Travesty or Bargain?
I went to work on Friday and was browsing the computer games when I found Sam and Max Hit the Road for not $15, not $10 but AU$5!! Naturally I bought it, but...
That's US$4.42! 2.74 pounds! Or 3.09 Euros!
So anyway, who thinks its sad that this great game is going for this cheap? And who thinks its great? I think its a bit of both.
But, unfortunately, I can't play it yet because my mum spent $30 on eBay on a copy of this for Xmas! So I'm keeping it in case the eBay copy doesn't work, and then I'm selling it on eBay.
That's US$4.42! 2.74 pounds! Or 3.09 Euros!
So anyway, who thinks its sad that this great game is going for this cheap? And who thinks its great? I think its a bit of both.
But, unfortunately, I can't play it yet because my mum spent $30 on eBay on a copy of this for Xmas! So I'm keeping it in case the eBay copy doesn't work, and then I'm selling it on eBay.
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I would probably pay £5 for it tops nowadays.
Way to make me feel old. Ok, I wasn't exactly playing it at the age of 2/3, but the idea that 1993 was sixteen years ago just seems depressing.
At least I can say that The Secret of Monkey Island came out before I was born and make other people feel old
Anyway, back on topic, I found a Sam and Max/Day of the Tentacle double pack in a UK Gamestation for £3.99 in 2004 and bought it, being an avid fan of Monkey Island and having heard good things about the games. One of the best purchases I ever made
I was born in 1990 by the way. I'm nineteen, first year of university. :cool: Out of interest, how old are other Sam and Max fans? There may have been a thread in a similar vein before but don't flame me
I feel your pain
Well, i'm 18, and i would consider myself on the road to becoming a S&M fan.
You want old? a movie I loved as a kid just released it's 20th aniversay edition!
as for me, I'm almost 25 (will be in March)
Old, mass produced and often reprinted games that turned profit years ago have no real justification to be highly priced. I don't know what it is with the mentality of gamers but they always seem eager to overpay and be ripped off. It's as if paying more money for something increases the worth of it to them.
Bargain.
This is more of a travesty / bargain - 4 LucasArts classic adventure bundle for US$2.49.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/2102/
you can also get them from abandonware sites free. LA refuses to make a stance on wheather they are pirated (any press is good press) some of the sites acctually wrote LA and asked "is it ok that we post these?" and LA never wrote them back --- several sites...
If they said "yes, it's free" then they lose their (C), but if they say no, they get bad publicity. The fact they are not answering numerous requests is a silent "yes" that is still letting hte keep their (C). If you want to try and say otherwise, go ahead, but think about it from a marketing point of view; it makes sence (and I'm sure LA would have responded to atleast one of the dozens of letters saying "no" if they wanted to make sure their property was protected - several game makers did)
Maybe i guess. I still don't see how it would be seen as bad publicity to deny those websites of the games. They may hate them for it, but LA wouldn't loose any money in doing so. In fact they would gain the money by forcing people to buy the game. But then different people see things in different ways.
partly because Untill recently these games were impossible to find. Also the mindset of the fans is "well your not making any money off them now, so what's the harm?" (which was true while they were out of production) so the fans never get to experiance the game, which could have won over somone to guy a new game from them, and also LA is viewed as stingy because they wont let go of soemthing that's essentially jsut sitting around gatheirng dust waiting to be thrown out.
Now that the games are on STEAM and in some retail markets again, I would agree with the ideologoy that they should not give them away.
Abandonware doesn't really exist.
Now that's just a lie. Wheather (C) laws deal with it are anotehr matter, but it certainly exists. LOTS of companies give sites the right to redistribute their anchient games for free (often even giving them the copy-protection codes) just for hte publicity. I think abandonia acctually seeks permission for their games and more than a few companies reply affermative to their requests.
EDIT:
and I appoligize if I was wrong about (C) laws, I'm very fuzzy on intalectual property rights
No, the term has nothing to do with that. "Abandonware" is software that the creator has not updated in an excessivly long time (usually because they move on to another piece of software ala LA and S+M/MI/etc) they do not seek to re-release it, nor continue to produce it. In short they abandoned the franchise. Plenty of abandonware *is* still being watched and the owners will not give permission to make it avalible for free, however it is still an abandoned franchise for whatever reason.
Copyright holders have control of their copyrighted property regardless of whether they defend it or not. Not prosecuting someone for infringing their rights does not mean they have abandoned their property and lost the rights to it. It's actually an important legal distinction. LA does not have to respond to letters from websites that upload their games. By not giving permission for those sites to host their games for downloads they are implicitly not allowing it, not the other way around, since the only way those websites could legally host the games would be by being given explicit consent from LA to do so. If LA does not, it is piracy.
The difference there I guess is that those apples are still for sale. If they left a box of old apples outside by the backdoor that they had no intention of selling I'm sure they'd let you take them.
Buuuut now digital distribution is so popular companies are rethinking their stance on their back catalogue - obviously The Dig is on Steam and I'm pretty sure the other three will find their way there eventually.