It’s today’s news that EmuParadise has deleted all the roms it had on its site.
It hosted abandoned games. It was a source for every person who wanted to search and play old games.
What do you think of this decision?
(User names are hidden)
0 voters
Sadly, I have to agree. Maybe sharing abandonware ought to be legalized. 
It was, until someone (lower s) kicked the nuts to Nintendo. There were also current Nintendo games on EmuParadise.
But games like Aztec Challenge? Why the need to delete it?
What I find weird that it existed for 18 years apparently, and now they shut down to be “on the safe side”?
Plus as if people who want to get their hands on ROMs don’t already have them/will get them elsewhere…
Imo, it is only because Nintendo and others smell they can earn big bucks by selling nostalgia, and not always at high quality for that matter (AT games’ emulators suck).
Ah well, as long as they don’t take down all longplay videos on YouTube, we can still discover how certain old games looked and played like.
All that being said: most old games are not really that interesting if you haven’t played them growing up. And the few that are, are well worth buying. It is sad though you can’t take the “buy on ebay and play on emulator” route anymore. Not that companies see any revenue from that, but it is legal at least.
Making ROMs available to download does count as copyright infringement.
But, if the video game companies haven’t re-released these retro games for newer systems, how can they be harmed by these ROMs being available? After all, these companies don’t make money any more from the legit physical copies that still exist, right? Because you can only buy them from individuals, not from the companies themselves.
So I’m not impressed. And somehow I doubt Nintendo will end up re-releasing all the games they got taken down (and certainly not the ones that weren’t theirs) 
There still is the “archive”, where you can play old games inside your browser.
Some of these companies don’t even exist any more.
No, they prefer you buy them over and over again on their new online platform which they subsequently stop supporting in 5 years to force everyone to buy the next gen consolr and start all over again.
But their laywers or whoever acquired the rights do. And they know *beep* about gaming. Or at least they care that much about it.
And from the game copyright owners point of view, how is that different? Or do they get some advertising income for every game started in the browser. Which, by the way, usually takes ages to load and never works as it should (in my experience at least).
But she mentioned those that weren´t available on the Virtual Console. And they are are lot. Pretty much anything that has a movie and/or comic book license for instance. Since that would mean they´d have to pay money to another party. So you can pretty much forget about being able to legally buy any old Batman game for instance.
From the legal point of view (archival) libraries and museums often have certain exceptions, regardless what the copyright owners might want. (Often, not always.)
Interesting thought!
I was just pondering that books are in a lot of senses similar to games: things you experience typically once and then never look at again and taking up space. You have your favourite that buy over and over again if they’re reissued. They’re similar priced (new vs years later). There are collectors editions and first editions that are hard to track down.
The big difference though is that for books, the public libraries have a huge collection (including brand new releases). Some libraries have games too, but limited offerings. Music and movies (DVD) are also free to get from most libraries since years. So you pay like 10 to 20 € membership yearly for a completely physically organised library. Although a physical retro gaming library would be sooo cool, it would be impractical and competing with retro gaming events (of which there are like 0 where I live anyway, but I divert)
So why don’t they tack a yearly 10 dollar membership fee to Emuparadise and get it over with, i.e. let lawyers discuss how to split the revenue afterwards instead of naively stopping gamers trying to play say Pitfall! on the atari 2600? Because then Atari can’t sell their Flashback Activison edition for 80€ (!!).
Which even doesn’t include Pitfall II. Because they’ll sell that one in another edition, for the same amount.
(Rant mode off)
Anyway, it would be cool to have a real physical retro gaming place in libraries where you can experience every old game you’d like and take them home like you would with books. With the exception that you don’t have to wait for it to be available.
Technically, at least, it should be possible.
And it is called the internet
They don’t own the rights for all the games. But these other games are affected too. The people who run the ROM website could remove only the Nintendo games. But then maybe Disney will knock on their door, etc.
There were attempts in the past where some website have tried to get the permissions for the ROMs - and they weren’t very successful.
AFAIK archive.org has got the permission(s) to publish the games. That’s why you can download some of the ROMs from archive.org and some not.
This is called Gog.com 
I’ve got all Atari 2600 games in one DRM free package for 10 Euros some years ago …
That would be indeed great. 
Well, that is a start. But still: you need to buy a computer of a few 100 € at least and games are say 3€ a piece on average, if you wait for sales. That still is a long say from Spotify and Netlfix-like models. Or Spotify free for that matter…
Where, if I may ask?
I got a CD-Rom of 20 Euros from Atari which was just a “classic collection” (i.e. their own bad games, not even including E.T. and none of the Activison ones)
And all arcade machines too!
Good question. I’ve bought several collections. I got the “Atari 80 Classic Games” with an Humble Bundle. I assume that you are referring to this collection?
Then I’ve bought several years ago a DVD with a few hundred Atari VCS games. But I have to search for it first to say more. And then I bought a DVD with some(!) of the old arcade games. They were included as ROMs (and not as remakes).
I don’t agree, but it’s copyright infringement, even if the game is abandoned
^ Ditto!
Yeah, I guess the poll lacks a few shades of grey.
I have helped myself to some old ROMs (or disk images) in the past, and thought little of it. If it weren’t for places like EmuParadise, a lot of those old games, whether deserved or not, would simply vanish from the face of the earth.
It´s a difficult question because there are rights owners who just want to have their games out and recommend to with ROMS if there is no other possiblity to play their game at all anymore.
And I guess there are rights owners who prefer to sue people for getting illegal copies even though there is no way to accuire legal ones because that makes them more money instead of just offering the games.
Tell me which options would you like to add, and I’ll do for you.