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Abandoned Games
Ghost Pig writes "The people of Exiled Gamers have put together an Abandonware Campaign with which they hope to be able to convince game publishers to rescue titles from their current 'Abandonware' status, and make them available for the public to play (legally) once again. They have made mention of quite a few titles that have slipped into the status of Abandonware (titles that it's no longer possible to buy at retail, and that are near impossible to locate on sites such as eBay), which includes System Shock 2, Freespace 2, as well as older titles, such as The Chaos Engine, Alien Breed and Flashback."
No. It's not legal. It's just a law that isn't enforced much, in that most copyright holders of really old games don't bother chasing up abandonware sites, since it's not exactly a huge revenue loss.
Some do, notably Sierra and Lucasarts, though.
Freespace 2 was a commercial game, produced by the same people as Freespace 1. Several years later the source code to the engine was released.
Speaking of abandonware, there is also the option of taking the old DOS game and optimize it for current hardware and OS:
h tm
On April 14th 2006, a Windows XP/ME/2000/98 version of Another World, with high-resolution support and more detailed background graphics, was released as a tribute to the original game on the Another World website. The port is shareware; to unlock the full version, a special key must be bought from here for 7 euros.
You can download it from:
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.
Another World (aka Out Of This World in the US), a technological predecessor to Flashback and a great, mythical game on its own, lost its abandonware status a few days ago when a High Resolution Collector's Edition was released by its author, Eric Chahi. It is currently being sold online for 7 euros, a demo is available. You can also play the official Gameboy Advance port, if you have an emulator or a flashable game cartridge.
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Official Website (still being translated; download links at the bottom of the page)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/anotherworld_uk/index.
Official Website in French (lots of very interesting details about the making of the game)
http://www.anotherworld.fr/
Buying the Game
http://www.magic-productions.fr/aw/index.php?lang
Official Gameboy Advance Port
http://www.foxysofts.com/index.php?l=content/gba/
An Excellent Review (from an excellent site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=13
An Excellent Interview (from same site)
http://www.idlethumbs.net/display.php?id=44
Victim of "It's a wonderful life".
Seriously. Someone at the studio forgot to register/renew it, so it passed to the public domain. TV networks started airing it at christmas because it was royalty-free, and it became a big hit. The studios got pissed that they weren't making money, and lobbied congress. The irony is if the movie hadn't gone public domain, no one would have ever seen it...
It might have been changed since I bought my copy of Freespace2 oh so many moons ago, but the EULA on the disc I just popped in reads like standard boilerplate....but there is the bit about giving it to "friends" (in bold)
This software product, FreeSpace 2 (the "Software"), is
intended solely for your personal noncommercial home entertainment
use. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, or disassemble the
Software, except as permitted by law. Interplay Productions and
Volition, Inc. retain all rights and title in the Software including
all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives
thereof. You are granted a revocable, nonassignable limited license
to create derivative works of this Software solely for your own
personal noncommercial home entertainment use and may publicly
display such derivative works to the extent specifically
authorized by Interplay in writing. A copy of this authorization, if
any, will be provided on Interplay's World Wide Web site, located at
http://www.interplay.com/ or by contacting the legal department of
Interplay Productions in the US at (949) 553-6655. The Software,
including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters,
images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all
other elements of the Software may not be copied (except as provided
below), resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or
otherwise), used on pay-per-play, coin-op or other for-charge basis,
or for any commercial purpose. You may make copies of the Software
for your personal noncommercial home entertainment use and to give to
friends and acquaintances on a no cost noncommercial basis. This
limited right to copy the Software expressly excludes any copying or
distribution of the Software on a commercial basis, including,
without limitation, bundling the product with any other product or
service and any give away of the Software in connection with another
product or service. Any permissions granted herein are provided on a
temporary basis and can be withdrawn by Interplay Productions at any
time. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.
etc. etc.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Actually you can legally obtain FS2 for free - the original EULA actually contained a clause allowing you to give free copies to your friends - took three or four years for people to notice
I'm a developer on the source code project and i write some of the major modding tools.
Some Important URLs:
http://scp.indiegames.us/
http://hard-light.net/
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I was under the understanding that Volition had released the source code for Freespace 2 *and* officially classed the original game CDs as abandonware already.
The ISO images (capable of being put through Alcohol 120% or so) are VERY readily available online with what looks like a real blessing. The FSOpen project is one of those better game-source-code efforts where some real, even impressive improvement was done to the game engine to bring it up to scratch..