Licensing an Abandonware Game? 148
WolverineOfLove writes "I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed further in a Slashdot journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away."
Get permission! (Score:1, Interesting)
Whether or not you think the copyright "no longer matters" is irrelevant. If you do not get legal permission it is breaking the law pure and simple.
See the case of "Alien Abuse", an iPhone port of Abuse by defunct Crack.com. The authors released the code and graphics as public domain, but the whole game (including SFX) was redistributed without legal permission. This resulted in a nasty dispute with former Crack.com founder Dave T. Taylor, and the game being removed from the iPhone app store.
The lesson I would take from the above is that even if the company responsible for producing the company may no longer exist, it's founders certainly do and may not take kindly to unauthorised redistribution of their IP.
Ask the ScummVM guys (Score:4, Interesting)
My Advice (Score:2, Interesting)
If the game company has gone bankrupt it might be a situation where the company was liquidated and its assets sold. If that is that case then the company no longer owns the copyright.
In any case I doubt it is worth purchasing the copyright. You state that you will be remaking this game from scratch which means purchasing someone else's copyright when you aren't going to use it will be a waste of money. Also you have to take into account that purchasing copyright is very expensive, requires a lawyer and at the end of it you can't really be guaranteed that you own it.
If you wish to use the original name then you should check and make sure any registered trademark has already expired. If it has then you should have no issue naming your game with the same name or something similar.
When making your own version of the game you should make sure that the names of things in the game, artwork, etc are all of your own work. This means they should be different from the original game. Copying how the original game plays shouldn't be an issue however.
If you feel that is not an option and that you need the original names of characters etc in your remake then you could have an expansion pack hosted someone else away from the project which adds the original content. That way if you do get in legal trouble you can pull the offending content without causing any problems where your project is hosted.
Re:Contact the Owners (Score:5, Interesting)
I very much agree. If you want to remake the game I can only assume that you enjoy playing it and have some respect for the game. Show the original authors that respect and contact them; the game represents a great deal of effort on their part and deserves a dialog. From your description of the situation in you journal entry, the author would probably enjoy hearing of your interest and you could ask them what the position of the copyright holder is on the subject and discuss options.
How does one find the copyright owner? (Score:3, Interesting)
How does one find the copyright owner?
For example, who owns copyright in the video game Zero Wing?
Re:Forget about the copyright (Score:1, Interesting)
Safest way to do it. A few years ago Xcom and a few other games were considered abandonware, then the BSA came and you had to pay for an ancient game, not a remake ... so it's safer to just bypass the whole legal mess. In XCom's case a series of games appeared with mostly the same theme and gameplay called UFO. And as far as I know they have no troubles from them.
Re:Forget about the copyright (Score:1, Interesting)
Sorry, doesn't work that way. There is no innovation in open source, only re-implementations of existing commercial products. I know this is a soft spot for FOSS supporters, but no matter how you turn it, it's true. However, I never said open source never produces *good* re-implementations.
Open source works best when faced with "technical" issues. E.g. software emulator of old computers, web browsers (for example, while Firefox is arguably a half-decent browser, there's nothing innovative about it at all), game ports, window managers, office suits among others.