Abandonware: Preserving the Now for Tomorrow

Lionhead’s movie studio management sim The Movies came out in 2005. Fifteen years later, the only way to buy The Movies is to find a physical copy on eBay, and the only way to play the game is to either dig up an old disc or to download it off websites like My Abandonware.

Over the last decade or so, sites with abandonware—video games that have become impossible to buy or download commercially—have become increasingly popular as more games become defunct. While initially driven by the simple desire to play games that are otherwise unavailable, abandonware sites have become one of the main ways to preserve video game history.

My Abandonware first launched in 2008, starting with a database that one of its admins had created several years earlier. “As gamers born in the mid-90s, we had fond memories of the DOS era and we started with roughly 4,000 games,” said Baptiste, one of the founders and main admins of My Abandonware. Inspired by Amiga-focused abandonware site Home of the Underdog, Baptiste said that preserving video games “was not as important back then. It was more about sharing those good (and bad) old games.”

Another website that was inspired by Home of the Underdog, GamesNostalgia, started in a similar manner. GamesNostalgia co-founder and editor-in-chief, Manu, who’s responsible for deciding which games are added to its growing catalogue, said that it took six full years for the website to go from an idea to a reality.

“[At] the end of 2014, two things happened,” Manu explained. “First, a friend of mine sent me a Mac app that included both an MS-DOS emulator and a game. It was a revelation: It would have been great to build a catalogue of games, each one with the proper emulator included. Second, another friend, an amazing graphic designer, told me, ‘If you find the time to do the programming, I will design the site.’ So, working in our spare time, we built the website.”

Currently, My Abandonware offers over 15,000 games that launched between 1978 and 2010. Games are searchable by release year, platform, genre, developer, publisher, and even theme. GamesNostalgia’s catalogue numbers in the hundreds, but it offers something that other abandonware sites don’t, which are the proper emulators to run the games on both Windows and Mac computers, in addition to its reviews of available games.

One of the biggest challenges that abandonware sites face is acquiring the games. Like most museums, abandonware sites rely on outside sources to fill out their catalogues. Baptiste encourages users who want to preserve games to “check if it’s still available online. If not, upload to Archive.org and notice abandonware websites.” Beyond that, these games might not have the extra materials that came with the originals, like covers and manuals. “One hard task is to extract metadata from the game: developer, publisher, release year, genre, etc,” Manu added while pointing to online database Mobygames as a key resource for this kind of information.

Another issue, especially when it comes to computer games, is versioning. Different versions of games circulate physical and digital marketplaces, so it’s a challenge to ensure you’re preserving the right version. Older builds of games may be buggy or incomplete. Some may lack features and functionalities that were patched in at a later date. Localization presents its own problems, since “many games are only preserved in English,” Baptiste said, highlighting the importance for different countries to have their own abandonware scenes. A French player may have trouble playing an English-only copy of a game. If a game wasn’t released in your desired language, it’s unlikely that the developer will step in to localize it.

Given the nature of intellectual property, abandonware sites operate within a legally gray area. The catch-22 is that, while abandonware is “abandonware” because publishers have taken it off the market and stopped supporting it, publishers still own the IP rights to these games.

“From time to time, we receive an email asking to remove one or more games from the catalogue because the sender claims to be the copyright owner,” Manu said. “When we receive these emails, we always remove the games.” Additionally, GamesNostalgia has certain rules to minimize these kinds of scenarios. “We don’t publish games unless they are at least 20 to 25 years old. Also, if the games are available on GOG or Steam, we offer a reduced version (for example, without music), and we add a link where you can purchase the full version. Last year we generated a lot of sales for GOG. So, in a way, we are part of the legal ecosystem.”

My Abandonware has a similarly mutually beneficial relationship with IP owners. “We have been in touch with several publishers or IP owners over the years,” Baptiste said. “[It] always went very well. Usually, we remove the game archive and add a link to the publisher’s website.” 

Abandoned games rarely get any additional attention from developers, except in the case when publishers decide to re-release the game on contemporary platforms. Theme Hospital was once abandonware but it was brought to GOG in 2012. 

“I think ultimately, unfortunately, we live in a financial world and I think it’s all about business,” said Adrian Moore, lead designer of The Movies and co-founder of Loveshack Entertainment. Moore has worked on several games that have become abandonware, including Spy Mouse and Theme Hospital, which was only recently made available again on GOG. “[You] can’t keep something alive forever. It’s just not making any money anymore. If you can’t make money from something, or if it’s going to cost you too much money to buy it, then why would you update the game for the different firmware or the different graphics cards or whatever all the things that you need to do to keep the game alive?”

Despite working towards video game preservation, My Abandonware’s Baptiste doesn’t believe it’s the publisher’s responsibility to preserve their own games. “[This] should be the responsibility of the publisher’s country state, through some kind of museum,” he said. “Alternatively, a collective effort, à la Wikipedia, would be perfect on Archive.org—which is already doing a very good job.” These organizations have no direct relationship with publishers. They’re run by fans and video game preservationists, not publishers. 

GamesNostalgia’s Manu has a similarly realistic outlook on the situation. “Publisher’s are companies, and companies need to make a profit. Preserving the games has a cost (not to mention making them playable), so I don’t think publisher’s will do that. “We are talking about more than 15,000 titles. And most of their publishers are dead, so if we leave this responsibility to the publishers, we are going to lose these games forever.”

It doesn’t help that many publishers and developers don’t think about posterity, especially when it comes to indie developers who might not have the archival resources available to them. Even Moore admits that he doesn’t keep a copy of Loveshack’s latest game, FRAMED, on his hard drive. 

Perhaps because of the impermanence of video games, Moore said he doesn’t feel personally bothered when players use abandonware sites to download a copy of The Movies. “If you’ve got an old game, and it’s not alive anymore, and it’s not being supported, you can’t buy it through official channels. It’s better to have it available somewhere than nowhere. Right?” If players had the opportunity to purchase these games through more commercial manners, Moore believes that if “they’re a good person, they’ll go and buy the original. It definitely happens. It’s that human nature thing, isn’t it? You just feel like, yeah, I really should go and buy the original or I really should get in touch with this person and send them some money.”

Abandonware sites aren’t the only way that players can experience older games. As video games continue to become mainstream entertainment and their cultural relevance is recognized, organizations like the Video Game History Foundation, the National Videogame Museum, The Strong Museum of Play, and YouTube archive World of Longplays are establishing the norms for video game preservation in totally above-the-board ways.

“Video games are art, and art should not be lost,” Manu said. “Imagine a kid that in 2050 will be able to try and play games developed in 60 or 70 years before. This is amazing. A real history lesson.”

Having access to abandonware and preserving these games isn’t just about educating the general public. In the same way that film directors can watch and learn from movies that are over a century old, developers can learn from games that may have disappeared without abandonware sites to preserve them. “Two days ago, I played The Oregon Trail with my son, and enjoyed it a lot. [Modern] game creators should study these games because they can teach them a lot about game design,” Manu said.

“Personally, I think all games should be preserved,” Manu continued. “At some moment in time, someone designed, programmed, and refined a computer program that was a videogame. Regardless of the quality, this software should not be lost.”