I've never seen how acquiring a rom of those old games was wrong. Admittedly, Nintendo does still sell some of their older games on the Wii online shop, but as far as genisis, dreamcast, and Ps1/Ps2 games go, they really don't make those anymore. (and there's no real place to buy them either.) And no, buying it used doesn't quite count, since the original producers get nothing. You're money simply goes to the prior owner, not the company.
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It's something bit of a grey area, but if the game is sufficiently old, no longer for sale, for a "dead" console, and the manufacturer (ie Nintendo) has no interest in porting the games to PC, IMHO you'd be hard pressed to come up with a convincing argument as to why this was morally wrong.
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Pretty much, yes.
I mean, if no retailer or company is selling these games, then the company is not making any profit, even if they try to ban the download of roms, they still wouldn't be able to make any profit. Even trying to sell the games again would probably act against them anyway, as they'd have to either make the current system backwards-compatible with the old (Which has been known to be a major hassle), or produce seperate systems for those games. The production cost for making both all the old and the new would likely bankrupt a lot of companies. Even trying to sell them online would be hassle just by paying for all the servers needed just to host the data, not to mention the extras needed to handle the traffic that would come from people using the service to buy the game.
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Copyrights expire after 75 years at this point. It is not a grey area. If you do not own the copyright, getting the rom is 100% a copyright violation. Dead console is not relevant in any way shape or form. Rights holders may distribute their content in any way. If they refuse to distribute, taht dosen't give you the right to then take it without their permission.
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Sure, legally in many countries this is the case.
As I stated in my post, my argument is a moral, not a legal one, since laws differ in every country, and what is illegal where you live isn't necessarily illegal elsewhere.
Downloading Hareraiser for the Dragon32 might be illegal in some countries, but you'd be hard pressed to find a convincing argument for anyone being harmed, or losing out as a result of this action, therefore it being morally wrong.
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I agree, we're arguing morality, not legality. They aren't the same thing as many people would have you believe. As it is very possible to have unjust laws (e.g. the Jim Crow laws), whether or not something is legal has nothing to do with whether or not you actually should do it. In D&D terms, try to stay chaotic good.
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Still, no one is making a profit off of pirating old games. And no one is doing so to publish them or make a sale off of them. Neither are the download sites, who I don't think even make ad-revenue off of downloads.
So if no one has sold or published anything of the sort, how exactly has it been violated? Is it just by owning it? Or is it by paying a third party to acquire it? (a la used game stores/ebay/personal seller?)
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I pirate old games like that all the time
i have literally every pokemon game and zelda game produced for the old consoles (so basically everything except wii and ds) on my computer right now
The only other type of games I pirate are new games that i'm still saving up for
for example, i pirated a pokemon white 2 rom, but i'm buying it this weekend so money goes where money is due
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Downloading abandonware without owning the original game is same as piracy
Also, here in my country it's allowed to make 1 or 2 backups of music/movie/game if you own the original one. For example if you have an old unreadable floppy with Doom, you're allowed to download it. I think it's same with roms - if you have the original cd/cartridge, you're allowed to do anything...only thing they could say is "you don't use it like you should" (you play PS1 games on PC for example), but that depends on their EULA.
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"No company in their right mind would actually do anything about it though"
Except, perhaps, for Ubisoft, who are incorrigible dicks and arguably not in their right minds anyway, given the sort of DRM they punish their legitimate customers with.
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The only valid point I know of in favor of "piracy" of older games and emulators of older systems (both PC and console) is that without it many things could be lost forever.
Doctor Who is a perfect example of this. Without people illegally recording the audio from the episodes that were trashed by the BBC those episodes would have been lost completely. Google Doctor Who missing episodes for more info.
In today's world of giant gaming companies buying studios to shut them down and buying the rights to games to lock them away there is a very real probability that without piracy of the older games/systems many will be lost forever.
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I only torrent games that are no longer in production or available (meaning non-steam games. Mainly PS1, GBA, SNES, and other old games). I can't buy what they don't sell (see about developer). And the only way to buy it is used (see about retail). I also torrent games that I own(ed) (about half my roms, I have owned physically. I left my childhood with my grandmother in vermont when I moved to arizona), which to my knowledge, is explicitly legal to do.
About developer: They already made every copy they ever will, and got paid all the money they ever will by selling those copies to retail. So the developer won't gain any more money from people buying, or lose from people not buying because they don't have any more copies to sell when retail gets low on stock.
About retail: Being old games, only used applies here. They buy mint condition used games for $2 and sell them for $40. Fuck you retail, you can take the hit from me not buying your used games. Not to mention that the retail stores ALREADY got paid for the game when they sold it new. Used is irrelevant at this point.
To sum it up, the developer got paid for every copy, retail got paid for every copy. I could buy used, but the developer wouldn't get any of the money anyway, and retail honestly doesn't deserve the 2000% profit from ripping people off.
Of course, if the developer would produce a factory new copy for me, or started to produce the game again, hell yeah I would buy it. Old games rock, and emulators suck on a 10 button controller (d-pad, 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons. Stiff input too, cost $1.50 at a thrift store)
So what are your opinions on this; downloading games that are no longer in production, and the purchase/lack of purchase neither benefits nor disadvantages the developer and retail?
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