an income in retirement.”
I couldn’t find that on the steam page, what have I missed? :(
[img]http://i.imgur.com/sPHN7BQ.jpg[/img]
I couldn’t find that on the steam page, what have I missed? :(
[img]http://i.imgur.com/sPHN7BQ.jpg[/img]
Patrick Vuleta,
@ Patrick, ill start from the bottom of your post up:
Regarding Musicians: How is that any different from the commercial pharacist working for a pharmaceutical company or medical company (I work in the medical field)? Those products which have many hundreds of millions, and often billions of dollars invested in the research are not protected by 90 year patents.
Copyright, patents etc are designed to ENCOURAGE innovation, by protecting the rights of the innovator to make a commercial return. it is not meant to lock it down for perpetuity. I am not debating they are entitled to a return, but 90 years is a bit of a joke.
Level of investment is an arbitary measure, and is unrelated to the products shelf life, the Return on investment is, however is. As long as Mass Effect titles continue to draw money, we will see more Mass effect titles. Interestingly, Halo (or was it halo2) which IS drm supported just switched off half their product (the MP aspects).
There are plenty of movies where millions were invested -> flopped at the box office. they didnt keep showing them “just because they invested a lot”. they cut their losses!
Re Investment: Windows Vista (which also cost “hundreds of Millions of dollars) and was laden with DRM has already had mainstream support withdrawn. its only 6 years old.
Hellgate:London, which was a DRM supported title has shut down, leaving owners of the product with a non functional product.
Hell, THQ just fail cascaded. DRM wont help their products. The new OWNERS of the copyright will decided on the viability, and that will be a ROI decision.
Finally: re: Future market of the products: All current gen products are designed to be obsolete. they are built with the current generations of engines and technology. World of Warcraft will eventually fall (it may be after the cylons attack though), despite its DRM and subscriptions.
What will happen to all of Ubisofts uplay products? or products sold via GFWL? I doubt they will continue to support some of the less well played products. the ROI would be too small, despite DRM. they will be abandoned like every other product in history.
Cas Bitton,
That’s the second time I’ve seen you do that.
No, actually it was me. As the article author I have a bunch of fancy admin options on comments, and somehow I managed to misclick the moderate button for that comment by mistake. I clicked it back immediately, but it seems to have permanently stuffed the comment up.
To confirm what happened, I tested repeating it on my comment above, and doing that completely removed everything I wrote… so, my bad and I apologise.
IIRC, the comment was a short reply to another poster agreeing with them. Nothing disagreeable with what was said, just a WordPress bug I stumbled on. Again, my sincere apologies.