Re: Any way to play the VIP gameszone games for free?
Hi, so I wanted to put my two bucks worth in for the sake of it and all.
Vipgamezone is an interesting case because in my mind I always think, okay you purchase a licence you have purchased for a single registration of that product for lifetime use without condition. That being said though it's interesting that if you have registered the game, you still can not play it. That rubs me the wrong way slightly.
Is VipGameZone's old website available on the wayback machine? I'm actually not familiar enough with it to figure out how to use it, which is sad!
Overall though I do think that the rules set up above must clearly be set out.
This article sets out some interesting details on abandonwear:
https://bit-tech.net/reviews/gaming/pc/abandonware-the-ethics-and-essentials/1/#:~:text=Firstly%2C%20a%20game%20can%20be,of%20Lucasarts'%20first%20graphical%20adventures.
In short though:
1. Pick a period where the game creator is no longer supporting or distributing the game (I suggest 5 to 10 years).
2. In order to be abandonwear, the company's website must be down, (for period), the registration and licence details must not be renewable or purchaseable (for period).
3. The developer can not be reached through any reasonable means *attempts up to 3 months of effort).
GMA for instance would not be classed under abandonwear as their website is still available, and keys are still obtainable (go lone wolf!)
This is a very, very very serious matter as while I respect the fact people want to archive games for everyone and that our community is small and classic games are no longer available, I am also extremely extremely aware that whether you like it or not, these are game works that people put a lot of hard, time and effort into it. Making that game free when it was not could cause untold damage in the long term to the confidence, desire and mood of the developer. Sure, you'd argue well if they want their stuff secure then stay supported, but I'm going to use the same argument: If you wanted the game, you should have bought it when it was available.
Now, I'm not in any way saying don't archive it, I'm simply wanting to make sure that clear, clear guidelines are set out here and that the archive is painfully aware how much damage this can do to developers if a mistake is made. Archiving is good as it preserves old beauties, but it is also bad because without those old beauties, would people be motivated to make newer, supported and better games? Who knows.
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