TechStuff Looks For Abandonware

I'm so lonesome I could cry. Very nicely done. Thank you. Today we think Hank would have done it that way, Hank SA. Today we're going to talk about abandoned ware. Yes we uh, we've had requests to talk about abandoned ware, and this is UM and we've talked about abandon weare in the past, just not as a dedicated topic. Yeah, we've also talked about vapor ware, just a totally different thing, UM,

if you might wonder what the differences are. Vaporware is when a company has announced or information is leaked out that a company is working on a particular product, but that probably never seems to actually go to market. Oh, I thought it was the kind of software that every once in a while just meaning you feel light headed, I'm 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. Uh. The but no, the the abandoned ware is when a company has produced a piece of well product mainly, but we usually talk about in terms of software. More frequently than not, we talked about in terms of games, although

that's not the only kind of abandoned ware. 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 uters, Let's let's say a computer, it gets so advanced that it can no longer run older software. 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 discontinued it, that's abandoned ware. 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 abandonware 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 a a shepherd 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 uh, it's a little complicated. Yeah, the uh the in the context we brought it up in before, we were talking about the multiple machine or multiple arcade machine emulator. Name, Um, you coax the blues right out of the horn. Sorry name anti name yes? Um not a n T I yes um. So yeah, name is for those of you who don't know, basically, a way of uh running the programs that old arcademan will 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 the software for those machines was built specifically for the hardware inside the arcade machine. You wouldn't opening up an arcade cabinet and find a a computer in there, right, It wouldn't look like a computer. It would look like a whole bunch of different chips wired together. And yeah, and and so it's hardwired into the uh the hardware. 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 chip. A similar example would be when you if you ever played console games that used cartridges. The cartridge had the ROM on it, and the console just had the the technology to read

the ROM 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

if you to run the ROM on a computer. And sometimes this would work well and you would have a pretty uh 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 you're able to run this uh 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, Attari still exists. I mean, truth is, it's a different Attari 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. Um okay, So that's that's one version. Um My. My other example was was going to be I was gonna 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 or sim Ant 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 disks for sim Ant, 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 the in 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 manufacturers gone and it's hard to identify who, if anybody, owns the copyright. And this actually is it presents some seriously thorny legal issues, right, So

let's let's clear things up a little bit here. Uh, if there is an old piece of software, it'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 the late eighties, let's say, and it's an old doss based game on the little 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 ahold 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 the that material to be distributed. And said, wouldn't you know what I picked? A bad example for a video game was just Kangaroo

really Attari. 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. I vaguely remember playing that. It was it was it was very Donkey Kong like because you climbed up to the top and had to find your Joey, you know, the baby kangaroo right, right, So anyhow, so the substitute centipede for what I said before. Anyway,

So getting back to copyrights. Now, a copyright, the term of a copyright right now, lasts for in the United States, last for seventy five years from the creation of the work, unless it's a work for higher right years, right, And so yeah, a work for high would be last even longer. And most of these, I guess would be considered work for high, 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, 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. Um, even our our younger listeners would have problems with this

all the way through. Yeah, 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. Now at that point, you know it's weird to call the software abandoned ware because abandoned ware really means this software that doesn't have

really any support or or access through legitimate channels. So it's not like it's abandoned where that point, it's just public domain work, so it becomes more like shareware in

a way. But a copyright holder does have that option. Uh. And in some cases you 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 abandon and wear 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. Also, you get some console games that will occasionally come out. They'll be like the best of and it will be whatever the old company was. Like. You can even get a version of the if you really want it. Yeah, but that's a little oh new one. They're making new ones now, is that on thinking? I'm not sure the

Dreamcast was. Somebody told me recently that they saw a new quote unquote new packaged with some of the early games. That's basically a relieve the past. That's the whole retro thing. But they're there hundreds and hundreds of computer titles, PC titles, Windows titles, do space titles even that, Uh, well, we'll 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 abandoned ware.

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 or otherwise unavailable. Um, they're very much about not hosting what are also called whares. Whares would be kinds of software that's essentially pirate, ID or

duplicated that's readily available on the market today. Basically the copy protection has been cracked and you can use it. You know, when I say freely, I don't mean you're allowed to use it, I mean you don't have code. So but but the more the more legitimate abandoned ware sites will only host games that you cannot get through any other means unless you were defined like someone selling an old copy. But uh, you know that you wouldn't be able to go to the publisher and buy it

because sometimes the publisher doesn't even exist. Well, um, 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 for companies to release abandoned ware, so that there isn't this, uh, this legal barrier, especially considering the fact that software changes much more rapidly than say print. And uh. One of them is Greg Kostickian. Now do you know who have you ever heard of?

Greg Custician. 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 tyrtcal or otherwise humorous slant to it. For example, he created an role playing game called Tune Back In, 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 would 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 uh 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, they hope just because al 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, uh, actually have a quote. Software is about as ephemeral as

you can get yet preserving it is essential. Illegal abandoned ware 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're 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 the technology advances, our ability to access those old games decreases, and he says, that's 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 owned, but a lot of them had very innovative gameplay or very compelling storylines and are great lessons for game designers to 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

um and and immersive quality to it. Now, I should also had that the Ultimate Series has regularly been released in packages where you could buy it legitimately, So don't go out there and start piotying games. Look and make sure first before that, make sure there's a legitimate way of getting it, and go that way before ever going with abandoned ware route. But um, but yeah, as a producer of games, he was pointing out that this is a valuable service that abandoned weare 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. 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. Um. You know, the the app stores for the mobile devices have proven that, you know, even even software that costs one or two dollars for a copy of it can still make a decent amount of money, and uh, you know some of these titles are languishing an obscurity when you know people might really be willing to pay one to 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 the 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 that were four three or four generations behind the current stuff that's up on the shelves, and you would sort through that ben 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 disks 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 Attari cartridges for you know, a dollar, the same sort of thing

where they were just unloading their inventory. But those days are are you know, pretty much disappearing because you get to digital distribution, you get to the era of the c D really started to decrease it, but then digital attribution 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 or

for a smartphone. So let's say that you throw up Mule, the old Mule game, or ARCon ARCon Yeah, put those old populus, yes, um, put these old games up on or battle Chess, these old games up so that you can buy them for likes 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 uh 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 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. You're still going to be a handful of people that are willing to fork over a couple of bucks for it. Yeah. And 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. Um And 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. Um. 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 hayment kind of app approach. Um. And

also it tells companies what people are interested in. If you were to create an 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. Those that's still you're gonna you're still gonna have that problem where if there's a title where you're not really sure that the is the copyright holder of the guy who made it, is that this other company, is it a company that bought you know, bought a company, that

a company that bought a company. That's where you start getting two issues where these games may be hopelessly mired in red tape. That's just it's until you figure out who is the owner of that copyright and who has the authority to do this. It will never happen, and that you know, the abandoned ware approach is pretty much the only way you're gonna get hold of those games. Um, and it's not a legitimate way. Yeah, yeah, now, okay,

this is from 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. Um. Let's say you have um an old at and you bought a copy of Yards Revenge, and you have the machine, and you've got the the game. It's it's in your basement, it's

in a box, but you got it. It's storage unfortunately doesn't work anymore, or you don't have an adapter, and and you really can't play because the machine is dead. But I know, hey, it's a museum piece, so you hold onto it, and then you find an emulator for your computer with yours Revenge where you can play the attor 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, the chips, then legally you can play the game. Otherwise you are That's why they haven't been shut down. Otherwise, you're only supposed to hold onto a ROM up to twenty four hours,

and then after that you're supposed to delete it. Yes on your on you Yeah, you as a person who downloaded the ROM from that site, not 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. There's some probably legal gray area where you know if if the uh, the copyright police they don't exist. But hey, like the copyright police come to your house,

they wait a minute, You're 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, so so they're not gonna come after 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 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 abandoned ware and 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, but and the law, by the

letter of the law, it's illegal. And again, if 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 gonna be. That's gonna be what happens if you if you run an abandoned ware site, you might occasionally get a takedown notice from a copyright holder, and then of course you should very much. And here that if you don't want to encounter legal difficulties, it's nice to

have pants. And if you have them, suit off of you. Yeah. By the way, it gets drafty. Here's here's a pop quiz. Hot shot, so hot shot. Yeah. The guy who the guy who made Yards Revenge, he made another very famous Atari game. Do you know what it was? Who was it? They made Yards Avenge? It was Howard Scott Warsaw, the actual game designer who know e t the extraterrestrial. I

don't blame him. He was paid a truck something very quickly. Yes, but yes, one of the Yards Revenge was one of the games that was considered to be a big hit, with a twenty six hundred, followed by a game that that often people credit as killing not just the autent, but the video game industry, the home video game industry as a whole. In nine 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 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 ware sites, and man, those games are neat and you know what, I'm pretty sure the copyright holders wouldn't come after you, But don't do it. If you're gonna go back and redo that you if

you do that, it would be technically illegal. Yes, it is technically illegal, whether or not a shame. Whether or not it's unethical is another question. Unethical and illegal are two different things, And unethical that's a weird question too. Yeah, because again, if there's if there's no one to pay, then those games essentially are forgotten. 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 it's gonna 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 standpoints

differ from the legality standpoint. This is definitely a technology issue too, because if you really want to read Bao Wolf, there's a copy in print somewhere. Probably it's a local bookstore, possibly in a used bookstore. It's not even get into that. But it's also the thing is you can find a copy of it. You can download it for free on the internet because it's out of copyright. I'm pretty sure

it's in the public domain, 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, uh, in case you're saying, well, you're just talking about games, really do you want to you want to download a copy of physicalc so you can run that really. Yeah, that's the the other part of that. I mean, people don't. Adobe

won't necessarily support Photoshop three. Um, you could probably find a copy of it somewhere out there, but you know, I would consider that to an effect abandoned where too, because they've moved so far beyond that point. It's been on a print for so many years. You're on your own. Um. 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. Yeah, 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, word perfect legacy issue, in which case that could be able. In some cases, that's that's an issue too, But I think I think it's used more. Abandoned war 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 I used to love to play that. I would I would really enjoy seeing an updated version of that game, or or having the ability to play the old one again like um Tie Fighter. 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 there's hint, Well you've seen you've seen the success of the Monkey Island franchisees it's renewed and and Oregon Trail as it has popped up on Facebook and and on. Yeah. But I mean that's the

funny thing about some of this stuff. Um can be updated and refreshed and people and added dimension things that you couldn't do thirty years ago. Um, there's you know, there's some such good reason to update and keep these things around. Right And and again, like I said, if they took my approach where they host that abandoned where they reclaim the abandoned ware and host it for super cheap.

They might be able to find out what trends people are really gravitating toward, and that could help them design their next game. It's all part of Jonathan's plot to take over the world. Look, there's certain games I want to play, and I'm desperately trying to get them to back my plan so that I can. I can shut shut.

I'll hand over the money. I am more than happy to purchase this game, the same thing we do every night, try to take over our con alright, guys, we're gonna wrap up this discussion about abandoned where I hope you guys didn't feel abandoned through the process of this podcast. If you did send this little note ask us to very nicely, you know, to cover whatever topic is that you would like to hear us chat about at nauseum.

And you can do that too by sending it to our email address, which is tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook to handle There is tech Stuff hs W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.

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