Quote:Original post by johnhattan
Yeah, there's nothing like having a couple of kids declare your product "abandoned" and thus in a legal state that allows 'em to give it away without your consent.
There's no legal software state called "abandoned". Abandonware is the belief that if you don't support your software and it's 5 years old, it's alright to pirate it.
It's still straight out piracy, no legal gray area about it. The underdogs even state that in the FAQ! The underdogs are at least opt-out and link to places to purchase used video games, which is better than some abandonware sites.
I always view underdogs as a necessary evil, they're glorified pirates, but at the same time, I want to play the games I own, paid for but are no longer supported by the companies who made it. Games whose disk has gone bad, manual I lost, or patches I need but are no longer avalible.
Plus, they have recorded the history of gaming better than a lot of other resources on the web and they highlight games that you should purchase that are still avalible. Such as
King of Dragon Pass, which links to the A# store, rather than to a real download. There's a lot of entries like this in their database, this is just one I found randomly.