Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike McC
Actually, the statement that 'abandonware' is a bullshit term is completely accurate. It's not rigorously defined, and some 'abandonware' still has copyrights in effect, making it piracy as well.
The stuff that is safe to release is stuff that has been released into the public domain, either by the copyright lapsing or the creators releasing it into the public domain. So check to make sure that is the case before linking, even if your site claims to 'follow the laws'. Remember, even is a company no longer exists, that doesn't mean that the copyright didn't default to the authors of the game.
In short: Don't trust the label abandonware. There are far better labels that are not ambiguous.
Anyhow, an Adventure game I still enjoy and occasionally return to today is Shivers, and it's sequel. Very puzzle centric with slight touches of horror, it was very well done.
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I said this elsewhere, but I'll reiterate it here. I rely exclusively on the site I linked because they have the strictest definition on the market (which I suppose I take for granted) and enforce it vigilantly. By their definition, it's not abandoned until there is literally no one left to speak for it, they do some pretty thorough research into whether there's anyone at all who legally can, and if they get so much as a phone call, the archive comes down. If I had any doubts as to whether it was legal or not, I wouldn't have posted the links.
As Synk and I seem to have agreed, again, elsewhere, it's at worst a legal gray area simply due to a lack of precedent, but bears the most similarity to orphaned works law, which simply hasn't yet been applied to it.
Edit: At any rate, I'm not going to argue this further. The links are down and if anyone wants to check out the games I mentioned, they're not exactly hard to find.