Better than Abandonment

By Ian, on August 21st, 2008

I introduced my colleague Alan to the term ‘Abandonware’ today. As a net-savvy individual, I was surprised he’d not come across it before. But, then again, it’s only really current among gamers.

Abandonware is software that has been given-up by its original developers and publishers. Normally, it applies to old games which fans still love, but which their publishers don’t care about any more.

The spiritual home of abandonware is Home of the Underdogs (beware Dragons and possibly viruses), which, appropriately enough, hasn’t been updated for two years. The site hosts binary files for hundreds of old games, manuals and screenshots.

While some of the content is definitely illegal, according to the letter of the law, it’s also a shrine to those old games that you played as a teenager. On balance, it’s definitely a good thing that it exists. Not just so you can get free w4r3z, but because it keeps the games and the emotions and memories of those games alive. These games, despite the moniker, are not abandoned, but carefully curated and preserved (if the site owner would get off his arse).

Back to Web 2.0, Alan’s observation, just on the basis of the term was that, “a freemium model endgame is suggested” (I think it’s disrespectful to represent someone’s opinion from a single Twitter message. I do so here only to advance the argument. Sorry, Alan.)

Web 2.0 abandonware already exists, surely. I have no idea how Google Docs, for example, could ever make any money. Annoying Microsoft doesn’t seem like much of a model to me. Open Source is ‘cards on the table’ abandonware in some cases. There are interesting examples — when Movable Type went Open Source was that a form of abandonment?, but if there is a Home of the Underdogs 2.0, it won’t really matter very much.

I can still find a working binary download for Computer Quarterback published in 1979 (don’t bother — it’s shit) nearly 30 years after its publication date on Underdogs. I wonder if someone couldn’t make a fortune by starting a Web 2.0 Underdogs for those projects that were loved, but not by the right people.