Some companies may not even realize they own a particular title, especially if they weren't the originators of the work and it's been off the market for a while.Īnother possible reason for abandonment of software is a company deciding that it is no longer commercially viable to spend time and money on advertising, distributing and supporting an old game, or porting it to newer platforms. Game studios and other software producers are also prone to going out of business or getting sold to other companies, so the rights to game titles change hands frequently. To make matters worse, the hardware and software media eventually degrade and stop working. And after a system upgrade or two, a lot of software becomes incompatible with newer computers and gaming systems, especially if the companies don't work in backward compatibility. As old hardware and operating systems are replaced with newer and more powerful versions, and new applications are created to take advantage of the improved capabilities (like faster processors, more memory and better graphics), older software eventually becomes obsolete and falls out of use. The useful life of hardware and software is often only a few years. There are a great many reasons why software might become abandoned. These days there are a great many ways to experience a lot of our childhood favorites, but some are still in danger of disappearing forever. Increasingly, companies are re-releasing old titles for new platforms, sometimes for a price and sometimes for free, making them abandoned no longer. A lot of abandonware flies under the radar, either because there is no one around to protect the copyright or the owner isn't bothering to do so for whatever reason, but game companies and trade organizations have been known to request its removal. Most software is copyright-protected intellectual property, whether a company is selling it or not.
In most cases, however, it isn't strictly legal. Usually when people talk about abandonware, they mean out-of-print games or other software that someone is making available online for free, and a lot of the stuff considered abandonware was made for gaming and computing systems that are now obsolete and no longer available. Many sites dedicated to cataloguing and distributing these apparently abandoned titles have sprung up, dubbing them abandonware.Ībandonware is generally defined as any software that's at least a few years old and is no longer distributed or supported by its owner. You can hunt for a downloadable copy of a game online to relive the days when you were the "Pong" master, even if the company that created the game no longer sells it.
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