Crack for Sale

Dave Taylor and Jonathon Clark wrote in to tell us that they are selling the Crack.com domain name. If you haven't heard of these guys, then you live in a box. If you haven't played Abuse or tracked Golgatha, then you also live in a box. Check out the action on the eBay auction page. As of when I saved this story, the top bid is $15k, which is is still quite a bargain for all that crack. And good luck to you guys, and thanks for Abuse. (I'm not sure which is more fun to say: "Crack for Sale" or "Thanks for Abuse" ;)

Comments

Hmmm...

[ff]

Hmm... along with heroin.com and cocaine.com, this domain name is a great opportunity for any enterprising urban businessman.

answering my own question

[perdida]

From Abuse FAQ

"Purchasing Abuse
Is Abuse Public Domain?
The source code, artwork, and shareware levels (1-4) are public domain. This means you are free to copy, sell, or modify it with no restrictions. To get this point across you can do the following:

1.You can write a book about games and include the data on CD with the book. Some people have done this already.
2.You can put the data on a FTP or web site without asking permission to do so. People have done this many times as well.

3.You can make your own game based off of the Abuse source and artwork and sell it as your own. As noted below you can't call the game Abuse or Abuse 2 because the name is trademarked.

Data that is not public domain:

1. The sound effects in Abuse are owned by Bobby Prince (contact http://bpmusic.com). Since we do not own them we cannot make them public domain, but you should not have a problem using them in most cases. Besides they are 8bit 11khz, games these days are expected to have higher quality.

2. The levels with commercial Abuse (4+) are not public domain. We did not make them public domain because some stores are still selling the game."

fyi

Is Abuse Open Source?

[perdida]

(heh, heh..)

Jokes aside, though:

"Crack was a game company started in 1995 by Dave Taylor and Jonathan Clark. Taylor was working at id Software and had co-authored Doom and Quake. Clark was fresh out of college, burning to start his own game company and had already written a smooth, capable 2D scroller engine. The engine became Abuse, a 2D scroller still unique to this day for supporting a 360-degree aiming mechanism, a built-in editor, real-time lighting, a LISP interpreter, and portability to several platforms, including DOS, MacOS, Linux, Irix, BeOS, and others."

from crack.com

That sounds pretty useful

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

buycrack.com

[rograndom]

Does it bother anyone else that buycrack.com redirects to buy.com?

Crack.eh-hem

[grovertime]

You'd think with Slashdot's slew of ICANN postings regarding the new 7 domains, they would have considered this vantage in this story:

1. How could crack.com ever sell for much when really solid, wonderful domains like crack.museum, crack.coop, crack.biz, and crack.asleepatthewheel are still available?

1. 
   humor for the clinically insane
   

It's even more ludicrous...

[bonzoesc]

at $15k, haven't even had their reserve met. Are they holding out for somebody so rich they could be a ... crack ... dealer?? (dr. evil accent & pinky to mouth) What could you possibly market with such a domain name?

• Illegal drugs
• Butt porn
• Windshield repair
• Plumbing (redundant)
• The sound a baseball bat makes when you hit the ball
• Eggs?

Not a lot, compared to something like (fill in blank).

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Fifteen Thousand?!?

[atrowe]

15K? That's absurd. The last time I had mod points, the stret value of crack was around $3.00 a rock.

Re:living in a box

[skt]

bluesnews:

Crack Falls Down [2:03 AM EDT] The official announcement that Dave Taylor mentioned in an earlier .plan update of what's up with Crack and the Golgotha source has worked its way through the net. On the subject of the source, a later .plan update points out, "To those of you grabbing the source, you only need golgotha_src.zip to get started. Also, we goofed on the music name, it's "Helsinki, Finland", not "Helsinki, Sweden". *blush*" Here's the whole sad tale, told in good spirits:

WHAT: Crack dot Com is closing its doors.

WHY: Ran out of cash.

REALLY WHY: Lot of reasons, but then again, there are a lot of reasons that we got as far as we did. I think the killer reason, though, was that Golgotha was compared by publishers primarily to Battlezone and Uprising, and those titles sold really poorly.

WHAT NOW?: Now we file articles of dissolution w/ the secretary of state, and we file bankruptcy.

IS THAT IT?!: No.

WHAT ELSE?: We're releasing the Golgotha source code, and data to the public domain.

HELL YES! WHERE'S THE SOURCE CODE?: I want to personally thank everyone who supported & rooted for us. That was really nice of you.

YEAH YEAH, BLAH BLAH, WHERE'S THE SOURCE?: I want to apologize to the fans and business partners we've let down.

BOO HOO! WE CARE. OUT WITH IT!: Thanks for your patience. The source & data can be found at http://www.crack.com/golgotha_release. And of course, the ex-Crack developers are up to new & interesting things which you can follow at the web site.

WAIT A MINUTE. IS THIS STUFF FREE BECAUSE IT SUCKS?: No. Even if you thought the code sucked, there are 15 gorgeous pieces of music, 100 cool sound effects, and over 2000 hi-resolution textures. But trust me, even the code is cool. It's an ultra-modular outdoor 3D engine, and it does WAY more than Battlezone or Uprising even came close to. Check out the features page. You should definitely check it out if you've ever wanted a public domain, competetive, outdoor 3D engine.

THANKS!: Welcome. Have a happy.