TechStuff Classics: Abandonware

world of abandonwear. That's the stuff that disappears into obscurity, whether people still need it or not. Check it out to today, we're going to talk about abandonwear. Yes, we've had requests to talk about abandonwaar and this is and we've talked about abandonwear in the past, Yeah, just not as a dedicated topic. Yeah, we've also talked about vaporware, which is a totally different thing, if you might wonder

what the differences are. Vaporware is when a company has announced or information has leaked out that a company is working on a particular product, but that product never seems to actually go to market. Oh, I thought it was the kind of software that every once in a while, this just means you feel light headed. I've already got a headache. I've already got a headache. So that's different. I'll tell you what that means, and you'll like it

because you like that kind of humor. But no, the the abandonwar is when a company has produced a piece of well product mainly, but we usually talk about it in terms of software. More frequently than not, we talk about in terms of games, although that's not the only kind of abandonwear. But a company produces this the the But then technology continues to evolve over time, and no, yeah, I know it's crazy, right really, so the things like computers, Let's say a computer gets so advanced that it can

no longer run older software. Yeah, I'm aware of that. Yeah, where you get to a point where you know, if software has been produced before a certain point, your computer is not really able to run it anymore because things have changed so dramatically. And then companies will sort of

stop supporting this old software that they produced years ago. Okay, so if they no longer provide any support or they've discontinued it, that's Abandonwhere if a company creates some software that is, you know, hits the market, and then that company ceases to exist. That software may be considered abandonwear because now there's no there's no place you can buy it anymore because the company that was in charge of

it is gone. This can happen through an acquisition or a merger where certain divisions get dissolved or merged into other divisions and as a result, pieces of software no longer have a kind of a shepherd really to keep the software going. So what happens to that software? What happens if you want to have access to that software? How can you do it? Are there legal ways of

getting at it? And it's a little complicated. Yeah, the in the context we brought it up in before, we were talking about the multiple machine multiple arcade machine emulator, Mame, you coax the blues right out of the horn. Sorry, mame, Yeah, that's anti name. Yes a t I yes, go INTI yes. So yeah, mame is for those of you who don't know, basically a way of running the programs that old arcade well actually not necessarily old that arcade machines would run

in their cabinets on a home computer. Right now, keep in mind that arcade machines, the software for those machines was built specifically for the hardware inside the r cade machine. You wouldn't open up an arcade cabinet and find a computer in there, right, It wouldn't look like a computer. It would look like a whole bunch of different chips wired together. Yeah. Yeah, And so it's hardwired into the hardware. You know, you don't You don't put a disc in,

at least not most arcade games. I know there are a few that run on laser disc, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about like it's reading directly from a chep. A similar example would be when you if you ever played console games that used cartridges. Yeah, the cartridge had the rom on it, right, and the console just had the technology to read the realm and

then translate that into a game. So for a computer, you would have to create an emulator, something that could create an environment similar to the hardware that you would find inside that arcade machine in order for you to

run the realm on a computer. And sometimes this would work well and you would have a pretty similar experience as to if you were sitting in front of an arcade machine and playing it, and in some cases it doesn't work so well because the computer's architecture and the arcade architecture are so different that the game stutters or

just runs really slowly. Yeah, so then you have the question you're able to run this software and on your home computer and you have something like, say Kangaroo, and you want to play Kangaroo on your home computer, and you go, wait a minute, Atari still exists. I mean, truth is it's a different Atari technically, but they own the copyright for that stuff. Now you know, that's one thing.

Then on the other hand, you have something like say Defender, and then you'd say, okay, well who owns the stuff that Williams used to make or Robotron for that matter. Okay, so that's one version. My other example was going to be I was going to ask you if you thought that if I brought my copy of Deluxe Video Construction Set to Electronic Arts for Miamiga, do you think they'd support it? Yeah? Probably not, or SimAnt for that matter, from Maxis before it was acquired by Electronic Arts. I

don't think so. But the thing is, the question is you know I can legally use that software because I still own the discs for SimAnt, even though I never really had enough memory in my Amiga to run it, you wouldn't be able to distribute it. I can't distribute it,

but I legally can run that all I want to. Now, for something like Maime that in some cases the manufacturer is still around, in some cases it's a different version of the manufacturer who legally owns the copyright, and in other cases the manufacturer is gone and it's hard to identify who, if anybody, owns the copyright this actually is. It presents some seriously thorny legal issues, right, So let's

clear things up a little bit here. If there is an old piece of software that's available online and there hasn't been any express permission from the copyright holder that that software can be distributed, distributing that software is illegal. Yes, it violates copyright. Now, that being said, copyright is one of those things that only works if you exercise your right to the copyright. In other words, the copyright owner would have to pursue action against anyone distributing that content.

So if you are if you come across an old game from the late eighties, let's say, and it's an old doss based game on from the late eighties, and you wanted to You love this game and you want other people to explore this game and experience this game, and there is no way to buy the game because the game, the company doesn't exist, or the company still exists but no longer markets this gamer supports it. Then

you might feel, well, what's the harm? I mean, no one's no one's trying to make money off of this. No one is losing money off of this because there's no way to legitimately get a hold of this. Why is there an issue? And it's all because of that copyright, and the copyright holder may choose to not pursue action. It doesn't mean that it's legal. It just means the copyright holder is allowing that material to be distributed. Yeah, I said, wouldn't you know it? I picked a bad

example for a video game. It was just Kangaroo really Atari. It was distributed by Atari, but actually it was a product by Sun Electronics. Did you wear like little boxing gloves in that game and you had to box stuff as a kangaroo? Yes, I vaguely remember playing that game. It was very Donkey Kong like because you climbed up to the top and had to find your Joey, you know, the baby kangaroo and so anyhow, so the substitute centipede

for what I said before getting back to copyrights. Now, a copyright, the term of a copyright right now, lasts for in the United States, lasts for seventy five years from the creation of the work, unless it's a work for hire, right years, right, and so yeah, a work hire would be last even longer, and most of these, I guess would be considered work for which is why

I brought it up. That's a good point. So in other words, this is software that is going to be is still protected by copyright and will be for pretty much our lifetime, right, I mean, some of us might get really lucky, but maybe the Singularity will hit and it won't that won't be a problem. But at that point, who's playing video games? Well, if you wanted to play Space War, you're probably in fairly decent shape because that

was created so much earlier than this stuff. Yeah, the games that were created in the eighties, even our our younger listeners would have problems with this all the way through. Yes, so lifetimes. So by legal definition, strictly going by that, it is not there's no real recourse unless the copyright holder gives permission for distribution or releases the copyright into

the public domain. Yes. Now at that point, you know it's weird to call the software abandonwear because abandonwear really means this software that doesn't have really any support or access through legitimate channels. So it's not like it's abandonwear at that point. It's just public domain work. So it

becomes more like shareware in a way. Sure, but a copyright holder does have that option, and in some cases you see companies take advantage of old, old, old libraries of content and repackage them and market them again, which would mean that you wouldn't want to host those abandoned games on your site, for example, because they are actually making money from this old content and there are legitimate

ways to get hold of it. A good example of that as Atari, because you've got the old Atari games that get repackaged occasionally as an app for a smartphone or tablet device. Yea. Also you get some console games that will occasionally come out they'll be like the best of and it'll be whatever the old company was. I like you can even get a version of the Atari twenty six hundred if you really want it. Yeah, but that's the oh new one. They're making new ones now?

Is that on think Geek? I'm not sure the Dreamcast was. Somebody told me recently that they saw a new quote unquote new Atari twenty six hundred packaged with some of the early games. Wow, that's basically that's the whole retro thing. Yeah, but there there are hundreds and hundreds of computer titles, PC titles, Windows titles, DASS based titles even that will probably never re emerge, And so the question comes, well,

what's the best way of handling this. There are a lot of sites out there that are dedicated to abandonwear and these sites are the really the ones that are more legitimate And I use the phrase loosely because again we're talking about violating copyright one way or the other. But the ones that are more concerned with offering people the chance to play games that are the equivalent to being out of print, yes, otherwise unavailable. They're very much

about not hosting what are also called wares. Whares would be kinds of software that's essentially pirated or duplicated. That's readily available on the market today. Yeah, basically the copy protection has been cracked. Yeah, and you can use it. You know, when I say freely, I don't mean you're allowed to use it. I mean they're on anse code

to do it. So, but the more the more legitimate abandonware sites will only host games that you cannot get through any other means unless you were to find like someone selling an old copy. But you know, you wouldn't be able to go to the publisher and buy it

because sometimes the publisher doesn't even exist. Well, there are there are people out there who in some of them are content creators, who say there should be a more streamlined way too for companies to release abandon wear so that there isn't this, uh, this legal barrier, especially considering the fact that software changes much more rapidly than say print. And one of them is Greg Costickian. Now do you

know who? Have you ever heard of? Greg Costickian. He's a He's a game designer who designs not just computer games, but also role playing games. His name is really familiar to me, and I'm gonna go ah as soon as you say, well, he's He's designed a lot of stuff, most of it is kind of has a has sort of a sitturical or otherwise humorous slant to it. For example, he created an role playing game called tuone back in nineteen eighty four where you played as a cartoon character

within a cartoon episode. Every single adventure was modeled after the idea of a seven minute cartoon episode, and you would have the capabilities of a cartoon character, and you'd have friends and enemies within the cartoon, and you could do these outlandish things. It was hilarious. He also created a game called Paranoia, which was all about a post apocalyptic society where you live in a essentially like a

biodome kind of thing, and a computer controls everything. But the computer is crazy and paranoid and thinks everyone is out to get him, and pretty much everyone is out to get him. And then but anyway, the whole just because, all right, the whole purpose of the game was to create this idea of paranoia. Well, this guy, who created several different computer games as well, said that I actually have a quote. Software is about as ephemeral as you

can get, yet preserving it is essential. Illegal abandonedwar sites are providing a critical service to game designers and scholars and gaming enthusiasts. They do, not, however, provide a lasting and satisfactory solution to the problem because they are illegal. So he was maintaining the point of these old games that exist are important, and they are important culturally because some of them were what helped usher in the era

of personal computers in the first place. I mean, you know, personal computers were great for productivity, but there's no denying that video games. Computer games really drove the industry as well. And as the technology advances, our ability to access those old games decreases, and he says that's a shame. There

should be a way to preserve that. And also, as he points out game designers, you know, some of these old games are very primitive when it comes to the graphics or the sound, but a lot of them had very innovative gameplay or very compelling storylines and are great lessons for game designers to learn from. Sure, you know, I would argue the Old Ultimate series, for example, is a very valuable series for people who want to create a storyline that spans several episodes and has a very

kind of deep and immersive quality to it. Now, I also add that the Ultimate series has regularly been released in packages where you could buy it legitimately, So don't go out there and start pirating games. Look and make sure first before make sure there's a legitimate way of getting it, and go that way before ever going with abandonwar route. But yeah, as a producer of games, he was pointing out that this is a valuable service that abandonwear sites are giving us. That without it, we would

lose these games. And you know, unless some company was like, hey, we need to roll out another product or we're not going to hit our revenue this year, what titles do we have in the vault that we could package together hastily and then shove out the door. And occasionally you see that happen. Well, it would be nice if some of the people who own the copyrights to these would

release these these programs in some form. You know, the the app stores for the mobile devices have proven that, you know, even software that costs one or two dollars for a copy of it can still make a decent amount of money. And you know, some of these titles are languishing an obscurity when you know people might really be willing to pay one, two, five dollars for an opportunity to play it again. It's not really a lot of money for most people, and they might relish the

opportunity to give it another shot. I think we have the opportunity to actually see that happen now because digital

distribution is a reality. Yeah, right, Like Chris and I can both remember a time where you would go to your local computer store or electronics store and there would always be that bin of the old games that were for three or four generations behind the current stuff that's up on the shelves, and you would sort through that bin and just look to see if there were any hidden gems in there, and then you find something like oh, I always wanted to play that, and you pick it up,

and you know, you might get a copy of Civilization that way. But that was back in the old day where you would get like the floppy discs I was thinking you were talking about during the video game console crash, when you would go into your corner drug store and there would be a bin of really horrible Atari cartridges for you know, a dollar, say, the same sort of

thing where they were just unloading their inventory. Yeah, but those days are you know, pretty much disappearing because you get to digital distribution, you get to the era of the CD really started to decrease it, but then digital district has has taken a big hit on it too. But that also gives the opportunity for companies to put potentially put up old titles for you know, like the same price that you would have for an app for

a smartphone. So let's say that you throw up a mule, the old mule game or ARCon oh ar Con, Yeah, put those old populous populous, yes, put these old games up on or battle chess, these old games up so that you can buy them for like ninety nine cents or whatever. And and you know, maybe package it with a free emulator if you need it, because some of these old games will not run on your current system unless first put through an emulator. I have old machines

for strictly that purpose. And before before you write in and say, you know, why do you want people to spend this money, this property should be free, Well that's an option too. It would be really cool if they if these companies were released these games into the public domain. However, I think they might have more incentive if they charged a small price and then they would get something in return for it. It's sort of like the Chris Anderson's long tail and the online stores versus the brick and

mortar stores. I mean, if you put that up for digital distribution, it could stay there virtually forever. Yeah, you're still going to be a handful of people that are

willing to fork over a couple bucks for it. Yeah, And I think I think that solution really provides an elegant approach to this complicated issue because you've got for one thing, you know, it gives an incentive to these companies to share this old stuff that you can't otherwise get and people can relive like that moment from their childhood when they played this one game that they loved and now they can't they can't get it anymore. It also gives the the you know, it gives the fans

what they want. It's not prohibitively expensive if you go with this this micro Paine meant kind of app approach. And also it tells companies what people are interested in. If you were to create a section of your site, for example, that hosted the old titles for cheap Purchase, and you saw that one of those titles was getting

hit like crazy. People were just buying it up. You might think, you know, we could probably do a follow up, like, just do an incredible follow up that is based on the same premise of this original game, maybe not a remake, but even perhaps a long awaited sequel and clean up, because we didn't realize there was this interest in this old title that we owned. Now, this does not solve the problem for those titles where the ownership is up in the air, like no one knows who owns this anymore.

That's still you're gonna you're still going to have that problem where if there's a title where you're not really sure this is the is the copyright holder of the guy who made it? Is it this other company? Is it a company that bought you know, bought a company that bought a company that bought a company. That's where you start getting to issues where these games may be hopelessly mired in red tape. That's just until you figure out who is the owner of that copyright and who

has the authority to do this, it'll never happen. You know. The abandoned weear approach is pretty much the only way you're going to get hold of those games, and it's not a legitimate way. Yeah, yeah, now, okay, this is from the perspective of the law. I'm sorry I shouldn't say that, because sometimes I'm like, hey, you know what, I love that game. I bought that game, I played that game. There's no way for me to get it, and my sense of entitlement is crying out. Well, this

is where things get interesting. Let's say you have an old Atari twenty six hundred and you bought a copy of Yards Revenge, and you have the machine, and you've got the game. It's in your basement, it's in a box, but you got it. Yeah, it's in storage. Unfortunately the twenty six hundred doesn't work anymore, or you don't have an adapter. Yeah, and you really can't play because the

machine's dead. But I know, hey, it's a museum piece, so you hold on to it, and then you find an emulator for your computer with yours Revenge where you can play the Atari twenty six hundred version of it. The thing is from what I understand. Again, keep in mind, I'm not a lawyer, but theoretically, from what I understand, you're entitled to play that because you have a copy of the game. You already paid for it, You have a copy of the game in your possession, you're legally

entitled to play it. Because the reason I get this is from the disclaimers on the main sites. They say that if you have a copy of the ROMs basically, if you have the guts of the arcade machine, yeah, the chips, then legally you can play the game. Yeah. Otherwise you are, That's why they haven't been shut down. Yeah. Otherwise, you're only supposed to hold onto a ROM up to

twenty four hours. Yeah, and then after that you're supposed to delete it, yes, on your on Yeah, you as a person who downloaded the ROM from that site, not the sites themselves. But if you own a legal copy of the ROM, you're supposed to be able to play it, even if the machine that you had it on. Now, I imagine that's there's some probably legal gray area where, you know, if the copyright police they don't exist. But hey, like the copyright police come in your house, say wait

a minute, your Atari twenty six hundred is broken. You're not supposed to play it on your home computer. You're supposed to play it on this machine. You're in trouble Man. The thing is, for one thing, there aren't any copyright police, not specifically copyright police. And you know, for a lot of people, this just people aren't gonna bother doing it. I mean, they're not gonna sue Jonathan because you know,

that's the thing. They say that you can sue anybody in America for anything, but generally people sue people who have money, right, So so they're not gonna come out. Yeah, they're not gonna come after Jonathan or me for doing that unless they really believe that they can prosecute us with good cause and are going to get something. You know, that's worth putting the time and money into a legal case for doing this. And that's even more so for

these companies and organizations that don't exist. And that's why that's the biggest case I've seen for making abandon wear legal. Basically saying, hey, company X doesn't exist, this is a great game, I want to play it. I would give them twenty dollars if they were still around, but there's nobody to pay please, you know, but technically technically it's illegal. Yeah, and the law, by the letter of the law, it's illegal. And again, if the copyright holder doesn't pursue any action

against you, then you're in the clear. And in almost every single case that's going to be that's going to be what happens if you if you run an abandon wear site, you might occasionally get a take down notice from a copyright holder, and then of course you should very much adhere to that if you don't want to encounter legal difficulties. But I used to have pants and if you have them sued off of you. Oh, by the way, it gets drafty. Here's here's a pop quiz.

Hot shot. Okay, so hot shot? Yeah? The guy who the guy who made Yards Revenge, Yeah, he made another very famous Atari game. Do you know what it was? Oh? Who was it that made ours Avenge? It was Howard Scott Warshaw, the actual game designer. Who does I don't know et the extraterrestrial. I don't blame him, I don't He was paid, he was playing paid. A truck glows me something very quickly, Yes, but yes, one of the yars.

Revenge was one of the games that was considered to be a big hit, with Atari twenty six hundred, followed by a game that that often people credit as killing not just the Atari twenty six hundred, but the video game industry, the home video game industry as a whole, in nineteen eighty three. He was just following orders. That

was just some trivia for all of you guys. So lest you think we are telling you to run out and download all the abandoned where you want and play it, we're not telling you to do that, right, because that would be illegal. What we're telling you is there's some awesome games that are out there, and some of them are hosted on abandoned where sites, and man, those games are neat and you know what, I'm pretty sure that copyright holders wouldn't come after you. But don't do it.

If you do, go back and redo that. If you no. No, if you do that, it would be technically illegal. Yes, it is technically illegal. Whether or not it's a shame. Whether or not it's unethical is another question. Unethical and illegal are two different things. Yeah, and unethical that's a weird question too. Yeah, because again, if there's no one to pay, then those games essentially are forgotten. Yeah, they're gone.

You might as well do the same thing. Like this book came out in nineteen eighty we're locking it away in this library and you have no access to the library. In fact, no one has any access to the library, and it's going to stay there in the library. So you could have access to it if we opened up the door, but we're not gonna see. That's that's an issue, right because then you're like, well, what's the point of

it even existing if no one can use it? So yeah, there's there is an the ethical and the ethical standpoint is different from the legality standpoint. This is definitely a technology issue too, because if you really want to read Balo Wulf, there's a copy in print somewhere way it's a local bookstore, possibly it a used bookstore. Yeah, it's not even un in to that. But it's also the thing is you can find a copy of it. You could download it for free on the internet because it's

out of copyright. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's in the public domain. Yeah, I would think. But the thing about it is for the technology behind these games, you know that that is one of the issues behind it. And there's there's the other thing too. In case you're saying, well, you're just talking about games, really do you want to you want to download a copy of physical So you can run that really. Yeah, that's the other part of that.

I mean, people don't. Adobe won't necessarily support Photoshop three. You could probably find a copy of it somewhere out there, but you know, I would consider that to an effect abandon whear too, because they've moved so far beyond that point. It's been out of print for so many years. You're on your own. But legally, if you've downloaded a copy of it, a cracked copy of it online, you'd be

in the same boat. But the reason we're talking about games predominantly is because that's the stuff that people go back to the reason that people in a lot of cases keep old gaming machines around just because every once in a while that nostalgia thing hits. But I don't think you find it for something like a spreadsheet or you know, or issue, in which case that could be a Yeah, in some cases that's that's an issue too,

But I think I think it's used more. Abandonedwear is more in the minds of a lot of people for games, simply because there's that nostalgia and retro factor. Yeah, I'm thinking back to some of the games I used to love to play that I would I would really enjoy seeing an updated version of that game, or the ability

to play the old one again like Tie Fighter. Ah yeah, and now that one has a double whammy against it, right because it's a licensed game, not just a not just not just the fact that you've got the software and everything, but you've got the actual content. It's all. Yeah, that's a much more complex situation. Well, it was LucasArts.

It was LucasArts, so great game, fantastic game. Wish that they would come out with a new one and then their hint, well you've seen you've seen the success of the Monkey Island franchise, is it's renewed, and of the Monkey Island franchise and Oregon Trail as it has popped up on Facebook and on h Yeah. But I mean that's the funny thing about some of this stuff can be updated and refreshed and people in an added dimension things you couldn't do thirty years ago. I hope you

enjoyed that episode. Chris and I had a lot of fun exploring the world of abandoned war and the Murky thinks about what to do once something becomes unavailable in the market, And of course I'd never abandon you guys. Remember if you have suggestions or questions, write me. My address is tech stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, that's at tech STUFFHSW. And you can always drop me a line on Facebook or Tumblr. We use tech STUFFHSW for both. And I'll talk to

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