Abandonia is an abandonware website, focusing mainly on showcasing computer games and distributing games made for the the MS-DOS system. Note that abandonware is not a legal concept; copying software without the permission of its owners is a violation of copyright laws.
| File:Abandonia.jpg | |
Type of site | Abandonware video games |
|---|---|
| Owner | Kosta Krauth |
| Created by | Kosta Krauth |
| URL | http://www.abandonia.com/ |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | not required |
Every game showcased on Abandonia is accompanied by a set of screenshots, and a review written by a member. As the reviews are written by ordinary people of all ages and nationalities, the quality of their text varies greatly, resulting in the presence of a so-called "Grammar Squad" - a group of individuals responsible for proof-reading and spell-checking submitted reviews to ensure a basic quality level among them.
Abandonia also features a music section, where anyone can listen to music from old games. Another feature is the Abandonware List[1], a database of nearly 4600 games, which lists games released for personal computers and whether according to the staff's knowledge the software is sold, protected or abandoned. This list is a sum total of research and enquiries made by the site crew (with sources including but not limited to MobyGames, Wikipedia and the company registry at Home of the Underdogs) and as such may not always be correct.
The site is maintained by people from all over the world, including Belgium, Holland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Poland and Croatia.
History
The site was created by Croatian Kosta Krauth on June 21, 1999. At that time Abandonia was a typical warez oldwarez site, with popular games like Monkey Island and Doom available for download, even though these games were still being sold in stores. In the first few years of its existence, Abandonia only received a few daily visitors. It was only in 2003, when the discussion forum was created, that Abandonia started to become a success. Things still happened slowly, though. Then in 2004 Abandonia started to have daily updates for a long period, and a new feature was implemented: Mega-Updates (Often 20-30 updates in a single day). Along with site-translations into (at that time) Croatian and Norwegian and more translations on the way, this significantly increased Abandonia's popularity as the member count rose daily, from just under 100 to several thousands in just one year.
At the present time Abandonia has been translated into German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Polish, Croatian, Norwegian, Slovene, Icelandic, Slovak and Romanian, in addition to the main English. Other translations currently being worked on include, Swedish and Russian.
Abandonia Reloaded
In May 2005, Abandonia launched its sister-site: Abandonia Reloaded, a site dedicated to the development and distribution of freeware games. It is a site which has quickly gained popularity among prospective gamers looking for free games.
Abandonware hosted on Abandonia
Abandonia has some of the strictest criteria of abandonware in the abandonware scene. In order for a game to be hosted on Abandonia, it had to be pass three very specific criteria:
- First, the game had to have been formally taken off the retail market. In other words, it must be no longer distributed by its publishers nor by legitimate retailers.
- Second, official support for the game must have been dropped by its publisher.
- Third, the game must not be under protection of any anti-piracy agency, such as ESA, nor directly by the copyright holders themselves. The third criterion prevents Abandonia from hosting games that are under the protection of the Entertainment Software Association. It also means that if anyone holding the rights to any game asks for its removal, then any downloads of that game will be immediately removed (although the review would still remain).
The site also maintains a constantly updated list of ESA member and subsidiary companies which can be found incorporated in the ruleset of the site's Requests forum [2], conveniently for easy reference when determining the status of games not yet present on the Abandonware List.
On several occasions games were placed on the site that were later discovered to not be valid abandonware in the light of the above criteria (it came to light that the game was still sold in some compilation pack or the staff were unaware that the copyright holder was an ESA subsidiary). In these instances, the games have been removed without any intervention from the copyright holders (one example may be Bard's Tale series, downloads of which were removed barely fourteen hours since their initial addition [3]).
Reception
The site has been referred to in articles on abandonware gaming by several gaming sites.[4] In addition, the site has a significant underground presence among blogs and discussion groups.[5][6]
References
- ^ Krauth, Kosta. "Abandonia's Abandonware List". Abandonia. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ the_fifth_horseman (2006-11-14). "IMPORTANT: RULES! Read this before posting here!, Ignorance does not imply innocence". Abandonia Requests Forum. Abandonia. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ ReamusLQ (2006-11-09). "Bards Tale, The - Tales of the Unknown". Abandonia Forums. Abandonia. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Marcus (2006-09-10). "abandonia: classic computer games from yesteryear". theblogjoint.com: tech news/reviews/how to's. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Walexei (2006-09-10). "Abandonia". FullyRamblomatic Forums. ChefElf.com Night Life. Retrieved 2007-01-26.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Joe (2005-07-11). "Abandonia". TransformOnline.com. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help)
External links
- Abandonia Official site
- Abandonia Reloaded - Abandonia's Sister Project