Toilet paper orientation.
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By the way… I feel like nobody is hurt by retro roms. Heck, nobody is even hurt by piracy* - the things that would have “killed the industry” are uncountable but the industry is still there, music survived cassettes and downloading and streaming, and so did gaming.
*of course, pirating a just released game is wrong. But as Delores said, “That’s OK, pirates wouldn’t have bought it anyway”, so how on earth can C64 roms be harmful, if there is no legal way of buying it?
Games are not like books, to reproduce a book you just need the words - then you can print it as you like, the medium is always the same. It’s not the same for games, which are tightly bound to the hardware architecture on which they’re going to be played. So sites like emuparadise are kind of a museum for old game data. If ALL rom sites disappear, how will we be able to play Monty on the run for C64 in the future?
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I suppose in general if something is “abandoned”, the author gives up the ownership of it. In the case of a game, it’s not clear what it means for a game to be “abandoned”. I suppose we could say that, if you are not selling it, then you have abandoned it. (otoh, if I am not using my house at this time, it does not mean I have abandoned it and you have the right to use it :))
For the Italian laws, if your house is not lived for 20 years, is considered abandoned. And if another person lives in that house for 20 years, it becomes his full own property.
You can’t change a poll after somebody voted.
The industry. But what about the lesser known musicians? Or the indie developers?
That is not true. Of course there are pirates who won’t buy the game. But there are also pirates who definitely would buy the game if they have to.
Indeed. At least in Germany we preserve books but not software (I would like to include here any kind of software and not only games).
btw: We had this kind of discussion somewhere here in the forum … (time to add it to the FAQ 
).
But maybe he has a good reason not to sell it anymore? For example he is ill and can’t handle the sales? Or the game covers cultural/personal things that he would like to “remove” from the markets? Or that he feel uncomfortable with his work? And what if nobody buys it because there is the hardware missing?
We’re going off topic, but nowadays the model has changed. Streaming and the Internet in general helped the diffusion of things that otherwise wouldn’t have reached enough people. A person like Justin Bieber became millionaire thanks to his youtube popularity, without youtube he’d probably never got a record deal. If it weren’t for their full albums on youtube, I’d never have known Vulfpeck and bought their last two albums.
Same goes for games. The times have changed, we come from a generation for which Internet was the land of the free (in the monetary sense), but youth nowadays is used to buying digital goods. So there will be in my opinion way more “pirates” that end up willingly buying the good than people that would have bought the game but didn’t because they found it for free.
With that in mind… none of this applies to retro games.
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It applies to retro games - for example the current (re-)releases of “Goldrush”.
I meant primarily old system roms. Unless they get bundled in things like Nintendo’s virtual console, I highly doubt roms will have an impact for the rights’ holders.
And, again, see the sales of the Nintendo Classic or similar things. Did people just say “why should I, when I can download the roms”? Nowadays, if you can legally and easily buy something, people will. So, unless those roms were of games currently being sold or re-released, I don’t see the problem.
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You can buy Goldrush in form of the old “ROMs” (it’s a PC adventure game, so you actually get the original game and not a ROM 
). You can even buy it in a box.
Yes. A lot of my friends did that. (And some of them just would like to have the small new hardware.)
Because they have to? For example Switch is a “closed” system. If you would like to play games on that console without modifying it, you have to buy the games. And if you buy a PlayStation, you have to buy them again.
hmmm… I’d say if the author does not signal this (eg with a web site) and is unreachable via email, you can consider it abandoned. If he then complains you need to remove it.
I saw a lot of people write that actually.
For me though, when I have roms and the selection of EVERYTHING I end up downloading thousands and play none of them all the way through. When I have selection of 30 true classics I play though as much of them as I can. Being able to do so on the TV with the gamepad was also nice.
No getting Batman for the NES and Turtles In Time for the SNES was unfortunate, though. You really have to resort to ROMS for those.
You could buy the cartridges used, but think about it. Who gets the money from those?
So if you buy a used cartridge of a game you never owned back in the day it is practically the same as downloading a ROM except someone not involved with the company makes a big profit from it. So maybe that makes it even worse, technically?
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@ZakPhoenixMcKracken I had a look on Emuparadise and found that game roms I looked for were still there (Zak for Amiga for example). Are you talking about “Operating system” roms like Kickstart ROM for Amiga instead?
Oh, wait. I’ve understood everything! It’s just the negative effect of Salvini and his worldwide partners spreading all around (in italian we call Rom the Romani people, the gipsies)!
No no. Games. Search for monkey island, Indiana Jones or any other. Yesterday they were all removed.
No, GOG has impure (or incomplete) games without all the executables that came on the CD and such. They’re not infrequently worse than an abandonware site imo, which is quite a pity. Because for whatever reason they chose only to include the DOS version when the Windows version was obviously better (e.g., Earthworm Jim) or vice versa.
Ironically, the much much much inferior Steam is often better in these matters because it’s just a dumping ground for stuff that doesn’t even work out of the box.
/GOG rant
That’s why there is little fella:
At least they try to get the rights and to make the games available again.
There are many different reasons. For example they can’t get rid of the copy protection or that the Windows version won’t run in Windows 10 (Gog has to offer support for these games so they will use the one that will make less trouble).
But it could just be there secretly not bothering anyone. I’m not asking for something hard, just for not deleting files.
If it’s actually supposed to be policy to remove things that don’t run in Windows 7/10 then they’re doing a pretty bad job at it. (And then I pray they’ll do a whole lot worse.)
I bought something mainly because my CD-ROM is at my parents’ place (and it was only something like €3), I forget what, and I was pretty peeved that I still had to grab it from an abandonware site. I’ve since adjusted my expectations and I buy from GOG with slightly more reservations, especially if I own the CD-ROM already. Note that I say that as an owner of 281 games on GOG at this very moment. If the price is ~€3 or less I’m a lot more forgiving of GOG’s flaws (not Steam’s).
My most expensive purchase on GOG was probably Shadow Tactics at the full €36 or something. Worth it.
Indeed. But even with a warning message many people would complain that the game won’t run out of the box. (Have you worked in support? ).
Hm… they remove a game from your library only if there are legal issues like in the case of Death Gate. In such cases you’ll get your money back.
The CD-ROM versions often have a copy protection that might be a problem with current computer systems. The versions on GOG are DRM free. So maybe buying a game again on GOG (and then download it if you fear that they could remove it) could be helpful.
I don’t think we’re talking about quite the same thing. You seem to be talking about a game which won’t run properly on Windows 10, like Atlantis: The Lost Tales. This game is on GOG and runs perfectly in Wine. I’d be saddened if they didn’t sell it, but I’d normally assume the copyright holders were being dicks about it without realizing GOG was keeping it from me for reasons I consider more stupid.
I’m talking about something like Dungeon Keeper, which comes with a 9x and a DOS executable on the CD. I’d have to redownload it to be sure, but I think GOG only included the 9x executable, infamous for being subpar and crash-prone, and not the DOS version which runs fine in DOSBox. With other games they do the reverse. With ScummVM games they often strip out the executables. I’m sure they have perfectly fine reasons for choosing one or the other, but this is the scenario I was talking about the files “secretly” being there not bothering anyone.
In my experience it’s more of a 9x/XP (or rather NT) split. I’ve not generally had issues with XP-era DRM, except where said issues already existed on XP itself because the DRM was just so. freaking. bad.
E.g., I might buy Anno 1404 on GOG because my gold edition DVD is practically unusable. But only at like a 90% discount.
Me too: Let’s stay with the Dungeon Keeper example. They offer the DX9 version because it runs in Windows 10. If they would offer the DOS version, a lot of people would contact the support and complain why the DOS version doesn’t work on their super-duper-computer. Even if GOG would warn people that the DOS version is only there for preservation reasons, they will have support requests. This could be a reason why they only offer the DX9 version (= only one version). But I don’t have insight in their processes and guidelines.
Especially those DRMs that required to install a driver. Another problem are activation servers that aren’t available anymore.
The what now? 