Well, if you don’t mind having it in Japanese, check the Japanese Bishoujo thread. I have one I started there. I’m sure J-List has a few demos of their games too.
We released a free demo for Yume Miru Kusuri in cooperation with the HGTP; you can download it here.
Some of the out of print titles like Time Stripper, Ring-Out and Paradise Heights should be available on abandonware sites.
Besides them hardly being representative for current releases, the word “abandonware” itself is a BIG can of worms!
As far as I understand it, a game is only really “Abandonware” if the former owner of its copyright really abandoned it - meaning they made an official statement renouncing every legal claim on that game and its included concepts. Now guess how many times this has really happened so far!
EDT:
… and AliceSoft’s free releases of their games on the web are no example for abandonware either! They still keep the rights, but made these old games officially “freeware” instead. Thus they still may re-release such a game on a new platform, maybe with improved graphics/sound/storyline/whatsoever and charge a regular price for that new version while the old version remains free.
[ 10-29-2007, 03:08 AM: Message edited by: Unicorn ]
There is no such thing as abandonware, in the legal sense. All abandonware is technically illegal, in the same way all dojinshi is and all fansubbing is, and all fanart … what have you.
Nobody sues abandonware sites – well, the smart abandonware sites – because a) they only distribute stuff nobody cares about anyway, and b) if you tell them ‘hey, I demand you take this down’ … they do.
If someone makes a statement renouncing all rights to something they made, it becomes “freeware” and possibly even “public domain”. But not “abandonware”.
Depends on what country. In some countries failure to actively support it, such as technical issues, denotes abandoing. For some, it’s failure to show loss of profit, ie no longer selling the product themselves. Sometimes, for translations, it’s when the license expires that they can no longer pursue sales of those products if it isn’t renewed or repicked up by another company.
Nandemonai is 1/2 right. There is technically no legal term for abandonware and those that denouce rights to charge money or make it free to modify, etc. put it into public domain. However, as I mentioned, a company can lose their rights to products, even when they hold copyright, in certain countries under certain situations. It’s very rare though.
[ 10-30-2007, 05:04 AM: Message edited by: Jinnai ]
Not really anymore, at least not in any country which adheres to the Berne Convention. A lot of these kind of things wer standardized, and pretty much everything is automatically copyrighted now. In any signatory country.
yes, automatically copyrighted, but again in many areas they need to show a loss of profit or continued support for the product. And even so, in different areas there are differences in copyright laws.