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
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
Duke Sue'em Forever
rewriting history since 2109
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.
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
Abandonware can mean that the company that owned the copyrights no longer exists, and the ownership of the copyright is in limbo. Look at Transport Tycoon for example. The copyright was transferred to a company from a company that no longer exists to a company that no longer exists, and thus nobody can defend the copyright to the game. This is the epitome of abandonware and it's what allowed OpenTTD to exist.
Disagree != mod troll.
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.
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
What would 3DRealms do if someone just went ahead and wrote / released an open source version of Duke Nukem Forever.
They would probably announce that they'll sue you soon if you don't stop this. However, the actual sue date would be shifted to the future indefinitely. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.