Recreating abandonware

Hi Community,

I'm currently thinking about creating a low-poly game based on an old Sierra adventure game. Most of their games are "abandonware" at the moment and can be freely downloaded. My question: are we developers allowed to recreate such games or should I allways ask for some sort of permission before doing so? Anyone have any experience with recreating old games?

thanks in advance,
Joost

 

Fantastic. So long as based means inspired by and not a copy of the story, mechanics or visuals.

Need legal permission if anything will be copied or recreated (remade) to be the same thing.

It is always better to create new work that is influenced (similar but NOT the same) as you will get the same pleasure, players will get the same experience and there will be no legal issues!

Plus it'll be original and all your work... awesome IMHO.

(old school sierra fan here)

 

I don't think is anything wrong with recreating same game behavior, as long is not using copied assets / scripts.
For safe side, surely different graphics to be on safe side. Or even a little modernize, while keeping retro style.

At the end of day there is plenty copy cats anyway.
Idea are often copied from somewhere.

 

In the '90's, Sierra was my God. I have Lode Runner on my PC right now.

 

Not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure "abandonware" is not a legal status. They would be subject to the exact same legal protection as any other game. I think abandonware is just a colloquialism for "it's been on our download site for more than a year and they haven't sued us yet...so I guess they're cool with it...for now."

 

Yep that was fun game.
I got snes with rooms on PC somwhere in archives, with may old games. From Tanks, Contra, To Lode Runners, Super Mario, and many more

I was always amazed, how many games you could fit on these cartridges.
I wonder, if they shared "assets" back then, between games, to reduce overall the size.
Or each game was completely separate game. Which is more likely.

 

I treat title "abandoware" for games, which haven't been finished. If is genuinely finished, which is rare in indie world, then can not really say is "abandonware". Complete and sold. But I can not say the same, about tons of half producs, even with small update once a halve year

 

Like using assets from previous Sierra installs? You know, that could've been a real good idea in the days of the floppy. Or like an "Ultra" version or even Sonic & Knuckles type thing with a completely different game, or mixing of games. I think Wizardry 6&7 did something like that when they were both installed. Or maybe it just made it seem like one long game, either way a profitably marketable idea for that time.

 

Yep that would be one of approaches, but even when you had more than one game on same storage device. Either floppy, or cartridge, or any other way. Back then that superb idea. Specially for install-able games.

Ah you mentioned floppy. Lovely memories and times with Amiga 500.

Stupid management killed it ;[

What amazing machine was that.
But I was upset on defected floppies, specially when you had game on more than 2
Still sound of floppy drive sits in my brain.
Ah funny fact, there was game Lotus Challenger. Racing game. It had hidden second game in it.
You could shoo birds, or ducks. One of these two

 

It makes me so happy to remember those days. I want to rebuild the computer I wanted as a kid so bad. My first computer I got was a 3.1 machine with Tabworks installed on the kernal. My mom got it for her real estate agency I think, but she broke it somehow. I remember so well, i was no older than 5 and was like "I can make that work.". Chips Challenge all the way to the bank. Then I think in '95, I started using her actual office computer since she didn't have any idea how, an old horizontal chassis with an actual large 5.25 floppy slot in it, as well as 3.5 and a disc drive. I played my first "real AAA" computer game on that, gat dang Journeyman Project. Blew my mind and changed the way I processed games as a medium.

Edit: Well into adulthood, and all I want is that Sound-Blaster FX, lol

 

yeah soundblaster effects. Well deserved applause.

Did you make it work?

Hoping you will transfer this experiance, in new super cool AAA title.
Oh btw, ere these your tutorials?

Just refreshed memories from Amiga of few games.
Wings of Fury, Lemmings 1 & 2 (never found proper working snes room version) and First Samurai

 

Well, I think creating a game inspired by Sierra adventures would be the best. Will stick to that thought. Thanks for the advise!

When I was (a lot) younger I just loved the various Sierra-series; Larry, Space Quest, Kings Quest, etc. Not only Sierra games, the whole adventure genre, I also loved games like monkey Island, day of the tentacle, maniac mansion, full throttle, sam and max, gabriel knight, broken sword, flight of the amazon queen, indiana jones, etc.
It actually made me learn English at a very young age

First things first; game design Will think out a nice story first. (Love being creative!)

 

Recall quite well Larry, broken sword and indiana jones. I don't know how I played these, since I learned English over decade later

 

"Ken sent me"... ;-)

 

Yeah, but it was no big feat. I was totally into the trend of taking apart all of my electronics and toys to "study" them, then I'd set to putting them back together again. So when I saw the problem I just did what I'd do with any other electronic device. Think my parents just thought it was cute and it was trash to them so the figured, "Why not?" and let me have at it. Just took it apart and put it back together again, and it worked fine. Funny thing is my parents still had no idea how to use it.

S***, me too. I've got a history of dreaming too big. I've got ideas I've been refining most of my life and haven't touched. What I really want to do is much too complex for me at the time. Wanted to make a real game since I could play them, just always kind of assumed things would happen magicly I guess, so I've spent a redundant amount of time thinking about things I <I>would</I> do if that makes sense. I'd find comfort in thinking about it, mechanics, math, realistic implementation of my ideas in an actual working sense. Maybe I tried to be Steve Jobs, instead of Steve Wozniak, but I did try. I always read about it and learned some older editors when I had the time, some basic 3d modeling, etc.. Then I got to take Computer Science in school and they taught me Java which was cool because I had taught myself HTML a couple years ago. Then before that I don't even know how much money my dad spent on Visual Basic books. I remember on a flight to DC once that was all I read, I loved and wanted to know everything about games. Somehow things never fell into place though, I was too caught up in life. So nah, they're not my tuts, I'm nowhere near that smart.

It's funny you say that, I spent about an hour thinking about how much I want a new Lemmings game yesterday. I just love DOS in general, and I had it on PS1 too, pure gold.

Well there's my second AAA and second most life altering game of my life, that's awesome. Kings Quest VI blew my mind. It showed me how fun complex systems could be, how satisfying a hard puzzle can be. It's like it was on purpose, lol, Journeyman Project showed me how beautiful and story rich something can be and King's Quest showed me how complex a game could be. It might now be as hard now I guess, but as a single digit kid it was pretty life altering.

 

Just keep in mind that, like @kdgalla mentioned, while they may be easy to find it's not legal to download them any more than it would be legal to download a newly released game. It may seem like that though due to the copyright owners not pursuing anyone actively downloading or sharing it but it's almost always still copyrighted and owned by someone.

That being said just being on an abandonware site doesn't necessarily mean it's abandonware. Some companies - with Activision being one of them - have been known to release their older games as freeware and a few of them even come with source code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law

 

A lot of this has already been mentioned, but abandonware and the fact that it is possible to freely download these games does not mean it is legal to do so. It just means the company or person which owns the copyright finds it a wasteful expenditure to sick their lawyers on the pirating of a game which they are unlikely to ever receive further profits from.

The company or person which created the game still owns the copyright on it. Lengths of copyright vary from country to country, but generally last many decades beyond the death of the original creator of the work. There hasn't been enough time for any video game's copyright to expire and enter the public domain, so unless the entity that owns the copyright has specifically released it as public domain it is still their IP. Any trademarks are also likely to still be owned by that entity as well. Releasing as "freeware" is fundamentally different than releasing as "public domain", where in freeware the entity still retains all copyrights and trademarks.

Based on the famous Tetris case Tetris Holding, LLC v. Xio Interactive, Inc, it is entirely possible for you to be in violation of copyright by creating a game which is similar enough to the original as to be confused with that original without using any code or assets from that original. So avoid making a direct clone of the game itself. Use of the original game's name as your own game's name, or similar enough where it could reasonably be believed you intended to confuse customers into believing that your game is from the original company, would further add evidence that you intended to create a game to be confused as the original, and could separately put you in violation of the company's trademarks even if the game itself is significantly dissimilar to the original.

So make a game in the spirit of the original, it should be able to include some of the same elements to a point, but not so far that to a laymen it could be confused with the original work, and don't use a name which could be confused with the original name of the game, or confused to be from the original company. (You can't release a new phone called "EyeFone XI" for example)

I am not a lawyer

 

I don't have any particular example, but surely something can be found.
What I mean is,

Many of companies will hold copy rights, other will release games to the public, maybe even with source code.

However, in the light of current economical situation and whole bs capitalized industry, I wouldn't be surprised, that bigger game maker will hold old titles, only to wait and hunt for games, which become very popular and similar to their titles. Just to pray on them and take to court, when occasion arise. Easy money isn't it

And of course you see often older games remastered and sold again. So for whom released the game 10-15 years ago for public, where was different market situation, now it may be punching self in a face (why I released it for free?) (in some cases of course - maybe )

 

While you can sue someone for just about anything, you do have to be able to prove to the court they deserve it. Hosts for abandonware are very well known for being receptive to DMCA takedowns too - which is why it's very difficult to find some games - which eliminates any money they would have gotten this way since it won't reach the point of a lawsuit.

 

In addition to what @Joe-Censored posted, I'd be wary of assuming that because it's been abandoned, you won't end up with a nasty surprise sometime down the road when the IP owners decide to revive it, as these guys found out: https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/25/1...reators-ford-reiche-stardock-lawsuit-campaign

It's ironic that the creators are the ones who are apparently in violation, but there it is...

 

This is exactly the case, what I pointed out.

 

Strange situation. That lawsuit would seem to depend on the details of the Star Control francize purchase from Atari, and if Atari did in fact own that IP to sell in the first place.

 

Abandonware Refers to any game that is no longer supported by the creators. They still own the rights to the game but no longer provide updates. so NBA2K16 is abandonware (they probably stopped updating and providing online servers after the 2K18 game was released)

Depending where in the world you live, the rules for modifying games is different if you intend on creating a standalone game (Counter-strike is a Modified version of Half-Life after all) so good idea to check the rules of your country or region.

In most cases, remastering a game and publishing under your name is pretty illegal

If you are going to give the game fresh sprites, new elements, new storyline etc thenyou would need to legally edit at least 25% of the game for most countries, 75% in others (region dependant)

I didnt know that Unity could reverse-code games.. let me know how that works out

 

Nobody said it could.

 

Wish it could though... id have fun taking Jones In The Fast Lane apart and creating something wonderful form it

 

As others have said in here you do not want to do a direct copy of someone else's' intellectual property. However, you can build your base around it, modify and extend it to become a new product. This is what comprises a video game "genre". A genre of games is simply grouping together all of the games that have built upon one another in some new way. Every single game out there no matter how experimental has some component that's been done before.

 

True "abandonware" is not just a matter of software that is downloaded on-line. Proper abandonware is software whose copyright is no longer being claimed or defended.

Of course, it is important that you not mistake software copyright with trademarking and intellectual property. A company can be defending a particular IP, even if they haven't been enforcing copyright on an associated piece of software. Activision owns the IP for a lot of the older Sierra games, but they aren't all that particular about preventing people from downloading those older games. If you tried to create a new game or a remake game that included those trademarks and IPs, Activision would probably send you a cease-and-desist, even if they haven't been doing the same for distributing those same titles.

The only way to know for sure is to advertise your project, and wait to see if anyone defends the old game. If no one does, you're good to go. Companies tend to be very litigious about this stuff because the act of defending IP and copyrights is how you keep them. If you attempt to claim a lapsed IP and no one challenges it, it is, by default, yours, because you're using it. But with the Sierra catalog in particular, it's quite likely that someone will send you a cease-and-desist notice. Sierra was a well-known developer/publisher, and most of their classic IPs are spoken for.

 

That is absolutely not what abandonware means. Abandonware refers to software where no one knows who owns the rights to it. This is usually because companies fold, but no one picks up the rights to their stuff.

 

Abandonware doesn't really have a set definition, if we're being totally real here.

 

That's not the case; copyright doesn't require active defending.

Definitely not true from a legal standpoint.

Nope. "IP" itself is not a legal thing per se, but rather a collection of various things like copyright, patents, and trademarks. None of those has any "if you infringe and nobody challenges, it's yours" rule. Not even trademarks—it's possible to lose them, but the idea of "you have to constantly monitor everything and must immediately respond to every single potential infringement, or else" is not actually true. If you infringe and nobody sues right away, all it means is that nobody sued right away. They still could later. It doesn't mean you're legally in the clear.

--Eric

 

In that there is no legal definition, sure. The whole concept of abandonware is an insult to copyright law, because Disney F***ed it up so horribly that nothing in our lifetime will ever become public domain again.

 

Can you elaborate a bit more, what you exactly mean?

 

Short version: lobbyists on behalf of major corporations do everything they can to extend how long it takes for things to fall into the public domain. Disney's a big one, but Fox (pre buyout) and a lot of others got really into it too.

 

Probably is true. But why would you be interested something become public domain, if was owned by someone else?
Well, you may be interested, but I wouldn't be expecting. I rather think, if something is released to public domain, is a bonus.

Welcome to capitalism.

 

Except that's literally not in the spirit of the law as it was originally laid down.

 

Steamboat Willie is held up as the prime example of why copyright was extended so many times. Disney does not want that to enter public domain, as that short stars none other than Mickey Mouse.

Originally copyright was meant to be a short term solution that gave creators control over their works so people couldn’t immediately capitalize on something as soon as it became available. Being short term also meant that it was supposed to encourage people to not just sit on their laurels and continue to create more work over time.

And now here we are.

 

Sure, it was solving the problems of its time, which are different to the problems that need solving today.

We've now got businesses still commercialising works decades later who reasonably enough still want them protected. And we definitely don't have a problem keeping people creating new content.

 

The original spirit of the law was to prevent book printers from maintaining monopolies, and to ensure that works didn’t get lost due to perpetual rights and no one having the ability to print new copies in the future. Most of early copyright law revolves around printing of books (and behaviors of printers). Authors/creators weren’t really even part of the concern until early us copyright law. Since then it has evolved significantly from its original application to cover new media types and favor creator protection over publishers.

 

Except in the modern concept of corporations as people, this kinda just goes all out the window.

 

How so? If people sign over their works to a business then that's a choice they're making, presumably for some benefit. If the business could not reliably commercialise that work there would be less benefit for businesses in commercialising works, which in turn would mean less benefit for people doing work for businesses.

If you think you can do better commercialising work yourself than you can from handing it to a business then that's exactly what you should do, and in that case you're the direct beneficiary of the system.

Either way, warts and all, overall things are better off with it than they would be without it.

 

Just imagine how many Mickey Mouse clones we would have had if people didn't have to make their own IP.

 

It doesn’t go out the window, it evolves to account for current concerns. Originally there were few printers, and those few printers had very, very limited capabilities. As culturally important works became more valuable (because of the printing of knowledge), those works became scarce, and monopolies led to the inability to meet the needs. Medical texts, maps, etc, were in short supply and printers were printing new or popular works (or whatever was selling). Limitation on exclusivity meant that the demands of printed knowledge could be met by any other printer after a short period of time. These things don't apply today, public repositories and the growth of both printing as an industry, meant that wasn't an issue. Mass printing lead to printed works led to more works of purely entertainment.

Early US copyright law evolved to place the ownership in the hands of the creators of the work, the fruit of the thier labor being their right. Though it was an evolution, not a complete change, so it was based largely on the original european predecessors. Today, things have changed significantly both in terms of tech and medium as well as ability for creators to publish and the sheer amount of creators and consumers of creative work. And, you are right in that corporations didn't exist and work the way they do in the last century. So it has evolved.

Setting aside other discussions and opinions and actions/aspects of corporations, they are essentially a legal group or team organized with a single voice. The works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were solely the work of an individual, not only their creation but the value they have. That person is now gone, being the public domain is a good thing. Using the example of Mickey Mouse, that was the creation of a group of people. And more importantly that character's cultural value is result of many thousands of people. It was created by a group, marketed, displayed and continually displayed and value created by that group today. He was designed and created and owned by a team of people and his significance and value is completely attributed to that group, over many decades. Any large ip is just that. While Stan and King created many early Marvel characters, many other creators that worked for that company over the decades have made what Spider-Man et al, are today. The creators are benefit from their creation, even though those creators number in the thousands, they all played a role.

Copyright isn't perfect, and probably never will be, as things will keep changing. Some of it gets pretty questionable, for example IP that constantly changes hands and/or gets shelved for long periods of time. Hopefully some reasonable evolution can address that. The intent of modern copyright is ensure creators are able to benefit from their work, historical copyright was largely to ensure that work didn't get lost. A blend of those goals would be ideal.

 

Thats a legit interesting perspective. I really never thought of it like that.

 

You joke, but Disney themselves made a healthy profit off public domain works with Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin, etc.

 

Loderunner was an Elon Musk game, if I remember right.. one of the very first games to have full motion video, for Sega CD, I think originaly


but which Sierra games? good chance my old boss Doug made those, and I could just ask him if he'd endorse a remake (no, really he loves that people still play his old ega and vga games...)…. but if you are not making an exact copy, just a game say inspired or a parody of those old point&click Sierra games, you should be fine to make that without permission.

also... just wanted to add that I never got anything from Rooster Teeth, no credit, no money, not a thank you card, yet, even though they used my art all over Red vs Blue.. I mean, I liked the show and all, I just gotta whine a little about it every now and then... still.. I'm at a point right now where I could use some funding, if this message should make it over to those Rooster guys... ​

 

Me thinketh you may have gotten sat down for one too many of those corporate brainwashing videos/presentations/seminars. If your only point of reference is Disney and the mouse, then it makes perfect sense that they should hold copyright until the heat death of the universe. When was the last time you saw a copy of Steamboat Willie, though? Is there even a blu-ray version, and when was it last printed? Are they really making money on it?

Think about how much Disney owns that no one in the company cares about. How many properties acquired over the eons have been lost to history? Hell, how much of Disney's own history has become whitewashed and rose-tinted just by omission?

And keep in mind that I'm being explicit on copyright, not trademark. Again, we can thank Disney for creating IP as this gross amalgamation of the two. The three touching circles is their trademark, but the movie Steamboat Willie is their copyright. These days they make far more money from their trademark of the mouse than their copyright of the movie.

Let's take the founder's copyright, 14 years plus a possible 14 year extension. Under it, all of Harry Potter would still be owned by Scholastic. They are still printing new copies even today. The entire NES library would be public domain. A good chunk of the PS2 library would be becoming public domain, since who would renew copyright on something that they probably haven't made a penny on in a decade, much less printed a new copy of. Blizzard would still be selling those box sets that you can get at Walmart. Hell, most artists would be just as well off with a fourteen year old copy of photoshop as with the current edition.
Is that not enough time to have made their cut? At what point then does something need to stop being a profit generator and become a historical artifact?

Granted, I come from the realm of anime and manga that has blatant disregard for copyright. The flip side is that anime is probably the most well preserved form of media, and it's all been translated in English in some way.

 

Who cares? As far as I understand, the issue isn't Steamboat Willie the film itself, it's that if copyright on that is lost then people can start reproducing and deriving from it, and that puts the character Mickey Mouse at risk.

I'm not saying that the system is perfect, but if I were Disney I'd want to protect that, too! If their attempts to protect that cause issues elsewhere then the system needs to keep evolving to better address the full variety of contemporary cases.

Considering that Disney themselves have Steamboat Willie online and free to access, I don't see the point here in relation to that example? They aren't defending the copyright so they can charge us to see it. They're protecting their ability to stop others from using their most iconic character.

And nothing is stopping anyone else from also making profit off those same public domain works. You just can't use Disney's art, scripts, soundtracks, etc. to do it.

The flip side to your flip side is that since there are fansubs and so on of this stuff, the creators' ability to commercialise that work in English speaking countries is diminished. In many cases the creators might not care or might even like that - if they couldn't do it themselves then it makes complete sense that they just want to share their work around. But that should be their choice to make, not anyone else's.

I do agree that some more evolution is probably needed to protect "historical" or at-risk stuff. Perhaps we need another category that's like "public domain" but allowing only duplication without derivation? Back to the Steamboat Willie example, that would allow the standard copyright to expire without putting Mickey Mouse at risk.

 

Since we live in the real world and not some fantasy drama, we can dismiss this comment as ignorant nonsense.

As pointed out, it is (and has been for years) available to watch for free. Making money on it is irrelevant and not the point. Since the company was built on the success of that film (among others), it is incredibly valuable to Disney. No one else.

Not sure this is accurate or has anything to do with anything. Especially not copyright.

No, they are separate and distinct things. But it is correct that the revenue from the brand associated with the works is far more monetarily valuable than the original product. That has always been true. After the release of Willy, Disney made tons of money off putting him on everything. That was some of the earliest merchandising. Vastly more than ticket sales. And that is true today. TFA made more in merchandising before the movie was released that it ever made in ticket sales. That is the whole point, copyright, today, isn't just about reprinting the source, since usually that becomes free for consumption within a few months of release. It protects the creators to allow them to profit from their work.

That is up to the creator and their market. "their cut" is ALL of it. No one else "deserves" to make money of their work. Why should any creator be stripped of their rights for the work they did, so some sweat shop tee-shirt printer to toy manufacturer and jump in and legitimate profit of it? There is no argument that completely unrelated businesses should benefit from the investment and work of creators simply because they have cheap labor and a screen printer. In fact this is EXACTLY the reason copyright was created. Because someone had a printing press, they could simply knock off cheaper versions of books that that other printers had invested in originally. Thus discouraging the creative endeavour. Why invest in creating something when you can just copy?

 

That sort of exists with things like the library of congress, libraries in general and other archives. But woefully outdated. Generally today, source content quickly becomes free, (unless netflix randomly decides to pull the series I was halfway through... grrr.). Some companies are doing a great job about becoming diligent about archiving materials. Both Marvel and DC have been digitizing content for a while, but in the last few years, have really started to dig deep into the past. Which is pretty awesome.

 

I kind of feel like you missed the point here: It's slightly hypocritical that Disney profited from public domain works, yet fought so hard against having their own stuff enter the public domain.

One of these days the legislators will have to take a stand: Either let the public domain exist, or abolish it.