Lost Infocom Games Discovered

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Archivists at Waxy.org have gotten a copy of the backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989 and are piecing together information about games that were never released. In particular, there is the sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy called Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and there are two playable prototypes of it. And yes, they have playable downloads available."

Comments

He shouldn't have done that

[Huntr]

IMO, he shouldn't have published the emails, particularly without attempting to contact the authors. That's rude and, as can be seen from the comments on his blog, dredges up hard feelings that would best remain private.

In fact, he probably shouldn't have published the code and game files, either. Those data are not his. He has no right to do with it as he sees fit. Someone "gave" that drive to him, but that may not have been theirs to give. Truthfully, I have less of a problem with that, as no one likely really cares about the games themselves. But, its still an issue.

At any rate, I think he's hiding behind "journalism" to simply publish some juicy talk associated with a formerly popular defunct games publisher.

Re:Educational value:

[TheRaven64]

I disagree. Security can always be broken. Good corporate security means keeping data safe until its release can no longer cause financial loss to the company. Since this data has remained private until two decades after the company died, I think it is a good example of adequate data security.