5 ms·

Tough not to draw a comparison here with illegal music. Is there any reasonable expectation that the gaming industry will take the route the RIAA took and start

Tough not to draw a comparison here with illegal music. Is there any reasonable expectation that the gaming industry will take the route the RIAA took and start going after people? It seems like these old games are quite different from old music: both make most of their money immediately upon release, but games lose their appeal much faster as newer games come out, while the appeal of music may last an order of magnitude longer, and isn't necessarily replaceable. Also, while music may continue to make money on the radio or in commercials or movies or other media, games pretty much lose the revenue stream after the first few months. I recall a few weeks ago another game (C&C maybe?) made news here for releasing an early version in promotion of a new version. You don't see Metallica giving away old tunes in promotion of a new album, do you?

btilly 17y ago
I am not a prophet, but I doubt that will happen. However there are a lot of people with nostalgia. If someone, somewhere, could put together a legal product that made it easy for a lot of people to take a walk down memory lane, they could find a good market. Such a vendor would have a strong incentive to acquire copyright to abandoned titles then enforce said copyright. This would cause backlash, but it isn't impossible that someone with money and energy could take this step. Of course the first barrier that such a company would have is getting copyright permission to the core operating system they need to emulate. Those copyrights are owned by companies like Apple and Microsoft which are aware of the issue and show no desire to bother themselves by getting involved.
- allenp 17y ago
  You might check out http://www.gog.com/ http://www.gog.com/ - "good ol' games" They sell a fairly large back catalog of older games as downloads.
  - btilly 17y ago
    Interesting. They seem to be avoiding the operating system issue by focusing on games from the 90s that can still run thanks to Microsoft's efforts to maintain backwards compatibility. (They may need to do minor tweaks, but basically the OS is still available.) Wake me when I can legally revisit my Apple ][ memories.
InclinedPlane 17y ago
The difference is that these are specifically works which are no longer on sale from the manufacturer. The basis for being sued for "piracy" of music or software is damage to the publisher in the form of lost sales, if the publisher is no longer selling the product so there is no longer a valid claim of damages. In theory you could still be sued on other grounds, but that seems very unlikely.

btilly 17y ago

I am not a prophet, but I doubt that will happen. However there are a lot of people with nostalgia. If someone, somewhere, could put together a legal product that made it easy for a lot of people to take a walk down memory lane, they could find a good market. Such a vendor would have a strong incentive to acquire copyright to abandoned titles then enforce said copyright. This would cause backlash, but it isn't impossible that someone with money and energy could take this step. Of course the first barrier that such a company would have is getting copyright permission to the core operating system they need to emulate. Those copyrights are owned by companies like Apple and Microsoft which are aware of the issue and show no desire to bother themselves by getting involved.

allenp 17y ago
You might check out http://www.gog.com/ http://www.gog.com/ - "good ol' games" They sell a fairly large back catalog of older games as downloads.
- btilly 17y ago
  Interesting. They seem to be avoiding the operating system issue by focusing on games from the 90s that can still run thanks to Microsoft's efforts to maintain backwards compatibility. (They may need to do minor tweaks, but basically the OS is still available.) Wake me when I can legally revisit my Apple ][ memories.

InclinedPlane 17y ago

The difference is that these are specifically works which are no longer on sale from the manufacturer. The basis for being sued for "piracy" of music or software is damage to the publisher in the form of lost sales, if the publisher is no longer selling the product so there is no longer a valid claim of damages. In theory you could still be sued on other grounds, but that seems very unlikely.