Within games, however, abandonware is typically the realm of very old games that publishers have naturally stopped caring about, or even games from publishers that flat-out no longer exist. There’s a thriving Abandonware scene on PC, led by a handful of sites dedicated to abandoned games and the much larger Internet Archive, which also makes itself home to backed-up archives of websites, magazines, and much else besides. This doesn't necessarily hold water legally - but it has become an accepted practice. The argument is that if the owner of the software has abandoned supporting and selling it, to some degree they've abandoned the copyright. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Abandonware refers to a piece of software that is ignored by its owner or creator, which usually means there’s no official support for it and no official way to purchase it. Look, we all want to play Typing of the Dead again, right? Bluntly, if a game is delisted, publishers should embrace the fact it will become Abandonware. What I can’t stand is when a publisher wants to have it both ways they pull a game from sale, but then also try to suppress alternative distribution by fans in the name of squashing piracy or protecting their IP. If they want to delist games from sale or even download without prompting warranted fury from preservationists, they need to understand and accept the inevitable consequences of their actions: that any delisted game will be downloaded through other means, and that players will often pull games apart to keep playing them. I’m here to argue one simple thing: game publishers should be allowed to do what they want… with conditions. Mind you, I also don’t think withdrawing perfectly playable games from sale makes much sense either – just drop the price, note the lack of online, and let people continue to buy it if they want to. But also, I’m a realist: these are companies trying to turn a profit, and keeping servers open for a game barely anybody is paying doesn’t make much sense. How does such a classic become Abandonware, anyway?Īny game preservationist, such as myself, would obviously rather that game servers be left online, or the game patched to allow for some sort of alternate online connectivity solution. It's Liberation now, but it could be any Assassin's game next. Once delisted, nobody new will be able to buy the game, however. Rather than the game at large being deactivated for all, it was just the multiplayer component shutting down on that date – meaning that certain features will be unavailable, but the ‘base game’ will remain accessible for those who dropped cold, hard cash on it in the past. A poorly-written prompt on Steam made people misunderstand what was actually going on. In this instance, the additional anger over the game being removed from paying customers was actually mistaken. And that… well, that’s a much worse look. The game’s Steam page was marked with an announcement that sales of the game would cease in September – pretty standard, if rubbish – but also with text that suggested that even those who already owned the game would no longer be able to download and install it after a certain date, too. To be honest, the original circumstances around Assassin’s Creed Liberation looked pretty bad.
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