Hello everybody.

I'd like to know what is the latest policy around here concerning serial numbers? I've found a 2 years old post about someone who give out serial numbers for a small donation, but two years is pretty long for me and I thought I'd ask so I could know exactly what is going on.

I myself have a very old copy of the game, and I'd be damned if I could find again or remember what the old number was. Would that be a problem if I want to play multiplayer games here? What about friends who would want to play too? From what I gathered and I understand, every player require an unique serial number to be able to play in a multiplayer game...

Also, why is it that we need to give out a "donation" to someone to get free serial numbers? I mean, is this guy the creator of the game? Isn't he stealing money doing this versus copyright laws or something? I am guessing that it is to help maintaining this site, but I thought I'd ask anyways.

Any imput is welcome. Thank in advance.

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Hummm... I just realized that I posted this in the wrong forum... All I've read was "post your questions here"... But it says strategy at the end of that sentence, isn't?

Apologies...

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Thanks for the reply.

The reason why I am asking this in the first place is that I have been asked to write a review on a abandonware site about STARS!. However, the way I understand how it works is that whoever want to download the game and don't have a serial number will basicaly end up with a shareware game on their hands... Not really the kind of material we are looking for since the whole point is preservation of the game as a whole. Being unable to access part of the gameplay kind of defeat the principle.

Second thing is that abandonware is adamant on giving out those available games for free. It is important that the site don't make money at all in allowing the download, else it would basicaly become warez. Thus why I asked about the reason of the donation. While Ron is in no way afiliated with the site, I really want to make sure the offer is really genuine before considering anything.

So, if I understand well... The real reason of the donation is simply to prevent people who are not serious enough to get hold of free serial numbers and then use it in a bad way, for cheating or any other kind of reason.

Thus, I am wondering: would a solution be to ask for a single serial number and ask that this particular number would be banned from AutoHost from the very start to prevent cheating? I assume then that anybody downloading the game and using that serial could fully play the game in single player and possibly also host hotseat games. If anybody then discovered that they were serious enough to go thru with the donation they could then go thru the whole process and get a new serial number to play multiplayer games...

And now off to bed I go. 4:30 in the morning is really too late for me to have any kind of coherent thoughts. I hope I made some sense here... I'll come back in the morning.

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Sat, 06 December 2008 07:54

Hummm... I just realized that I posted this in the wrong forum... All I've read was "post your questions here"... But it says strategy at the end of that sentence, isn't? Apologies...

No problem, I moved the topic to the appropriate place.

mch,
modaw

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[Updated on: Tue, 09 December 2008 19:12]

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Sat, 06 December 2008 10:25

The reason why I am asking this in the first place is that I have been asked to write a review on a abandonware site about STARS!.

That'd be great!

However, Stars! is not (yet) abandonware. At least one of the original devs (also called gods, or Jeffs) has expressed an intention to release a serial-free (and possibly less buggy) version in the future. Plus, the rights to the awesomely-mindblowing sequel are still eagerly retained by the publisher.

Quote:

However, the way I understand how it works is that whoever want to download the game and don't have a serial number will basicaly end up with a shareware game on their hands... Not really the kind of material we are looking for since the whole point is preservation of the game as a whole. Being unable to access part of the gameplay kind of defeat the principle.

Google's your friend, then. There's at least a couple dozen serials that still work for single-player games out there.

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[Updated on: Tue, 09 December 2008 19:16]

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[Updated on: Tue, 09 December 2008 19:27]

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m.a@stars wrote on Tue, 09 December 2008 15:59

. Plus, the rights to the awesomely-mindblowing sequel are still eagerly retained by the publisher.

They don't intend to do anything with those rights, they just don't want anyone else to finish the game.

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Quote:

from the Abandonia FAQ: Why can't I download game X? "...this game is either still sold or actively protected by copyright holder..."

That quote from the Abandonia FAQ simply mean, once translated into "normal" talk: Games with the NO GO! button are not available for download either because they are protected by ESA (an organization which only goal is to enforce copyright laws of companies which ask them to police their rights. Which mean that if we didn't we'd receive stop and desist letters and ultimately have to close the site down) or the maker or the owner actually communicated with Abandonia directly and requested that game X was removed as download.

Most game producers actualy like to have their old games available on Abandonia. It's a great publicity for them, they don't have to pay for the bandwith, and most makers think something similar to this: "What? Game X is still availble and hundred of players still play it today? That's so awesome!"

Abandonware itself is, as you could say, tolerated by the companies themselves and thus in a grey area of the law. As far as the owner of the site don't make money by distributing the game then we are not really stealing anything (it is not warez), and as long as we do comply to requests to remove availability of games when asked they don't mind either. A good example would be when we stoped distributing Civilization around the time CIV III got out.

To return to the NO GO! button, the reason why we have those is that Abandonia wish to preserve the memory of the games themselves. That, and we keep the review material up in respect of the reviewers who did the work, and it's then way easier to simply change the button again if the game status simply change back to available. It would make no sense to simply "get rid" of the reviews then.

Quote:

One could argue that since Jeff(Stars!' creator) personally gave Ron(who runs this site) permission to distribute new serials, that Stars! is still protected by the copyright holder.

Copyright doesn't work that way. Only Jeff could actualy enforce any copyright action. That, and one could also argue that the game is already freely available for anybody who is willing to do a search on the web (as previously stated on this thread) and that since Ron ask for a small fee for the access to his autohosting site rather than the game itself then it has nothing to do with copyright in the first place. The serial is simply an obsolete hardcoded copy protection problem at this point... From which we can get back to Abandonware.

Anyhow, I'd love to know Ron POV on all this. And as stated previously... If Jess actualy don't want us to distritute this game, he simply need to say it and we won't. It's just as simple as that.

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Tue, 09 December 2008 18:46

And as stated previously... If Jeff actualy don't want us to distritute this game, he simply need to say it and we won't. It's just as simple as that.

I think... that would be the furthest thing from Jeff's opinion on the matter.

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Eagle of Fire wrote on Wed, 10 December 2008 01:14

I don't think that you understand the concept of Abandonware, m.a@star. It has nothing to do with copyright or ownership of games.

It probably has more to do with lawyers, enforcement and money.

Luckily for you, it's unlikely that the Jeffs would mind your listing Stars! on Abandonia, at least if the review is glowing enough.

The publisher that's still sitting on top of the sequel's rights, however, might be harder to convince.

Good luck & don't forget to post the link when it's done!

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Thank you Effluviant Walrus, but I am already entering a 24h/T game. I should be able to test it out myself soon enough.

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