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I wax nostalgically because I spent so much time browsing the several thousand games when I was in college. There was actually still some life on the forums before everything went down last week. Sure, it was controversial and criticized at times, but Sarinee always took down games when they came back up for sale, or if a company complained. That said, it was slow, and there are the obvious legal issues, but it will be missed. If they took out all of the abandonware and just left in all of the great freeware games it would still be a great site. It was a great place that preserved video game history and honored some of the more underrated old titles. Whats really sad about this is that Underdogs was a great resource about computer games in general. She hasn’t communicated any interest in keeping it going.įrom about 2000-2006, HOTU was THE site online to find obscure games. Now that the hosting has run out, I suspect it is gone for good.
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Over time, most of the download links died and it fell into general neglect. Sarinee, the site’s founder, moved on to other things.
Since early 2006, the site has set dead with no new updates.
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Also, limited time promotional free downloads are often mistaken for a proper freeware release.Why would it be the end of the road just because their web host went bankrupt? Did he forget to back up the site, or just doesn’t want to move it to a new host? However, relinquishing copyright is uncommon - the copyright ownership of all portions is often unclear, creating difficulties in open-sourcing, and there is rarely an economic incentive to do so. Files include: Master database (Excel, 14MB): Underdogs.xls Box shots (some) (11MB): hotu-covers. No games are available in this data, only metadata from the site and various picture files.
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Transfer of public domain or free software is perfectly legal, distinguishing it from abandonware. The last data available from the Home of the Underdogs (formerly at one of the largest abandonware websites on the Internet.
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Another example is Amstrad, who support emulation and free distribution of ZX Spectrum hardware ROMs and software. One of the largest and most popular depositories for abandonware PC games has fallen off of the Internet. id Software is notable as an early proponent of this practice, releasing older titles under an open source license. HOTU is pre-eminent in the world of abandonware, a community of sites. For example, unencumbered emulators and games for Colecovision are markedly easier to find on the Internet than unencumbered emulators and games for Mattel Intellivision in large part because there is still a company that makes money by selling Intellivision games while no such company exists for the Colecovision.Ĭompanies do sometimes voluntarily relinquish copyright on software, putting it into the public domain, or re-license it as freeware or open source. Home of the Underdogs archives more than 4,000 games considered by their. Often the availability of abandonware on the Internet is related to the willingness of copyright holders to defend their copyrights. Abandonware changes hands based on the presumption that the time and money that a copyright holder would have to spend enforcing the copyright is greater than any money the holder would earn selling software licenses. Transfer of this software is still technically unlawful in most jurisdictions (except in cases of owner dissolution) as the copyright is still in effect.
Some who are ignorant of copyright law have incorrectly taken this to mean that abandonware is legal to distribute, although no software is old enough for its copyrights to have expired, and even in cases where the original company no longer exists, the rights usually still belong to someone. Proponents of abandonware argue that it is more ethical to make copies of such software than new software that still sells. In this member list you may also sort on 'rating', 'game count', 'date updated' or by 'site type'.
(Copyrights owned by an individual who dies become the property of the person's estate.) Nevertheless, some companies vehemently defend their rights to old games from which they're no longer making profit. This can be due to intentional non-enforcement by its owners due to the software's age or obsolescence, but sometimes because the corporate copyright holder went out of business without transferring ownership, leaving no one to defend the copyright. Abandonware's copyright is frequently no longer defended.