Sierra Games No More?

[Sonny Bonds]

Greetings all,


Could somebody please tell me why the games made by Sierra On-Line are no longer available? :help:

Thank you,

Dustin

[MdaG]

The ESA said that we couldn't have them up for download any longer. It's sad, but that's the way it is. You can write to the company that owns the game you want and ask them to allow Abandonia to put it up again. Just remember to be polite.

[Sonny Bonds]

Originally posted by MdaG@May 11 2005, 06:58 PM
The ESA said that we couldn't have them up for download any longer. It's sad, but that's the way it is. You can write to the company that owns the game you want and ask them to allow Abandonia to put it up again. Just remember to be polite.
I will write to the company.


When did this come into effect?

I was just able to download King's Quest 2 yesterday.

[Tulac]

It is sad, very sad, I thought they had some sort of approval or something...

[Sonny Bonds]

Lets all write to the company.

[Tulac]

Abandonia lost it's permission AFAIK...

[Sonny Bonds]

This is terrible.... I love those games :cry:

[xoopx]

you wont even get past the P.R zombies and layers of lawyers.
in fact it would probably just bring more attention from ESA to abandonia

[Titan]

http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?s...ndpost&p=106460 (http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5252&view=findpost&p=106460)

[BeefontheBone]

The ESA came down on the site because there were a couple of protected games up (which the admins didn't know were protected) without permissions, and they've been forced to remove all the ones by ESA members (including Sierra).

[A. J. Raffles]

What a bore. It's only the downloads which have to be removed, though, right? Not everything, including reviews and discussion threads?

[DonCorleone]

There is quite a high number of very good games abandoned from abandonia...too sad.

[xoopx]

?5 says it was MORTAL KOMBAT that caused it.

[A. J. Raffles]

Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter which game caused it. Either way, I find it rather disturbing, because it may (and probabably will) be damaging for the site's image. Even if it wasn't done on purpose.

By the way, did somebody create that new 'no go' icon sometime this afternoon? I don't remember seeing it before...

[xoopx]

Originally posted by A. J. Raffles@May 11 2005, 10:00 PM
Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter which game caused it. Either way, I find it rather disturbing, because it may (and probabably will) be damaging for the site's image. Even if it wasn't done on purpose.

By the way, did somebody create that new 'no go' icon sometime this afternoon? I don't remember seeing it before...
the thing that makes me wonder, is because some games like mortal kombat, or team 17 games... rang alarm bells with me and others, and we did warn about them - to no success.
if the ESA read those discussions, they can reasonably accuse the admins of deliberately failing to ensure they werent breaking protected games.

[Dino]

So it's practically all about few protected games... But does that mean that other games by ESA members that have to be removed weren't protected? I don't quite understand this, some games by ESA members are protected and some are not?? :blink:

[xoopx]

Originally posted by OvErLoRd@May 11 2005, 10:15 PM
So it's practically all about few protected games... But does that mean that other games by ESA members that have to be removed weren't protected? I don't quite understand this, some games by ESA members are protected and some are not?? :blink:
doesnt make sense to me either

[TheChosen]

They dont sell them and they dont want to give them.

What the hell is wrong with them!!!!???

[A. J. Raffles]

Well, anyway, the damage has been done, so probably won't do much good if we continue talking about it. It very much sounds like the ESA made a final decision so regardless of why they made that decision, whether it was appropriate or not and whether it might have been avoided, I suppose the only thing we can do now is to try and bear it as best we can. But I highly doubt that sending emails to the ESA will have any effect at all.

[TheChosen]

How about bribe or blackmailing them??

[A. J. Raffles]

Sure, why not? If you have anything to bribe or blackmail them with... :sneaky:

[Kreepah]

actually i just did a search and roberta has a package for sale with all the KQs an more (no PQs,QFGs or SQs on their though)... maybe the others have a similair deal, anyway this is going to screw abandonias image big time. I would be happy to buy them but id rather get them seperately than a package myself.

[The Fifth Horseman]

They also removed Mechwarrior. :angry:

I think that some of them quite lost their mind. HOTU has Mechwarrior for a long, LONG time and NOBODY asked them to remove it, depite quite a number of ESA strikes against their site. This does say something.

Also, for many of the games Abandonia had the permission from authors themselves. And still ESA demanded removal. :not_ok:

I have strange suspicions on that...

And then... Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis - we NEVER HAD THIS UP FOR DOWNLOAD. WE HAD A BUY LINK. :ranting: Now, this is something _very_ strange, not to call it otherwise.

I think ESA _wanted_ to bust us. Soon you'll learn that all freeware belongs to them as well.

Now this is suspicious:
7 Cities of Gold (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=958)
Nightmare on Elm Street (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=765)
Abuse (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=18) OPEN SOURCE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!
Aces over Europe (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?gameid=1859)
Advanced Civilization (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=22)
Airborne Ranger - HOTU - ESA
Aladdin (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=34)
Alien Carnage - HOTU - Sold
Alter Ego - HOTU - ESA

Mechwarrior (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=1647)

Some titles are indeed ESA protected, but there are things like Abuse, which is listed as being Open Source. Now what is the thing about Open Source projects? That's right, they are free.

[efthimios]

Originally posted by the_fifth_horseman@May 12 2005, 10:11 AM
They also removed Mechwarrior. :angry:

I think that some of them quite lost their mind. HOTU has Mechwarrior for a long, LONG time and NOBODY asked them to remove it, depite quite a number of ESA strikes against their site. This does say something.

Also, for many of the games Abandonia had the permission from authors themselves. And still ESA demanded removal. :not_ok:

I have strange suspicions on that...

And then... Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis - we NEVER HAD THIS UP FOR DOWNLOAD. WE HAD A BUY LINK. Now, this is something _very_ strange.

I think ESA _wanted_ to bust us. Soon you'll learn that a game that has long ago been released as freeware belongs to them as well.
Are you thinking what I am thinking about somewhere along the way there was some major BS and now something stinks about the whole thing?

[A. J. Raffles]

Erm, let's better not go there. That sort of speculation can only make things worse and it certainly won't help in getting any of the games back.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by Efthimios+****</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Efthimios)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Are you thinking what I am thinking about somewhere along the way there was some major BS and now something stinks about the whole thing? [/b]

******QuoteBegin-Raffles
Erm, let's better not go there. That sort of speculation can only make things worse and it certainly won't help in getting any of the games back. [/quote]
You have a point, but I have to say that I share Efthimios' point of view. Something is very, very wrong.

Say, Space Hulk. The game is nowhere mentioned on EA site, is not sold, and finally Games Workshop does not even acknowledge its existence (altough boardgames it was based on are somewhat heard of on their site). I guess I'll have to ask Jervis Johnson, one person involved in the game's development that I have contact with, to clear it up a little.

[Titan]

Originally posted by efthimios@May 12 2005, 11:22 AM
Are you thinking what I am thinking about somewhere along the way there was some major BS and now something stinks about the whole thing?
Do you REALY think it was FUN sitting there yesturday, spending 5 hours on tracing every single *dirty word* game? Tracking down WHO made it, who owns that company now, and when done with that, ANOTHER letter from ESA drops down..

Now... ONE more word about BS, stink or coverup WILL get a free 1 week suspention for stupidity.

Is that simple enough?

[Tom Henrik]

Also...

ESA never tells the names of all the games they want us to remove, so we have to remove EVERY SINGLE GAME that MIGHT go under their protection. That means that we removed some games that maybe didn't need to be removed, like Abuse.

Had we NOT done this, this site would've been TERMINATED for good a couple of hours ago (when the deadline ran out).

And before you people speculate thing even worse... (jeeeeezus... you guys just LOVE conspiracies :wall:... ) We DIDN'T have permission DIRECTLY from the producers. We had permission from ESA. ESA removed this permission yesterday, and gave us 24 hours to remove every single game connected to the companies protected by ESA and all their subsidiaries. If we didn't we would get a lawsuit, and the site would've been shut down and deleted.


We might've killed more games than we needed to, but hey.. the site lives. THAT is the important thing.

Now, PLEASE STOP jumping to conclusion and conspiracy theories.


(And I made the ESA NO GO button yesterday. You've never seen it before, because we've never needed it. Why place an ESA protected NO GO button on a game we had permission to host? ;) )