26 ms·

Videogame Publishers: No Preserving Abandoned Games Because “Hacking” Is Illegal

282 points by thisisparker 11y ago

morganvachon 11y ago
If it wasn't for hacking, we would never have had the first video games, and there might not be an ESA to care about it. Most early video games came about by hacking around on the computers and video terminals of the day, making them do things they were never intended to do. The same goes for many early console games on Atari and Nintendo systems, where the programmers found ways to make games do more than the system designers thought possible.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  You are equivocating on the word "hacking". That is obviously not the sense meant by the ESA.
  - chc 11y ago
    It sounded to me like the ESA were equivocating. Their usage of "hacking" seems to be deliberately vague in order to strengthen the connection with piracy, where more precise language would have made the claim sound even weirder.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      Consider that the EFF just ripped the word completely away from its original context, it's not surprising that it seems vague. Here it is: http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/En...
  - morganvachon 11y ago
    It was the ESA who said out right "all hacking is illegal", not me, not the EFF. By that logic, this very site is full of nothing but hardened criminals bent on piracy and wrongdoing, and its very name is contraband. That's just plain silly.
    - umanwizard 11y ago
      Yes, they said "all hacking is illegal", and given the definition they're using for "hacking", that's a perfectly reasonable thing to claim. The real debate is whether modifying computer games counts as "hacking" under that definition. Debates just about definitions aren't interesting.
      - morganvachon 11y ago
        It bothers me that the very "hacking" that made video games even possible (modifying the console or computer system to do what it wasn't intended to do) is now being called illegal by the ESA. I maintain that there wouldn't be any video games to hack, morally or immorally, without old school hacking from the late 1940s through at least the 1980s. The ESA are the ones trying to redefine the language to suit their pocket books. They are the ones trying to claim that "hacking" can only mean circumvention of copyright protection, when the word has a place in many different contexts and applications, and can be good/moral/legal or bad/immoral/illegal, or any combination. Even said circumvention can be for good or fair use reasons, as the EFF is arguing.
        tptacek 11y ago
        That is not what ESA is saying (they are saying a bunch of other dumb things), though it's understandable why you'd think that, because it's what EFF wants you to believe.
        morganvachon 11y ago
        I was basing what I said off of the actual filing, not the EFF's pearl-clutching. "Hacking video game access controls facilitates piracy and therefore undermines the core anti-piracy purposes of Section 1201. As explained above, hacking the video game access controls requires, by definition, hacking of the video game console or similar device in order to play the hacked video game. Once the access controls for the video game console are hacked, regardless of the purported purpose or intent of the hacker, any content, including pirated games, can be played on a video game console. What's more, console hackers may distribute their console-hacking solution to gamers that have no intention of using it for the purposes stated in the proposed exemption. The risk of piracy is even greater on personal computers and similar devices that do not utilize device-based access controls to prevent the installation of unauthorized software. The individual can use consoles to make and store infringing copies of copyrighted games and other content and to distribute these unlawful copies online to a large audience."[1] They are equating hacking with piracy, full stop. They are saying "regardless of the intent of the hacker, the hacker is committing piracy". That's a scary precedent to set. [1] http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/En...
noonespecial 11y ago
You know what else is illegal? Selling something to someone and then taking it back whenever you feel like it.
- Zikes 11y ago
  Naw, they only sold you a "license to play", not an actual game. That EULA's a killer.
  - bencoder 11y ago
    Except if your disk is damaged and you want to download a working version or get a replacement disk, then it's not just a licence, you gotta buy it again. They want it both ways
    - msandford 11y ago
      That always drove me nuts. It's got to be one or the other. Seems like there might be an interesting court case to be made by say the Internet Archive: 1. Buy a CD and then damage it 2. Then ask for a new one for free, with proof of the damaged one 3. When they refuse, get your lawyer to send the same request certified mail 4. When they officially refuse, sue in small claims and they'll get it tossed out since "you bought it" (hopefully) 5. Tuck this in your back pocket and start archiving and making them re-playable galore 6. When publisher X who told you it was a sale sues for "hacking" go to court for a summary dismissal based on the previous court case where they argued "hey you bought it!" and a judge might have no choice but to agree I'm sure it wouldn't work, but it'd be nice!
      - Zikes 11y ago
        In this scenario the game disc can still constitute a license, not the actual game. The contents of the disc would simply be a convenient installation method.
        msandford 11y ago
fragsworth 11y ago
I don't understand why the ESA cares at all about this. None of the games in question are making any money, and the publishers don't expect to make any money in the future on them. What is their incentive? Maybe they want to preserve the opportunity of reviving an old IP? If that's the case, then doesn't allowing players to keep playing the abandoned games improve the visibility of those IPs, improving the value of a future revival? It's really dumbfounding. I'd like to understand the motivation here, so that it at least makes sense to me.
- chongli 11y ago
  Their incentive is to keep players buying new games rather than playing old ones.
  - rosser 11y ago
    Exactly. If you're happily playing Abandoned Title III, why would you need to buy New Hotness XXVII? It's pretty much the same kind of thinking that counts each viewing of a pirated movie as lost revenue — nevermind that you can watch a DVD or BD over and over and over, and not get charged each time...
    - aetch 11y ago
      Nevermind that going to a theatre to watch a movie over and over would GET charged each time...
- DanAndersen 11y ago
  It seems more often than not that the incentive is just to sit on the rights to IP, even if you don't plan to do anything with it ever, just because there's no incentive to let things go, and there's some microscopic but non-zero benefit to holding onto IP just in case. I wonder if, instead of having the near-endless wait until public domain, it would be good to have a system of intellectual property that made copyright increasingly expensive to hold year after year, as some function of the total assets of the IP holder. Make it some exponential function, so that after a certain number of years, holding onto the rights to some IP is just too expensive to maintain unless the holders feel they can actually do something good and profitable with the IP (rather than a system that would need to show regular "use", which would incentivize publishing crap to satisfy a regulation).
mahouse 11y ago
Oh, but I want to be able to play Wrath of the Lich King again.
- sanarothe 11y ago
  There are private servers running every expansion, some of which have decent and playable populations.
  - nfoz 11y ago
    ... and it's a breach of the WoW client terms of service to connect to them. http://www.wowwiki.com/Emulated_server http://www.wowwiki.com/Emulated_server
    - zer0rest 11y ago
      who gives a shit
    - mahouse 11y ago
      But I never paid for a subscription so I never agreed to those terms.
  - mahouse 11y ago
    Most of them are really bad, and what angers me is that it's mostly because of the laziness and the greediness of those who run them.
- zer0rest 11y ago
  WoW at its peak
im3w1l 11y ago
Going after retrogame pirates of your out of sale game seems like a really stupid business decisions. If people still play your old game after all these years, despite the crappy graphics, it must have a lot of things going for it. Do a remake, an expansion, or a sequel!
- zer0rest 11y ago
  See Age of Empires II, the remake sucks because the platform sucks. Community driven platforms are the best(voobly for AoE II).
emergencevector 11y ago
Interesting. I do volunteer work at a videogame museum and I was just about to propose a system for preserving videogame art assets and enabling presenting them outside the context of the original game. There is a problem with the content of old games being lost due to only existing in idiosyncratic formats in hardware ROMs. Also, it poses a curatorial challenge to present the visual art at the end of a game with a 50 hour play time. I guess the industry doesn't want us to do that! (Disclosure: I work with the Oakland museum mentioned.)
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Serious question: how often do you approach the publisher and ask for their help with this? Have you developed an administrative system that could present these requests in a standardized and actionable way to the publishers' legal departments, or just the technical system?
  - emergencevector 11y ago
    As far as help goes, we actually don't need technical help. (I won't expand on this, of course.) It is mostly a matter of getting permission. As far as an administrative system for asking, there isn't such a system. My understanding is that permission comes most reliably through personal contacts with company insiders. Asking legal departments is usually counterproductive -- after all, if you worked in a legal department, what motivation would there be for you to say anything but "no?" Saying "yes" has all the possible downsides and no apparent upside.
snarfy 11y ago
You don't own the game. You agreed in the EULA to own a license to use the game, a license which no doubt can be modified at anytime for any reason, including removing any right to use the game.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  But I wrote a EULA that says to game companies that they void all other EULAs when they sell me a game ... Of course it's not enforceable, it's a one-sided contract. If their's is enforceable though mine should be too.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  how about when I have the game but cannot play it on my current machine because the OS doesn't support it any longer? Example, many games require Rosetta to be available on OS X but that support was dropped ages ago. If they can modify at any time my usage of the game then as consumers why would we not simply modify the situation to never pay them for their products?
ddingus 11y ago
They will mostly be preserved anyway. When the game is well distributed, preservation won't make too much sense. Nobody will have enough pieces, though it may well be possible to capture a lot of the before it all gets old too. But if they are stand alone, or even download 'n play, people are going to archive them. To me, given how existing efforts have helped publishers and producers out many times in the form of commented and running code, whether we archive seems largely moot. The real question is how do we make the money work? One thing I see a lot is this assumption or presumption of tons more sales, if only... Old one not available Pirates Used Swap with friends ...aren't in play. But the dollars aren't there. Most people cannot just double or triple their entertainment budget, and there is a case for time too. Who can actually get through them all? Some more dollars are there though. I agree with that, but I likely disagree in the amounts and to some degree, who. As for the illegal hacking. No way. That really isn't open for discussion. If it's on my machines, I get to take a look. Maybe there is little to see. Then again, teaching myself on these kinds of experiences is really high value. I can't reasonably let that idea get beat up fo no good reason. Many of us here know how valuable an activity like cracking a game can be. And at some point the need for better experiences drives demand for people able to deliver. There is a basic disconnect there. Run it and don't go looking... are you kidding? Seems to me they could offer archives themselves too. If you have hardware, great. Just run it. If you don't, maybe it makes sense to allow people to get a copy they can work with. There are a lot of things kind of broken right now. Budgets, costs and risks are high, and so is the asking price... Seems to me, a stand alone title is high value, assuming the title itself is good, right? I can swap with friends, and do other things I that adds value. A split thing that needs always on Internet is less. Download same, because I am doing work to make it happen and I can't swap easily...
- ddingus 11y ago
  I didn't see I somehow missed the finish on this comment! The games industry is going to have to go through some pricing challenges, just as music did. There isn't as much value in something that cannot run for as long as the user wants to run it. Same goes for downloads and swapping, streamed, etc... Some pricing options don't even make much sense! A $60 buy in for a subscription game? Not a lot of initial value there. It's all in the subscription. But then again, if it's on a retail shelf, they want to see potential margins too.
tptacek 11y ago
EFF is, unsurprisingly, misrepresenting ESA. ESA's objection is not that "this is hacking and hacking is illegal". "Hacking" is simply the term of art the ESA response chooses to use for the reversing and manipulation of game titles. EFF is trying to hang ESA on that impolitic choice of words. ESA's position, broadly, is: * Game publishers own their titles and are entitled the economic benefits that stem from them. * There is no exception in copyright law for "maintaining access to matchmaking services", and, more specifically, retaining access to online services isn't a use case that falls under fair use. * The duration of copyright lasts far longer than "6 months after the matchmaking service stops working", which is the time threshold in EFF's exemption request. * Game titles themselves have value separable from their online services, and indeed many/most games with online components charge separately (either directly or through agreements with the game console online services), further suggesting that the termination of online services doesn't impact the copyright on the game itself. Indeed, ESA contests the idea that these games are "abandoned" at all. * The modifications required to substitute a new matchmaking service are intrusive and impact features other than those needed to restore matchmaking, creating a legal ambiguity. * Similarly, the modifications extend far past the games themselves and into the consoles/phones/whatever, creating an ambiguity about whether/when jailbreaking limitations are contractually enforceable. * Ambiguities aside, the technical capabilities that would need to be exempted to make this work are so sweeping as to potentially moot the copyright of most of the code on the platform (ie, to restore matchmaking, you'd need to exempt reversing and modifying and trafficking in the modified versions of entire closed operating systems). * The beneficiaries of game modifications will include commercial entities who will gain legal cover for selling services that capture benefits that are rightfully owed to the game copyright holder. ... I'm about 1/3rd through their response and I've probably failed to capture 1/2 the ESA arguments I've read so far. The sad thing about this is, even with ESA's arguments charitably summarized and faithfully captured, virtually none of EFF's audience is going to be persuaded. There was practically no risk that ESA would persuade EFF's audience. Should video games be legally hackable? Virtually everyone who cares what EFF thinks believes: "yes!!^$!". There was absolutely no reason for EFF to be deceptive about this. And yet, here they are again, insulting our intelligence. EFF does a lot of good and important things, but their online advocacy is not one of them.
- 11y ago
shmerl 11y ago
ESA probably hates this too: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/ https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/ Boo! Publishers never thought of Emscripten... Those ESA crooks should really be strongly opposed, together with repealing the whole DMCA-1201.
jacques_chester 11y ago
For those who are interested in an actual example, GameRanger supports hundreds of games which have been abandoned by their publishers. And it has north of 6 million registered users.
- zer0rest 11y ago
  +1 for GameRanger also Voobly if you like Age of Empires II(all the competitive players are there).
c3d 11y ago
These companies care about their "property" more than about legality, unfortunately. I remember a lawyer from Atari/Infogrames coming at me for having authorised some abandonware site to publish a game I had written in 1990, Alpha Waves. So I dug up the contract I had signed with them. It was a 3 years exclusive licensing and distribution contract, which Infogrames could only renew by sending me royalties every quarter. I sent a copy of the contract, along with a letter asking for the more 15 years of royalties (after 1993). Never heard back from the lawyer after that. Old abandonware often belongs to individuals and independent authors. And if they are like me, unlike lawyers, they are just happy that someone remembers the stuff they sweated on for years.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
  Thanks for being reasonable.
golergka 11y ago
That's the point of property concept: if you own something, you can do unreasonable and even stupid things with it, if so you choose. So, although it saddens me that they choose this course of action, they're completely in their legal right here.
nekopa 11y ago
Simple fix: If I cannot run a game I paid for anymore, give me a refund for the initial purchase price.
anon4 11y ago
I understand where the EFF are coming from, but I wish they'd focus their efforts on things that matter, rather than on preserving toys.
anonbanker 11y ago
Back in 1999, the first time this hubbub started: https://books.google.com/books?id=FwIAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=sonic+cruises+for+hookers&source=bl&ots=p7lXpeiPxL&sig=PMjKiLJnihEs06SgNwX0xvJX1N8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KO8mVfOfPNbSoAT08oD4BQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA https://books.google.com/books?id=FwIAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=P... Money Quote: "If you want to patch together a lawnmower, a walkman, and a pair of ice tongs to play "Sonic Cruises for Hookers", or anything else Sony is publishing, that's your right.

282 points by thisisparker 11y ago

If it wasn't for hacking, we would never have had the first video games, and there might not be an ESA to care about it. Most early video games came about by hacking around on the computers and video terminals of the day, making them do things they were never intended to do. The same goes for many early console games on Atari and Nintendo systems, where the programmers found ways to make games do more than the system designers thought possible.

umanwizard 11y ago
You are equivocating on the word "hacking". That is obviously not the sense meant by the ESA.
- chc 11y ago
  It sounded to me like the ESA were equivocating. Their usage of "hacking" seems to be deliberately vague in order to strengthen the connection with piracy, where more precise language would have made the claim sound even weirder.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Consider that the EFF just ripped the word completely away from its original context, it's not surprising that it seems vague. Here it is: http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/En...
- morganvachon 11y ago
  It was the ESA who said out right "all hacking is illegal", not me, not the EFF. By that logic, this very site is full of nothing but hardened criminals bent on piracy and wrongdoing, and its very name is contraband. That's just plain silly.
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    Yes, they said "all hacking is illegal", and given the definition they're using for "hacking", that's a perfectly reasonable thing to claim. The real debate is whether modifying computer games counts as "hacking" under that definition. Debates just about definitions aren't interesting.
    - morganvachon 11y ago
      It bothers me that the very "hacking" that made video games even possible (modifying the console or computer system to do what it wasn't intended to do) is now being called illegal by the ESA. I maintain that there wouldn't be any video games to hack, morally or immorally, without old school hacking from the late 1940s through at least the 1980s. The ESA are the ones trying to redefine the language to suit their pocket books. They are the ones trying to claim that "hacking" can only mean circumvention of copyright protection, when the word has a place in many different contexts and applications, and can be good/moral/legal or bad/immoral/illegal, or any combination. Even said circumvention can be for good or fair use reasons, as the EFF is arguing.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That is not what ESA is saying (they are saying a bunch of other dumb things), though it's understandable why you'd think that, because it's what EFF wants you to believe.
        morganvachon 11y ago
        I was basing what I said off of the actual filing, not the EFF's pearl-clutching. "Hacking video game access controls facilitates piracy and therefore undermines the core anti-piracy purposes of Section 1201. As explained above, hacking the video game access controls requires, by definition, hacking of the video game console or similar device in order to play the hacked video game. Once the access controls for the video game console are hacked, regardless of the purported purpose or intent of the hacker, any content, including pirated games, can be played on a video game console. What's more, console hackers may distribute their console-hacking solution to gamers that have no intention of using it for the purposes stated in the proposed exemption. The risk of piracy is even greater on personal computers and similar devices that do not utilize device-based access controls to prevent the installation of unauthorized software. The individual can use consoles to make and store infringing copies of copyrighted games and other content and to distribute these unlawful copies online to a large audience."[1] They are equating hacking with piracy, full stop. They are saying "regardless of the intent of the hacker, the hacker is committing piracy". That's a scary precedent to set. [1] http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/Entertainment_Software_Association_Class23_1201_2014.pdf http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%2023/En...

noonespecial 11y ago

You know what else is illegal? Selling something to someone and then taking it back whenever you feel like it.

Zikes 11y ago
Naw, they only sold you a "license to play", not an actual game. That EULA's a killer.
- bencoder 11y ago
  Except if your disk is damaged and you want to download a working version or get a replacement disk, then it's not just a licence, you gotta buy it again. They want it both ways
  - msandford 11y ago
    That always drove me nuts. It's got to be one or the other. Seems like there might be an interesting court case to be made by say the Internet Archive: 1. Buy a CD and then damage it 2. Then ask for a new one for free, with proof of the damaged one 3. When they refuse, get your lawyer to send the same request certified mail 4. When they officially refuse, sue in small claims and they'll get it tossed out since "you bought it" (hopefully) 5. Tuck this in your back pocket and start archiving and making them re-playable galore 6. When publisher X who told you it was a sale sues for "hacking" go to court for a summary dismissal based on the previous court case where they argued "hey you bought it!" and a judge might have no choice but to agree I'm sure it wouldn't work, but it'd be nice!
    - Zikes 11y ago
      In this scenario the game disc can still constitute a license, not the actual game. The contents of the disc would simply be a convenient installation method.
      - msandford 11y ago

fragsworth 11y ago

I don't understand why the ESA cares at all about this. None of the games in question are making any money, and the publishers don't expect to make any money in the future on them. What is their incentive? Maybe they want to preserve the opportunity of reviving an old IP? If that's the case, then doesn't allowing players to keep playing the abandoned games improve the visibility of those IPs, improving the value of a future revival? It's really dumbfounding. I'd like to understand the motivation here, so that it at least makes sense to me.

chongli 11y ago
Their incentive is to keep players buying new games rather than playing old ones.
- rosser 11y ago
  Exactly. If you're happily playing Abandoned Title III, why would you need to buy New Hotness XXVII? It's pretty much the same kind of thinking that counts each viewing of a pirated movie as lost revenue — nevermind that you can watch a DVD or BD over and over and over, and not get charged each time...
  - aetch 11y ago
    Nevermind that going to a theatre to watch a movie over and over would GET charged each time...
DanAndersen 11y ago
It seems more often than not that the incentive is just to sit on the rights to IP, even if you don't plan to do anything with it ever, just because there's no incentive to let things go, and there's some microscopic but non-zero benefit to holding onto IP just in case. I wonder if, instead of having the near-endless wait until public domain, it would be good to have a system of intellectual property that made copyright increasingly expensive to hold year after year, as some function of the total assets of the IP holder. Make it some exponential function, so that after a certain number of years, holding onto the rights to some IP is just too expensive to maintain unless the holders feel they can actually do something good and profitable with the IP (rather than a system that would need to show regular "use", which would incentivize publishing crap to satisfy a regulation).

mahouse 11y ago

Oh, but I want to be able to play Wrath of the Lich King again.

sanarothe 11y ago
There are private servers running every expansion, some of which have decent and playable populations.
- nfoz 11y ago
  ... and it's a breach of the WoW client terms of service to connect to them. http://www.wowwiki.com/Emulated_server http://www.wowwiki.com/Emulated_server
  - zer0rest 11y ago
    who gives a shit
  - mahouse 11y ago
    But I never paid for a subscription so I never agreed to those terms.
- mahouse 11y ago
  Most of them are really bad, and what angers me is that it's mostly because of the laziness and the greediness of those who run them.
zer0rest 11y ago
WoW at its peak

im3w1l 11y ago

Going after retrogame pirates of your out of sale game seems like a really stupid business decisions. If people still play your old game after all these years, despite the crappy graphics, it must have a lot of things going for it. Do a remake, an expansion, or a sequel!

zer0rest 11y ago
See Age of Empires II, the remake sucks because the platform sucks. Community driven platforms are the best(voobly for AoE II).

emergencevector 11y ago

Interesting. I do volunteer work at a videogame museum and I was just about to propose a system for preserving videogame art assets and enabling presenting them outside the context of the original game. There is a problem with the content of old games being lost due to only existing in idiosyncratic formats in hardware ROMs. Also, it poses a curatorial challenge to present the visual art at the end of a game with a 50 hour play time. I guess the industry doesn't want us to do that! (Disclosure: I work with the Oakland museum mentioned.)

anigbrowl 11y ago
Serious question: how often do you approach the publisher and ask for their help with this? Have you developed an administrative system that could present these requests in a standardized and actionable way to the publishers' legal departments, or just the technical system?
- emergencevector 11y ago
  As far as help goes, we actually don't need technical help. (I won't expand on this, of course.) It is mostly a matter of getting permission. As far as an administrative system for asking, there isn't such a system. My understanding is that permission comes most reliably through personal contacts with company insiders. Asking legal departments is usually counterproductive -- after all, if you worked in a legal department, what motivation would there be for you to say anything but "no?" Saying "yes" has all the possible downsides and no apparent upside.

snarfy 11y ago

You don't own the game. You agreed in the EULA to own a license to use the game, a license which no doubt can be modified at anytime for any reason, including removing any right to use the game.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
But I wrote a EULA that says to game companies that they void all other EULAs when they sell me a game ... Of course it's not enforceable, it's a one-sided contract. If their's is enforceable though mine should be too.
Shivetya 11y ago
how about when I have the game but cannot play it on my current machine because the OS doesn't support it any longer? Example, many games require Rosetta to be available on OS X but that support was dropped ages ago. If they can modify at any time my usage of the game then as consumers why would we not simply modify the situation to never pay them for their products?

ddingus 11y ago

They will mostly be preserved anyway. When the game is well distributed, preservation won't make too much sense. Nobody will have enough pieces, though it may well be possible to capture a lot of the before it all gets old too. But if they are stand alone, or even download 'n play, people are going to archive them. To me, given how existing efforts have helped publishers and producers out many times in the form of commented and running code, whether we archive seems largely moot. The real question is how do we make the money work? One thing I see a lot is this assumption or presumption of tons more sales, if only... Old one not available Pirates Used Swap with friends ...aren't in play. But the dollars aren't there. Most people cannot just double or triple their entertainment budget, and there is a case for time too. Who can actually get through them all? Some more dollars are there though. I agree with that, but I likely disagree in the amounts and to some degree, who. As for the illegal hacking. No way. That really isn't open for discussion. If it's on my machines, I get to take a look. Maybe there is little to see. Then again, teaching myself on these kinds of experiences is really high value. I can't reasonably let that idea get beat up fo no good reason. Many of us here know how valuable an activity like cracking a game can be. And at some point the need for better experiences drives demand for people able to deliver. There is a basic disconnect there. Run it and don't go looking... are you kidding? Seems to me they could offer archives themselves too. If you have hardware, great. Just run it. If you don't, maybe it makes sense to allow people to get a copy they can work with. There are a lot of things kind of broken right now. Budgets, costs and risks are high, and so is the asking price... Seems to me, a stand alone title is high value, assuming the title itself is good, right? I can swap with friends, and do other things I that adds value. A split thing that needs always on Internet is less. Download same, because I am doing work to make it happen and I can't swap easily...

ddingus 11y ago
I didn't see I somehow missed the finish on this comment! The games industry is going to have to go through some pricing challenges, just as music did. There isn't as much value in something that cannot run for as long as the user wants to run it. Same goes for downloads and swapping, streamed, etc... Some pricing options don't even make much sense! A $60 buy in for a subscription game? Not a lot of initial value there. It's all in the subscription. But then again, if it's on a retail shelf, they want to see potential margins too.

tptacek 11y ago

EFF is, unsurprisingly, misrepresenting ESA. ESA's objection is not that "this is hacking and hacking is illegal". "Hacking" is simply the term of art the ESA response chooses to use for the reversing and manipulation of game titles. EFF is trying to hang ESA on that impolitic choice of words. ESA's position, broadly, is: * Game publishers own their titles and are entitled the economic benefits that stem from them. * There is no exception in copyright law for "maintaining access to matchmaking services", and, more specifically, retaining access to online services isn't a use case that falls under fair use. * The duration of copyright lasts far longer than "6 months after the matchmaking service stops working", which is the time threshold in EFF's exemption request. * Game titles themselves have value separable from their online services, and indeed many/most games with online components charge separately (either directly or through agreements with the game console online services), further suggesting that the termination of online services doesn't impact the copyright on the game itself. Indeed, ESA contests the idea that these games are "abandoned" at all. * The modifications required to substitute a new matchmaking service are intrusive and impact features other than those needed to restore matchmaking, creating a legal ambiguity. * Similarly, the modifications extend far past the games themselves and into the consoles/phones/whatever, creating an ambiguity about whether/when jailbreaking limitations are contractually enforceable. * Ambiguities aside, the technical capabilities that would need to be exempted to make this work are so sweeping as to potentially moot the copyright of most of the code on the platform (ie, to restore matchmaking, you'd need to exempt reversing and modifying and trafficking in the modified versions of entire closed operating systems). * The beneficiaries of game modifications will include commercial entities who will gain legal cover for selling services that capture benefits that are rightfully owed to the game copyright holder. ... I'm about 1/3rd through their response and I've probably failed to capture 1/2 the ESA arguments I've read so far. The sad thing about this is, even with ESA's arguments charitably summarized and faithfully captured, virtually none of EFF's audience is going to be persuaded. There was practically no risk that ESA would persuade EFF's audience. Should video games be legally hackable? Virtually everyone who cares what EFF thinks believes: "yes!!^$!". There was absolutely no reason for EFF to be deceptive about this. And yet, here they are again, insulting our intelligence. EFF does a lot of good and important things, but their online advocacy is not one of them.

11y ago

shmerl 11y ago

ESA probably hates this too: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/ https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/ Boo! Publishers never thought of Emscripten... Those ESA crooks should really be strongly opposed, together with repealing the whole DMCA-1201.

jacques_chester 11y ago

For those who are interested in an actual example, GameRanger supports hundreds of games which have been abandoned by their publishers. And it has north of 6 million registered users.

zer0rest 11y ago
+1 for GameRanger also Voobly if you like Age of Empires II(all the competitive players are there).

c3d 11y ago

These companies care about their "property" more than about legality, unfortunately. I remember a lawyer from Atari/Infogrames coming at me for having authorised some abandonware site to publish a game I had written in 1990, Alpha Waves. So I dug up the contract I had signed with them. It was a 3 years exclusive licensing and distribution contract, which Infogrames could only renew by sending me royalties every quarter. I sent a copy of the contract, along with a letter asking for the more 15 years of royalties (after 1993). Never heard back from the lawyer after that. Old abandonware often belongs to individuals and independent authors. And if they are like me, unlike lawyers, they are just happy that someone remembers the stuff they sweated on for years.

NoMoreNicksLeft 11y ago
Thanks for being reasonable.

golergka 11y ago

That's the point of property concept: if you own something, you can do unreasonable and even stupid things with it, if so you choose. So, although it saddens me that they choose this course of action, they're completely in their legal right here.

nekopa 11y ago

Simple fix: If I cannot run a game I paid for anymore, give me a refund for the initial purchase price.

anon4 11y ago

I understand where the EFF are coming from, but I wish they'd focus their efforts on things that matter, rather than on preserving toys.

anonbanker 11y ago

Back in 1999, the first time this hubbub started: https://books.google.com/books?id=FwIAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=PT37&dq=sonic+cruises+for+hookers&source=bl&ots=p7lXpeiPxL&sig=PMjKiLJnihEs06SgNwX0xvJX1N8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KO8mVfOfPNbSoAT08oD4BQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA https://books.google.com/books?id=FwIAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT37&lpg=P... Money Quote: "If you want to patch together a lawnmower, a walkman, and a pair of ice tongs to play "Sonic Cruises for Hookers", or anything else Sony is publishing, that's your right.