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![]() Gamers Respond To round off this discussion, we also turned to gamers themselves to see if they had an opinion on abandonware. This question was posed to a number of online gaming forums: "Is abandonware the same as warez? Why or why not?" The responses may surprise you.
Another message board post responds: "I don't see how you can consider that stuff 'abandonware.' Someone still owns the trademarks and copyrights. If you are somehow arguing that the issue is that the games should be free simply because they are old, that seems lame to me. Even an old game has commercial value. Look at the Lost Treasures of Infocom and other 'classic' collections. Every once in a while, a game company gets a clue and makes a Win32 port of an older game. I wish someone would do that with Carrier Command or Ultima Underworld."
Another poster states: "I'm not going to take the moral high ground on this issue, as I'm one of the people who downloads those old games and plays them. The way that I see it is thus: It's a gray area, and that works out perfectly for the developers. They wouldn't have it any other way. See, the fans who release the 'abandonware' games hype them, and that generates free publicity for the developer. It doesn't cost them any money, as they're not worrying about supporting the games or distributing them, and most of the profits for the game have been registered already at the time of the game's release. Besides, should the game garner a cult following, they can capitalize on it and release a newer 'episode' in the series with a guaranteed fan base, since the developer owns the rights to the franchise."
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