Exiled Gamers have put together a campaign and online petition in an attempt to provoke a response from game publishers regarding abandoned games.

Hey there was a petition to get MobyGames to support the Spectrum and that worked. Who knows?

Online petitions are a waste of time. The online petition for the Spectrum had nothing to do with MobyGames - by the time that petition was started, we had already been talking about adding Spectrum for months and gathering a list of tech specs.

The bigger the entity is you're trying to reach, the less fruitful an online petition is anyway. It might have worked for MobyGames which is essentially run by four people. But from major game publishers? Forget it.

I agree... it's a waste of time and effort. Also, that petition is worded in such a way that it wouldn't accomplish anything with even a smaller company.

Publishers answer: "What's in it for us?"
Petitioners answer: "Our eternal respect and gratitude"
Publishers: (repeat question) "What's in it for us?"
Petitioners answer: "Uh...what is it do you want?"
Publisher answer: $$$
Petitioners answer: We've gathered together 22 dollars, 15 cents and some leftoever pizza.
Server: "Internet connection disconnected"
Petitioners: "Hello?"

Bad ides

Publishers answer: "What's in it for us?"
Petitioners answer: "Our eternal respect and gratitude"
Publishers: (repeat question) "What's in it for us?"
Petitioners answer: "Uh...what is it do you want?"
Publisher answer: $$$
Petitioners answer: We've gathered together 22 dollars, 15 cents and some leftoever pizza.
Server: "Internet connection disconnected" Petitioners: "Hello?"


Good idea

Developer: What's in it for us.
Petitioner: What do you want
Devloper: $$$$$
Petitioner: *Flashes cash*


You shouldn't give out free games, but I WILL BUY NES GAMES IF YOU RESELL THEM. Its something thats always troubled me in the past and now. Just resell them. I WILL buy System Shock if you resell it. Or Fallout. I'll buy that too.

I signed the petition just because I'm a nice person and I want to see this happen. If everyone stays with the mentality that petitions never work. Its like voting for the third party in an election. If everyone keeps thinking that its a waste of a vote, then it will keep being that way. But if people vote for it, then it will pick up in momentum.

I signed it, I think everyone should too, even if you think its not worth it, its just a 30 second procedure. At least by signing it your helping someone else, even if you don't think it'll work.

The problem is that reprinting old games isn't simply a matter of dusting off old ISOs from your archives and firing up your CD burner - especially on consoles. But even on PC, there is a lot of money and resources you have to shed before your game can hit the stores again. And why would publishers want to do that if the number of people who would buy those games is very limited? Of course hard-core gamers might be interested... but those are a minority.

Also wouldn't companies get hammered for not making the older games compatible with newer systems (like what happened with the C&C Decade anthology) and wouldn't they be expected to support the titles?

As it says in the petition (and the article itself); it's not something that we'd expect them to do - the Company sells the game 'as is' with no tech support offered, if you're only paying a small fee for the game, and you've been informed that there's a chance it won't work, you'd probably feel much less aggrieved than if you had just bought the special new release of C&C; only to find that some of the games don't work.

You can buy Fallout today, can't you? At least in Poland.

This is an awesome recreation of the conversation... mwaha :)

But the campaign doesn't demand that all old games are released for free, neither does it demand that they're all made available in stores again (as you say, the costs would be too big to justify the outcome); it does make the suggestion of titles being made available for download at a cost - with distribution systems like Steam (and even the EA downloader) now available, could this not be seen as feasible?

It won't happen. Except in the few cases (eg. Atari), where a company will re-release old games in compilations or on "consoles" (the fake imitation consoles that only play the games installed on the thing itself), you just aren't going to see it happen.

On occasion, if a game is part of a series, you may see a set put out somewhere down the line when a newer game in the series is released, of course.

Even making games available to download isn't really that cheap for a company. Bandwidth costs money. Plus, many games, old and new, are set up to check for CDs or to only install from floppies or whatever else. The companies would have to update the games to avoid that. They aren't going to put it up to download and then say, "Go find a crack."

This isn't a big problem really, companies know exactly how to circumvent their own copy protection. I've seen games re-released that no longer checked for the CD or better yet Bane of the Cosmic Forge was re-released in the Ultimate Wizardry Archives with the copy protection (magicword/icon list) not needed as you could just hit Enter without giving the magic word. It doesn't seem that this is the biggest problem facing re-releases, but rather a large enough audience (as mentioned already) to justify the endeavor.

Do they? I'm guessing that's often not really true. In very many cases those who wrote the protection and/or game are no longer there; then you have to rely on source code being readily available to take the protection out (which it probably isn't, it's probably on some tape backup somewhere that no one knows about), documentation on the product being available or crack/patch it yourself, or who knows what. Where the original company is gone and someone else owns the ip is sure to be a nightmare. Sure, it can be done, and I'd agree it's not the biggest obstacle, but I don't think it's a trivial point in majority of cases.

Not to mention that the games were written 10 years ago. What compiler did people use? MSVC 6.0? What API? What shared libraries? You can't just take old source code and plug it into your current environment - that's not gonna work, especially when it comes to games.

Then, games are notorious for bad documentation because of the immense time pressure. Especially the copy protection part, which is often written hastily in the last minute. And, to foil crackers, it's often hidden so well that after 10 years, you'll foil yourself in an attempt to remove it.

We do agree that its a nice idea, but for most of us that has been slapped the cold harsh truth of the real world, "nice ideas" usually only end up just that.

First they (who ever they may be?) would have to research which game would be potentially good for a new release (Fallout or some unknown obscure title). Then they have to research the potential buyers that would buy that potential game (no, 1000 buyers won't cut it).

Even if they do get past that phase, they would have to create an emulator or engine where the game would be compatible with the latest Operating System, since if it weren't then the "paying" customers would nag about it.

Then they would have to also add additional technical support for those consumers who nag regardless (like me :p)

Honestly, just a petition is an easy-way-out. If you're really hardcore, you would conduct the quantitative and qualitative market research BEFORE submitting the petition. Then of course, precisely identify which game to release to which company that holds the copyrights (if you subject the petition to EVERYONE ie "Game Publishers", then no one will feel responsible.

But that costs time and money. I hate being a realist, but idealists can't do squat without money.

I agree with the point about the petition and campaign perhaps being too vague, and that a more focused effort on one particular publisher, for one particular title; would have perhaps had more scope for success - especially if you had the numbers to back it up, but then; how exactly do you prove the support for things on the internet, when petitions are (for the most part) frowned upon as a waste of time?

How would you present cold hard evidence that x amount of people would like to see a certain game made available (for download, or...) when all you have is a collection of people in separate internet forums apparently demanding it?

I suppose this is where your cost comes into things, to produce something that looks more solid and reliable than an internet petition.

There's already emulators for older DOS-based games that work quite well for the most part; and if you're paying to download an old title, then you would have to accept that the company no longer offers technical support for it (especially if it wasn't them who made the game in the first place).

And realism makes a welcome change to the apathy that I've seen in response to this on a few other internet sites.

Hmmm, I guess I never really thought about that too much. I sort of figured that rereleasing old games would be easy since the code was already there but you have a good point with all of these. Modern updates for newer systems, tech support, shipping, packaging, all only for a few hardcore gamers' respect, and really not that much money. The only way to get your money back is if the same ammount of people bought it as the first release at the same price.

That's why I suggested the download option, there's very little money to be had from re-releasing the titles as an actual physical product, as you say, the costs will probably outweigh any potential profit and good-feeling you may generate.

Tech support and updates I've mentioned my feelings on already, this needn't be as expensive a full blown re-release.

Personally, I think the only way you will have much luck getting older games that you can't find anywhere is to talk companies into allowing games that are over 10 years old to be released as abandonware. Some companies actually do that after X number of years, but most big companies will not (Maxis, for instance). Of course, those same companies usually have some method for obtaining the older games.

I really doubt anyone will get the companies to all allow 10 years for sales and then put everything up as abandonware, but it would solve problems for the hardcore gamers who like older games and wouldn't cost anything (other sites would host as they do now) and since most old games being released won't really generate profit (that's a big reason why the petition here won't help), it wouldn't really hurt companies who aren't planning to re-release the games themselves. It probably won't happen, but there it is. :)

Since it's been up again for a week or so now, I didn't want to start a new thread. The current URL is www.the-underdogs.info.