Forums > Game Forums > Nox > TRUE or FALSE: Abandonware?
And Wan on 8/22/2011 10:37 AM · Permalink · Report
Just curious, off-topic, but since Westwood Studios shut down, does that mean Nox is abandonware? I know EA bought the company then liquidated it... just confused...
If we bought Nox TODAY, not a penny will go to the original programmers/artist/creative-writers of Nox. True?
vedder (70822) on 8/22/2011 10:58 AM · Permalink · Report
If you buy NoX the money will go to the publisher, which has always been Electronic Arts (unless it's some kind of budget re-release by another publisher). Whether Westwood Studios (also owned by Electronic Arts) would get your money if you bought it 11 years ago depends on the type of contract they had with EA. Could be that EA simply funded the game, claiming all profits, or that they funded a certain percentage of development and also claiming a certain percentage of the profits, or took all profits upto a certain points, or paid royalties, etc.
I'm not sure what happens with a royalties contract if a company is liquidated. In any case whether your money goes to the developers, even for newly released games, is not always a certainty.
If this is still sold today as you stated (not sure if this was hypothetical) it's not abandonware by definition. Abandonware implies its been abandoned by the owner. And even if it was abandoned by the owner, that doesn't make it legal to warez it if that's what you are getting at, they are just less likely to care.
Starbuck the Third (22606) on 8/22/2011 11:40 AM · Permalink · Report
Ok, I'm not sure if this is in any way useful, helpful, relevant, constructive or even on topic, but when someone buys a pre-owned game from any given shop or bootsale neither publisher nor developer would get any money from it, at least from the sale of it anyway, so from your financial point of view, no, I can see that it would be.
In terms of IP ownership would probably be the best way of looking at it, but even this is murky, as we could argue until were blue in the face and still not have a clear definition of what constitutes an abandoned IP.
And slightly off topic, I do hope to see a sequel to Nox, for me it is one of those games that was good enough to warrant a sequel, but alas never got it.
vedder (70822) on 8/22/2011 1:15 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start havoc of smeg wrote--]Ok, I'm not sure if this is in any way useful, helpful, relevant, constructive or even on topic, but when someone buys a pre-owned game from any given shop or bootsale neither publisher nor developer would get any money from it, at least from the sale of it anyway, so from your financial point of view, no, I can see that it would be.[/Q --end havoc of smeg wrote--]
Hence the "limited activation" and "free dlc in box that permanently binds to a user account" type DRM we have nowadays. Publishers don't want people to resell their games.
Starbuck the Third (22606) on 8/22/2011 2:36 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start vedder wrote--] [Q2 --start havoc of smeg wrote--]Ok, I'm not sure if this is in any way useful, helpful, relevant, constructive or even on topic, but when someone buys a pre-owned game from any given shop or bootsale neither publisher nor developer would get any money from it, at least from the sale of it anyway, so from your financial point of view, no, I can see that it would be. [/Q2 --end havoc of smeg wrote--]
Hence the "limited activation" and "free dlc in box that permanently binds to a user account" type DRM we have nowadays. Publishers don't want people to resell their games. [/Q --end vedder wrote--]
And the Ironic thing is that from what I can tell from my browsing round pre owned sections of my local game stores, it's not having an effect. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. Unless your in the habit of collecting games as well as playing, all there going to be is pound signs in the eyes of the owner once they finish it/get bored of it.
Zovni (10504) on 8/22/2011 5:59 PM · Permalink · Report
Its a total scam, but the game industry is still something that senators and congressmen around the world barely understand. Otherwise you would have every consumer-protection agency gunning for publishers to get off their high horses and get rid of those measures. Remember when Sony tried to do a stunt like that with their music records? How far did that go? And now Id software also confirmed that its locking stuff out of Rage for 1st time customers only :S sigh... It always amuses me that regardless of how high an opinion we gamers have of ourselves, we still prove to be dumber than the general populance by not raising some hell over this shit.
Eh anyway, back on topic: Abandonware doesn't exist as a legal term. Closest thing you can get to are GPL licenses or public domain. Otherwise nothing is free and somebody, somewhere, owns the thing. Whether they care or not is a different issue.
Alex Z (1856) on 8/22/2011 7:15 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Zovni wrote--]Its a total scam, but the game industry is still something that senators and congressmen around the world barely understand. Otherwise you would have every consumer-protection agency gunning for publishers to get off their high horses and get rid of those measures. [/Q --end Zovni wrote--]
Still, the music and film industry gets away with much worse thing. Example A is their insistence on those "three-strikes" laws across the world that punish people without trial based only on suspicion that they were torrenting media. Or the fact that they routinely used to fix CD prices (they're probably doing the same to DVD and downloadable content now). Or the very notion of "private copying levy" (look it up) where you are basically punished regardless of your guilt, and if you are guilty of pirating you are punished again for good measure.
Truth be told, there is something deeply messed up with our IP laws. If you invest millions and over ten years of research in, say, curing cancer, you'll get only twenty years to use your patent (of which less than seven will be used as the others go for development and testing). But if you write a book, a song or something of the sort, you get to keep your copyrights up to 50 or 70 years after your death. sigh
Anyway, you could wait for GOG to remarket it with a decent price and with resolved compatibility issues. Shouldn't take them long now.
Slug Camargo (583) on 8/25/2011 11:07 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Zovni wrote--]It always amuses me that regardless of how high an opinion we gamers have of ourselves, we still prove to be dumber than the general populance by not raising some hell over this shit. [/Q --end Zovni wrote--] You really have a high opinion of gamers? Because that sheepish calm with which we take every fistfuck that large companies come up with is only one of the reasons why I despise this "community" of ours. The fact that, say, Ubisoft is even still in business (let alone getting away with their shit) speaks volumes.