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low rated
I have a feeling I'll pretty much be alone in this, but Gog seems to take games that are old enough to become abandonware, and are distributed freely without a claim, and sticking a $10 price sticker on them which then gets split between Gog and whatever company happened to purchase the rights along with a random gaming company it bought a decade ago.
It's great when it's a game that is impossible to find, but these kind of deals look really dirty to me.
high rated
You are absolutely right. Gog should be fixing up old games and giving you convenient modern installers and patches, plus let you download them from anywhere with an internet connection for free. Just like abandonware games are 'free' and not just inconvenient to get. Those companies that buy properties sitting in stagnation with a huge rift between potential customers and buying convenience, allowing them to be sold again for insanely high prices like 10$ are the most corrupt of them all, though. We need to rise up, brother. Rise up against these dirty deals.
high rated
So-called "abandonware" is illegal distribution of copyright content. Of course it's free, it's software piracy. What GOG does is legally distribute games and for that, you have to pay a price.
high rated
☑ This is my favourite topic
high rated
I don't think that I ever heard of SS2 as being considered free or abandonware, nevermind that the developers are very much still around.
@OP
You know that abandonware sites are a form of piracy. Plus, abandonment of an IP is if the IP holder is dead for x number of years. Abandonware is illegal.
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Ponchik: I have a feeling I'll pretty much be alone in this, but Gog seems to take games that are old enough to become abandonware, and are distributed freely without a claim, and sticking a $10 price sticker on them which then gets split between Gog and whatever company happened to purchase the rights along with a random gaming company it bought a decade ago.
It's great when it's a game that is impossible to find, but these kind of deals look really dirty to me.
Abandonware technically is illegal. All of the games that you see on GoG.com is owned by some company that didn't abandon it but didn't see profits in re-publishing it in a physical copy. While there are some games that are really abandoned (aka impossible to find anywhere legally), the games on GOG.com isn't abandonware. Rather, they're re-published digitally, with GoG.com staff fixing them up to work on modern computers.

If you still see a problem with that, then go ahead and walk into GameStop and declare "This game has been on the shelf for more than a day, so it's now abandonware." and grab it and try and walk out. Abandonware doesn't excuse you for pirating a game that's being legally sold by its license owners.
@Hotels: The situation could be explained to him nice and easy without that much sarcasm. Maybe he just didn't understand or never saw things that way.

@cogadh: Still, there is -from my understanding- a kind of legal limbo where the term "abandonware" actually exists without refering to piracy. I'm not fresh on specifications about this but know that not all abandonware is illegal. In fact, if it actually IS abandonware, then it should be legal, because it means that in view of the law, a certain software has dropped it's copyright or trademark or whatever and lost its distribution rights, therefore deeming it free to claim by anyone. The reason for this happening might be that the entity which created the software no longer exists and it's license has never been aquiered by any other entity... OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
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Blade_Runner4000: @cogadh: Still, there is -from my understanding- a kind of legal limbo where the term "abandonware" actually exists without refering to piracy. I'm not fresh on specifications about this but know that not all abandonware is illegal. In fact, if it actually IS abandonware, then it should be legal, because it means that in view of the law, a certain software has dropped it's copyright or trademark or whatever and lost its distribution rights, therefore deeming it free to claim by anyone. The reason for this happening might be that the entity which created the software no longer exists and it's license has never been aquiered by any other entity... OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
There is no legal definition of abandonware anywhere. It is a made-up term, created by those that distribute and use abandonware. What you are thinking of is public domain. If a copyright work is old enough, its copyright expires and the work enters into the public domain, making it free and available for the public to use and distribute. However, considering that current copyrights can last as long as nearly a century (the life of the creator plus 50 years), no video game in the entire history of video gaming has entered the public domain on its own yet and all of them are still protected by multiple rights; copyright, distribution rights, trademarks, etc. There are rare instances where a rights holder has willingly surrendered their claim to protected piece of software, but that is not adandonware. that's actually freeware.
Post edited February 14, 2013 by cogadh
@cogadh:

Ok, thanks for explaining it :)
low rated
IIRC they did make it available for free. That doesn't matter either way for me. It is an old game. It had its time to sell. I don't think it is reasonable to charge $10 bucks for a 14 year old game. I think it is not about bringing old games to the public, or giving the developers more compensation for their hard work. In my opinion it is only a way to make an easy buck out of something they happened to get their hands on. It's no different than finding an old painting in the basement, and charging people to see it.

I would also appreciate (from a few certain people here) if you don't treat me like a criminal. I purchase every single game that I play. And even if I didn't, a holier than thou attitude doesn't in fact make you holy.
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Ponchik: IIRC they did make it available for free. That doesn't matter either way for me. It is an old game. It had its time to sell. I don't think it is reasonable to charge $10 bucks for a 14 year old game. I think it is not about bringing old games to the public, or giving the developers more compensation for their hard work. In my opinion it is only a way to make an easy buck out of something they happened to get their hands on. It's no different than finding an old painting in the basement, and charging people to see it.

I would also appreciate (from a few certain people here) if you don't treat me like a criminal. I purchase every single game that I play. And even if I didn't, a holier than thou attitude doesn't in fact make you holy.
You are mistaken, SS2 has never been legally available for free anywhere at any time. It has been trapped in licensing hell for the last 14 years after its trademark, IP rights and copyright were broken up among multiple rights holders when the orignal rights holders when out of business and were sold off. Night Dive Studios managed to negotiate those rights back together again, fixed the game up so it will actually work on modern PCs and added a bunch of sweet extras to the package, all at their own expense. If you think they don't deserve to be paid for that, why are you even here? You realize the whole original point of this site is to bring back old games in a legally purchasable and functioning form again, right?

Plus, your analogy really doesn't make sense. You've heard of museums? They do charge you a fee to come in and look at the paintings.
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Ponchik: IIRC they did make it available for free. That doesn't matter either way for me. It is an old game. It had its time to sell. I don't think it is reasonable to charge $10 bucks for a 14 year old game. I think it is not about bringing old games to the public, or giving the developers more compensation for their hard work. In my opinion it is only a way to make an easy buck out of something they happened to get their hands on. It's no different than finding an old painting in the basement, and charging people to see it.

I would also appreciate (from a few certain people here) if you don't treat me like a criminal. I purchase every single game that I play. And even if I didn't, a holier than thou attitude doesn't in fact make you holy.
No, they never made it free. Abandonware sites made it available for download.

I'm not saying that you're a criminal, or that I'm holier than you. I'm just stating the facts. Can you get a 14-year old Ferrari for free? Unless you know some friends, I very highly doubt it. Can you get a 14-year old house for free? Can you get a 14-year old movie for free? Just because a game was developed for a certain computer specifications that's now obsolete don't mean that the copyright expired, or that the owners can't sell it anymore. Copyright grants the owners the right to sell the game, hence the "Copyright".

Trivia, did you know that Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" is copyrighted, and you can't listen or watch it without paying? Yet it's about 50 years old. The copyright will expire in 25 years, then it will fall into public domain. Same with System Shock 2, it will fall into public domain in like 80 years, then it'd be legal to download it for free.

Besides, $10 is a lot cheaper than what the original price was ($40 or 50 when it was first released), taking in consideration inflation and such. And they've went through efforts to fix it up for newer computers.
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cogadh: So-called "abandonware" is illegal distribution of copyright content. Of course it's free, it's software piracy. What GOG does is legally distribute games and for that, you have to pay a price.
Abandonware is actually Legal and legit in America , any software not sold and or distributed for 8 or more years is fare game according the the library of congress. They are not covered by the DMCA ( Digital Millennium Copy-Right act ) it was ruled that

"games for machines which are no longer available, the copy-protection controls may be bypassed for "archival purposes." He also added that games with copy-protection that require "dongles" that were damaged and could not be replaced were also allowed to circumvent the copy-protection systems. Dongles are hardware devices that users have to physically connect to their machine to authenticate a game and allow them to play it--they first came out in the '80s and have since fallen out of popular use. "

Also Abandonia.com removes the ability download games which go back into distribution and were one of the main supporters of GoG.com at its founding and brought in many supporters of buying games when they were redistributed I honestly would have never bought anything from GoG if it were not for them.

So in closing it is more important to preserve and keep alive the history and memory of these games than to let them fade into obscurity. But also support them if they go back on sale and you loved them.
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Ponchik: IIRC they did make it available for free. That doesn't matter either way for me. It is an old game. It had its time to sell. I don't think it is reasonable to charge $10 bucks for a 14 year old game. I think it is not about bringing old games to the public, or giving the developers more compensation for their hard work. In my opinion it is only a way to make an easy buck out of something they happened to get their hands on. It's no different than finding an old painting in the basement, and charging people to see it.

I would also appreciate (from a few certain people here) if you don't treat me like a criminal. I purchase every single game that I play. And even if I didn't, a holier than thou attitude doesn't in fact make you holy.
No one just happened to find this game in a basement; GOG.COM and the developer studio involved spent a lot of time and effort on solving the extraordinarily difficult legal issues surrounding the rights to sell this game, and also made sure it works on modern operating systems without relying on unofficial fan-made patches. The man hours involved in these two projects alone are easily worth at least $10.

More importantly, though, people who buy games on Good Old Games firmly believe that classic games are like classic movies or classic literature; i.e. worthwile to spend time with even decades after their initial releases and certainly worth buying for the very reasonable price of $5-10 each. If you happen to be of a different opinion, then this site is not for you and never will be.