Slashdot Mirror
Licensing an Abandonware Game?
WolverineOfLove writes "I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed further in a Slashdot journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away."
Contact the owners and ask them if they mind. You might be surprised.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Make your new game. Don't use any exact names or words from the original. By all means select your names so that people know this is a successor to the original.
After all, open office exists along side microsoft office. Afterstep came after nextstep. You need a name like "afterstep" so that people know what you are on about.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
As long as it isn't covered by a dreaded software patent, you should be fine. Software patents need to die in a fire.
Disagree != mod troll.
These guys have done exactly what you're aiming to do. You should probably get on their forums and talk to them for some insight. You should also check out their remake, it's a really good game! Warzone 2100
What would 3DRealms do if someone just went ahead and wrote / released an open source version of Duke Nukem Forever.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I don't understand why you want to create an exact port of the original game.
If you want to preserve the original game, then use an emulator like DOSBox on the original executables. It will save you a load of time.
If you want to popularize the game, then contact the owners to see if they'll sell it to you or put it under an open license. That way you can redistribute the game for use on emulators without legal worries.
If you want to make something new, then you should really put your energies into a new game inspired by the old one.
By the way, I once made a game that was a clone of a game on a portable system (with the intent of adding Internet play). It was an unexpectedly massive undertaking and by the end I was wondering why I was pouring so much energy into a derivative project that I might have to worry about lawsuits over when I finished it. It's really not worth it. You'll feel better in the end if you spend that time making something new that you can proudly take credit for.
I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but...
But nothing. You're asking a legal question, you need to go to a legal expert. Slashdotters are not legal experts, they just think they are, and their advice is worse than useless.
They re-released several abandonware adventure games after corresponding with the original programmers. They even got source code and permission to use all the assets for freeware release. I agree with most other posts here that you should try contacting the original developers first (might take some digging, try to get a hold of the original production manager). If they refuse you can still salvage most content and rename the characters to stay out of trouble. Most other projects don't make that effort of asking and are then shot down right at the finish line (look at basically every fan remake out there). Maybe you can also ask the people that did Zak McKracken 2 (zak2.org) they probably got some advice on how to handle someone else's IP w/o getting screwed.
If the game company has gone bankrupt it might be a situation where the company was liquidated and its assets sold. If that is that case then the company no longer owns the copyright.
In any case I doubt it is worth purchasing the copyright. You state that you will be remaking this game from scratch which means purchasing someone else's copyright when you aren't going to use it will be a waste of money. Also you have to take into account that purchasing copyright is very expensive, requires a lawyer and at the end of it you can't really be guaranteed that you own it.
If you wish to use the original name then you should check and make sure any registered trademark has already expired. If it has then you should have no issue naming your game with the same name or something similar.
When making your own version of the game you should make sure that the names of things in the game, artwork, etc are all of your own work. This means they should be different from the original game. Copying how the original game plays shouldn't be an issue however.
If you feel that is not an option and that you need the original names of characters etc in your remake then you could have an expansion pack hosted someone else away from the project which adds the original content. That way if you do get in legal trouble you can pull the offending content without causing any problems where your project is hosted.
www.hardwar.org - A remake of the old classic Hardwar
imo instead of bionic commando it should be bionic fartmando. instead of having a bionic arm you eat cans of super beans and fart to kill enemies. you also fart to jump, so the amount of beans you eat means that your jumps are limited. so to clear levels in the best way you have to conserve your farts and figure out how to do the least jumping. anyway bionic fartmando. code it up and i'll buy it. also i'll buy a second copy for my son marticock.
WSL3
The people you want to talk to, by the way, are the publishers, not the developers. In some rare cases the developers own the copyright, but in 99.9% of cases games are works for hire and the publisher owns the copyright.
Now, as to what they'll do? Well who knows? There have been varied results. You may well find them very amenable to the idea and they may want little or no money. You may find they flat out say "No," or don't even respond. However you don't know until you try.
A recent example of a success in that regard is Stardock just got the license to distribute and update Total Annihilation. The CEO is a big fan of it and talked to Atari and got the rights to sell it on Impulse, as well as the rights to update it with new features. So this sort of thing can happen.
However there have been failures too. In one case, Xcom I think, it turned out the original source code had been lost so the publisher couldn't license it out, even if they wanted to since they didn't have it.
You don't know until you try what will happen. However, do be prepared that they may blow you off. One thing that may improve your chances is if you have a solid plan for what you intend to do with it. Show them a business plan, more or less, that shows you have seriously thought out how you'd improve it and so on. They may be more likley to deal with someone they believe will make something rather than someone they think might just be playing around.
How about coding yours so that it loads resources it needs from a copy of the original game which you leave it up to the end-user to acquire? This is how Quake reimplementations work and ID don't seem to have complained about it.
First thing I did was emailed a few of the principal owners of the game, and told them about my intent, and asked about who holds the copyright and trademarks. I got the go ahead, with the caveat that another company owned the trademark to this particular game.
I also searched the web to look at other projects based on remakes. It seems that the best way to handle remakes of abandownare games is to not to bother the company that made it (especially if they're big like EA or Activision). The unwritten rule seems to be if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. Otherwise, they'll just say no and might put the kibosh on the project.
This should also be obvious, but don't sell the game. Just don't.
I never finished the game I was remaking since writing the tools to make it got laboriously time consuming.
incorporate the company, float it on the stock exchange with a market cap of $1. sell i to some bum on the street for $1.5 and have him name you CIO,CFO and CEO. then when it all goes wrong your just an employee doing as you were told.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
... It would never come out and I'm out of gum..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Gosh, you are trying to code Duke Nukem Forewer on your own ????
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
How does one find the copyright owner?
For example, who owns copyright in the video game Zero Wing?
Or more importantly, that SOMEONE could still have the copyright, and that they might not be very nice.
Then how does one go about locating this SOMEONE if the game's original publisher is defunct?
IANAL, but this is a subject I've looked into. Limited liability can help greatly when you have acted in good faith, but it is unlikely to shield you if you have shown malice or willful blindness. This is especially true for very small companies that are effectively a vehicle for the acts of one person.
As long as it isn't covered by a dreaded software patent, you should be fine. Software patents need to die in a fire.
The gamer-geek will be pursuing other game assets which may be independently licensed and legally protected: character designs and props, background art, music and audio effects, story, script, dialog, vocal performance, and so on.
I've heard music composed and performed for the LucasArts adventures used in Disney television animation.
With difficulty, unfortunately. Asking the game's creators might be a good start, as they might have an idea of what happened to the rights- their company was bought by A, that company was bought by B, etc.
If you try looking and after a reasonable amount of effort still can't locate anyone, then maybe just go for broke and press on with the project. At least you tried though.
"I'll rip your L shape off and shit down your T shape"?