Hello,

I wanted to collect some opinions on tomorrow's abandonware.

Based on the approx. 10 year rule, today we have games from 1997, which were mostly Windows compliant for almost two years at the time, and CD compliant for an even longer period.

As the games were becoming more and more sophisticated and complex, so were the mechanisms to avoid unwanted duplication.
Having started with code wheels and manual-questions ("what is the 5th word on page 13"), there arised an industry which is earning money from keeping pirates away from the valuable products.

And these mechanisms seem to go crazy in the last few years: Checks if burning software is installed (as if anybody would abandon the general possibility to use a burner built into the PC just because of a software doesn't want it), protection against CD emulation, prevention to run in virtual environments, enforced online activation and "damaging" the dumping process of optical media in on driver-level to name a few of the nastiest.

Where is that going? I already have problems to find patches for games I purchased 10 years ago because the developers keep them deeply hidden on their web site or abandoned them completely. What if the online server I need for activation gets shut down because the company doesn't exist any more in the future.

Although 10 years is an unthinkable long time period in terms of product development and lifecycle and no company is probably ever thinking of supporting a product more than 3 years, but then we have MAME and the classic console emulators which let you play games that are up to 30 years old and more to demonstrate that there seems to be a high interest in the gaming community to STILL play these games, and this number is raising with the number of people having a PC. Therefore I consider 10 years to be a short time in the total life of a game (as we can see on this site).

So I'm wondering whether we will lose the ability of keeping today's gaming treasures in future or if they protection industry garbles the contents so much that this will not be possible for a longer time???

Any comments are welcome!

We'll still be able to play, all the software protections are surpassed one way or another, I think the greatest problem in the future will be compatibility.

...and the huge size of today's games, making it difficult to host them on sites like this.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wendymaree @ May 15 2007, 01:39 PM) [snapback]290347[/snapback]</div>Dunno. Remember when a 16 MB hdd was a HUGE hdd? Same goes for servers, bandwidth and costs I would guess.

What about games that are on two, three and four CDs? They could be ripped, but still.

I always thought of copy protection as being ineffective, disturbing the legitimate owners without stopping piracy in the slightest least. Current games are cracked days after they're released, so that should be no problem after so many years.

On the other hand I wouldn't worry about not being able to play a game once it's no longer supported or its native OS gets obsolete, emulators can be developed in the future just like they've been before, and for PCs virtualization software will expand even further.

i think people will need a Much better processor for a good emulation of nowday games (like it were growing exponentially)

Well I guess computer processors will soon become pretty much faster than they're already now. Though someone said not very long ago that computer development slowly reaches a point of maximum effective development, I don't agree.
There can and will be hundred times faster computers in near future for sure as there's always progress. And that's where emulators will be able to support the today's current, tomorrow's classic games.

They said back then:
"Computers today have 10,000 Vacuum Tubes and weigh 10 tons, while in the future computers may have only 1,000 Vacuum Tubes and weigh only 1/2 tons"

So when Doom 3 becomes abandonware don't worry, BE hAPPY!!!

I'm only expecting the RCT series to go abandonware. Probably even TES IV: Oblivion even though I never played it. May computer games live forever, even in heaven!

@Battlefield Vietnam: We're 2 of a kind, really.