[Timpsi]

Nuclear Strike: No longer sold / Supported by EA?

CDAccess: "specialist games shop?"

I was referring to your line "Or perhaps a specialist games shop (expensive types of places that sell snes consoles for ?100 and that type of thing) is selling used copies for ?40? We'd be putting them out of business."

Don't get me wrong Timpsi, my argument isn't with you.

Don't worry, I don't generally take things personally. Matters as matters.

I just feel that it's a bit hypocritical of the whole abandonware scene to look for certain aspects of a game to define it as "not-abandonware". When in the same circumstances another game may be.

I'm not sure I see your point here, but I suspect I didn't stress the difference between abandonware and site policy. There are some games that are generally considered as abandoned titles, but are still sold by retailers. Some abandonware sites have decided to offer these for download, but for example Abandonia here has an additional requirement for the software as it rather wishes to support the retailers still carrying the game.

The point is to follow the "if it's not available elsewhere, then people can get it from us" ideology instead of "we have it up for download unless you can find it for sale". The site is kind of a preservatory for titles that are impossible to acquire otherwise.

The ways of determining this have been decided with rather straightforward logic. If the title is for sale on the net and thus globally available for purchase, then there will be a link to the retailer. Second-hand copies are of course inferior, and the seller usually has only one copy of the title.

If CDAccess was to begin selling copies of a shareware game (which they already do) That doesn't mean that it is no longer shareware.
Likewise, if they have a game which is now in the public domain i.e. http://www.cdaccess.com/html/pc/draglair.htm
(Recently given away free with numerous ganming magazines)
That doesn'y mean that they cannot sell it.

This is true, of course. There are some titles that are still sold by retailers and have also been released as freeware. In these occasions I'd like to see both buy and download links (since a hard copy is always better than a downloaded one, but a freely available game is a freely available game. The site visitor could decide which one he would prefer to get).

However, games on covers of magazines haven't been released as freeware, as the magazines often have been granted a special permission to bundle the game with their papers (and usually even have to pay something for the permission). They're not available for free, as you have to pay for the magazine.

EDIT:

Originally posted by TheSmyth@Mar 15 2005, 07:16 PM
Sorry, maybe "public domain" was a bad choice of words. But the point i was making was that they are selling games that are available for free. They're not doing anything illegal (except maybe the OEM thing?!).
And isn't that just the same as selling abandonware titles?

It is not the same as selling abandonware titles, as freeware games are legally downloadable, while abandonware is illegal to begin with.

Freeware downloads have been approved by the copyright holders, and are thus ok material for the site even though you could buy them from somewhere, too. But as I said in my previous post, a buy link would be nice as well.