Epic Allows Internet Archive To Distribute For Free ‘Unreal’ & ‘Unreal Tournament’ Forever
from the was-that-so-hard? dept
One of the most frustrating aspects in the ongoing conversation around the preservation of older video games, also known as cultural output, is the collision of IP rights and some publishers’ unwillingness to both continue to support and make available these older games and their refusal to release those same games into the public domain so that others can do so. It creates this crazy situation in which a company insists on retaining its copyrights over a video game that it has effectively disappeared with no good or legitimate way for the public to preserve them. As I’ve argued for some time now, this breaks the copyright contract with the public and should come with repercussions. The whole bargain that is copyright law is that creative works are granted a limited monopoly on the production of that work, with that work eventually arriving into the public domain. If that arrival is not allowed to occur, the bargain is broken, and not by anyone who would supposedly “infringe” on the copyright of that work.
Why would game publishers do this sort of thing? There are plenty of theories. The fad of retro-gaming is such that publishers can claim they are reserving their rights for an eventual remastered version, or otherwise a re-released version, of these games. Sometimes they even follow through on those plans. In other cases, some companies are just so ingrained in IP protectionism that they can’t see past their own nose (hi there, Nintendo!). In still other cases the companies that published the game no longer exist, and unraveling who now holds the rights to their games can be an absolute nightmare.
But it just doesn’t have to be like this. Companies could be willing to give up their iron-fisted control over their IP for these older games they aren’t willing to support or preserve themselves and let others do it for them. And if you need a real world example of that, you need look only at how Epic is working with The Internet Archive to do exactly that.
Epic, now primarily known for Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, has given permission for two of the most significant video games ever made, Unreal and Unreal Tournament, to be freely accessed via the Internet Archive. As spotted by RPS, via ResetEra, the OldUnreal group announced the move on their Discord, along with instructions for how to easily download and play them on modern machines.
Huge kudos to Epic for being cool with this, because while it shouldn’t be unusual to happily let people freely share a three-decade-old game you don’t sell any more, it’s vanishingly rare. And if you remain in any doubt, we just got word back from Epic confirming they’re on board.
“We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org,” a spokesperson told us by email, “and people are free to independently link to and play these versions.”
Importantly, OldUnreal and The Internet Archive very much know what they’re doing here. Grabbing the ZIP file for the game sleekly pulls the ISO directly from The Internet Archive, installs it, and there are instructions for how to get the game up and running on modern hardware. This is obviously a labor of love from fans dedicated toward keeping these two excellent games alive.
And the size and success of these games is important, too. It would be all too easy for Epic to keep this IP to itself with a plan for a remastered version of each game, or for a forthcoming sequel, or anything like that. Instead, Epic has just opened up and allowed the internet to do its thing in preserving these important titles using one of the most trustworthy sources to do so.
But this is just two games. What would be really nice to see is this become a trend, or, better yet, a program run by The Internet Archive. Don’t want to bother to preserve your old game? No problem, let the IA do it for you!
Filed Under: archives, internet archive, preservation, unreal, unreal tournament, video game preservation, video games
Companies: epic, internet archive
Comments on “Epic Allows Internet Archive To Distribute For Free ‘Unreal’ & ‘Unreal Tournament’ Forever”
If HR 9495 passes the house and senate, they could just kill the archive by declaring it a terrorist-organization, with no requirement for explanation, provided the internet archive is a non-profit.
..But then again the internet archive may not exactly be a high priority for them in that regard.
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When the Nazis started burning books, one of their first targets was a trove of research on gender and sexuality from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research). Believe that a fascist will burn knowledge of any kind—or the places that protect and share it. Fascists will burn anything (and anyone) that could challenge the supremacy they believe they hold.
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To paraphrase Rod Serling (from The Twilight Zone episode The Obsolete Man): “Fascism has one iron rule – logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.”
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Same with Communism, hence George Orwell’s book 1984. Not supporting either one position or the other, just pointing out how they share fundamental similarities.
Re: Re: Re:2 Same as communism
In the same way that black is like white. They are both colours.
The point of communism and the point of fascism are completely different. The fact that humans are shit at both things doesn’t make them the same thing.
But you knew that. Quality whataboutism!!
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1984 was about the soviet union. The AC you replied to rightly points out similarities between the levers of authoritarian control employed by fascism, and the levers of authoritarian control employed by Stalin’s USSR. That he mistakenly blames the economics of Communism and not the dictatorial control which exploded under Stalin is not a false equivalence between what we call fascism and the government of the USSR.
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Different AC here but that poster didn’t say Stalin’s ussr. They said “communism”.
Let’s not sane-wash something when it’s plainly incorrect. Fascism ≠ communism
Re: Re: Re:5
Correct, fascism =/= communism, but the communist policy of doublespeak and truth denial is the same as the fascist policy of doublespeak and truth denial practiced by MAGAts.
Re: Re: Re:4
Autrach Sejanoz:
AC:
James Burkhardt:
Thanks for informing us you struggle so much with reading comprehension that you read things that were never said. You do recall that 1984 focused on doublespeak and alt-truth, right?
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TIL: China has Joseph Stalin as its president.
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This. I know of no Communist government that is not authoritarian, so for James Burkhardt to make the case authoritarianism occurred only under Communism as practiced by Stalin is ignorant at best.
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In theory the points are different. The important part is what you end up with: Authoritarianism. While authoritarianism is a core component of fascism, some people like authoritarianism integrated into any political, economic, or other system. And all practiced state communism turned out fully authoritarian in a hurry. But so did a lot of capitalism+other systems, so whatever. And there seems to be a lot of authoritarian envy going on most everywhere the past decade.
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Thats the Authoritarianism.
Yes, 1984 was about the Soviet Union. But to blame communism as the source of the problems cited perpetuates the erroneous idea that a neccisary feature of communism is a dictatorship.
The evils on display in 1984, and in the soviet Union are issues caused by a dictator who has centralized power and planning. They do not rely on economic system, they are a core result of concentrating and maintaining power.
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But imposing an economic system on a populace relies on that power. Otherwise, communism is just a few mostly-insignificant groups of hippies, and nobody’s very worried about it.
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You appear to be agreeing with me. Communism, as it is, is not a threat. Its a threat when paired with a dictator and centralized power. My point was that the issues with the USSR reflected in 1984 were derived not from the economic system, but the power of the government, and the unifying feature of Facism and the USSR – authoritarian control – is what 1984 is warning you about.
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I’m kind of agreeing, but “communism as it is” is different from “communism in theory”. “As it is”, it seems inexorably linked with authorianism. I don’t mind if you want to be pedantic about it, but it doesn’t seem fair to portray people’s stated fears of “communism” as actually being about communism per se.
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Which is exactly the point AC was making, but you missed that.
Re: Re: Re:4
Which economic system isn’t imposed?
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Communism, for one, in the rare case where everyone agrees to do it voluntarily. Also, structures resembling capitalism have arisen numerous times before being co-opted by those claiming authority.
Of course, that’s if one accepts the loaded term “economics” to cover such things. To say that a group of people has (or should have) an “economy” is a political statement itself.
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Sure, things can and have existed, but not at the state level in anything like the modern era. Which is really the only thing that counts here.
People barter, trade, give away, help, and do all manner of things outside the official systems also. Again, they don’t really count for much at all.
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Post about Unreal & Unreal Tournament
Comments degenerate into an argument about communism/fascism/horseshoe theory, etc.
yep, seems about right!
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The subtext is about creative work as property: should it be property, who should own it, under which conditions, how do these things affect society, etc. In other words, politics and economics.
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No, actually. Although 1984 was written during the time of Soviet Union while Stalin was in power, the wider message of the book was about authoritarianism in Communism.
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Yes, great. Very good for my anxiety to have fascism-related quotes be all people have to say to this.
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Perhaps one should seek professional help rather than that of an internet blog?
idk, just a suggestion.
Some people drink, others smoke. I think a lot of our esteemed “leaders” are on much more powerful shit and it shows. It must really suck that in order to support ones habit, one must wear adult diapers. Anyone who willfully ingests horse dewormer in response to covid is probably on some other mind altering drugs, otherwise why would they do such stupid shit?
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That’s a bit of an odd tangent to go off on.
If we’re being realistic, that’s pretty unlikely. Unreal (as a game brand, not the engine) is pretty dead. Most companies will hoard it anyway because why not, but I wonder how much of this is because the IP is effectively dead/retired. If anything, it’s free good PR. I think it’s also getting close to entering public domain, similar to how Diablo 1 did?
That said Epic has genuinely been unique/cool about stuff and they deserve credit regardless.
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Video game copyright lasts 95 years from the date of publication, from what I can find. What makes you think Diablo 1 was close to entering the public domain?
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Software wasn’t explicitly copyrightable in the USA before 1980, so earlier video games might be in the public domain already (but it might take some court battles to know for sure). It’ll be 2075 before any games definitely enter the public-domain without copyright-owner consent.
Historically, id Software would open-source their engines (not public-domain, and not the full game) after 5 years, and it never seemed to harm them. That would be a more reasonable copyright length. Quake II, released about six months before Unreal, has been open-source since 2001.
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I know it seems discouraging to think of a 95-year term that ensures anything we want to recreate today can’t be made until our great-grandsons have reached maturity but with all this obsession over equating it to theft, we need to consider whether we can pull off heists. These things can be as good as public domain if we act like they already are; somebody out there has to have the leverage against the criminal justice system to make it happen, or the willingness to sacrifice everything to bring these games back.
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Err, sorry, public domain is probably not the right word choice there. That’s sloppy on my part. There was something a few years back about it becoming “abandonware”, and it ended up being hosted on the Internet Archive and some other places: https://archive.org/details/Diablo_1996_Blizzard
I could never find anything firm about whether it was legitimate or not, so it’s possible people were just straight up pirating it and it technically wasn’t legal.
But Blizzard seemed to be uncharacteristically lax about it, despite the attention it got at the time, and the fact that it’s on IA and not something more obscure. Soon after, the game got reposted on GOG, which is also pretty un-Blizzard.
I might be misremembering details, as this was years ago, and a lot of it was speculative. As far as I’m aware, Blizzard has never commented on it. It was just strange they didn’t go after it, despite typically being pretty aggressive. Particular since it’s an IP they’re actively monetizing.
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From what I can recall, Blizzard aren’t too bad when it comes to enforcement of their IPs that aren’t live services. That may be why they didn’t make too much of a fuss about D1 being on abandonware sites.
As for abandonware in general, there’s no guarantee that the software has been released with the original IP owner’s consent. For instance, this is from the FAQ of MyAbandonware.com:
We allow you to download old games for free, but we do not take any responsibility for downloads considered illegal in your country. Please try to buy the game first: GOG.com, Steam, Amazon or eBay may be selling your game.
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You may be thinking of DevilutionX, an open source game engine port of Diablo that allows for playing the game on modern operating systems. (And for the record: DevilutionX still requires you to own a copy of the original game.) Diablo was published in 1996, which means it won’t fall into the public domain for another 67 years. And that assumes copyright terms don’t get longer before 2091.
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Err, sorry, that was poor word choice on my part. I didn’t mean public domain in that sense, but I wasn’t sure what wording to use and didn’t think people would read into it. That’s my bad.
What I had in mind was how it’s hosted on Internet Archive and a few other places, seemingly without issue(?). There was talk about it being “abandonware” or something at the time:https://archive.org/details/Diablo_1996_Blizzard
I never could find details of how (or if) that worked, legally. I wasn’t sure how else to phrase it. Blizzard doesn’t seem concerned about IP implications, compared to normal. (It could just be Blizzard being lax, but that seems out of character, especially with how much attention it got). And they later put it up on GOG, shortly after. Which is also pretty un-Blizzard.
I don’t totally get the nuances involved, but Devilution makes more sense to me. Copyrighted code can still be reimplemented (you’re not supposed to copy/paste it, but you can’t copyright the idea). So as long as they’re not using stuff like the assets, which would require the base game, that seems more legitimate. But places like IA are hosting the full ISO, and it’s not like they’re an obscure rom site or torrent.
(I could also be mangling some of the details, this was a few years ago, before the Devilution stuff. Like back in 2019 or so)
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You should probably just describe it as being openly distributed by fans, or something like that.
Sometimes, the copyright is owned by some party who doesn’t know what they own. Maybe they bought some company who’d bought some company, and didn’t get a full accounting of all property owned; there’s no requirement that a copyright holder know they’re the copyright holder, or to police anything. Another comment mentioned the Star Wars 4K77 rips, and Disney could file lawsuits against every ripper and uploader tomorrow if they wanted, despite tolerating it for a decade (it’s copyrighted for another 48 years and they’ve never given official permission).
The Internet Archive does remove access in response to DMCA takedown notices, which gives them some legal immunity, and being an officially registered non-profit library probably helps too. But there’s no special legal status for “abandonware”; it’s an informal term for people infringing copyright and hoping not to get caught. And I guess Blizzard just doesn’t care that much about the original Diablo game, or haven’t noticed it’s there (I can also find RIAA music, Nintendo ROMs, etc., and you know they care; I’ve seen stuff getting re-uploaded after a takedown and staying for years before getting taken down again).
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This, this right here is why you’re insufferable. You make statements that are so easily disproven with even a slight amount of research. This is a fundamental aspect of copyright. Getting this so incredibly wrong should be the biggest red flag to you that you don’t know enough when you decide to respond to articles at length like you have enough knowledge to correct the record.
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It’s easy to find the basics of copyright, but I’ve looked into that particular situation and there isn’t much out there explaining how it fits into it. It could just be they haven’t cared or whatever, but it wasn’t clear. If you’re aware of a resource that explains the details, I’d love a link.
I didn’t think it’s true “public domain”, but I wasn’t sure what it was and used it as a generic term. That was poor word choice on my part, I didn’t expect people to read into it that way.
That wasn’t intended to be a statement of fact (and to be clear, I don’t claim to know much about copyright). I tried to be pretty clear about my uncertainty but looking back, I could’ve worded it better to make that clearer. I wrote it as a quick throwaway comment and didn’t take my normal level of care, so that’s my bad.
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Activision Blizzard still owns the copyrights to Diablo until 2097 (or until ActBlizz goes out of business and someone else buys the copyrights). That ActBlizz seems to ignore how Diablo is easily available online doesn’t change the fact that it still holds the copyright. Unilke trademarks, copyrights don’t expire from a lack of enforcement.
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Yeah, for some reason I had it in my memory that there was more going on than just ignoring it, but clearly I must be misremembering.
I guess it doesn’t really affect the trademark either, since it’s not a competitors product that could be confused or anything (or fair use)?
The idea of copyright on compiled binaries fundamentally breaks the “copyright contract” as intended by the constitution (That is: for the advancement of the sciences and useful arts).
Even if you legally acquire the content, you don’t get it in a human readable format. Of course de-compilers do exist, but it is lacking tons of things. Getting a precompiled binary is similar to only being able to hear someone else read a book, but never actually having the audio files/disk/etc.
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Without the audio files, you can never hear what’s on them, actually.
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you’ve never heard people talk near you?
And you’ve never been in a place where audio is playing that you don’t have control over?
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That requires someone having the audio files, dipshit. If nobody has them, nobody can hear what’s on them just like AC said.
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claiming a previous statement is true because it was intended as a tautology is… not quite the stellar argument you might imagine it is.
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Arguing that something wasn’t intended as a tautology just because you’re unable to read it that way is… not quite the stellar rebuttal you might imagine it is.
> It creates this crazy situation in which a company insists on retaining its copyrights over a video game that it has effectively disappeared with no good or legitimate way for the public to preserve them.
Goodbye, Chucky Egg. Gppdbye, Q*bert. Goodbye, PowerSlave.
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Have you heard of evercade?
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last i checked, Evercade didn;t have the more than 87% of all games that exist that are basically gone forever.
in fact, 90% of the games available for Evercade are basically the most popular games for the particular platform.
Popular games from the past are pretty easy to find, its the ones that hardly anyone bought that are totally gone
like a lot of movies and TV from before the age of the internet.
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In my experience, TV shows from before about the year 2000 can be very difficult to find in decent quality, especially if animated. Even the official Simpsons and Futurama rips being used for streaming are full of obvious de-interlacing artifacts, for example. And we still don’t have a full high-resolution rip of Star Wars (“4K77” had 400 frames that had to be up-scaled, and several thousand from dubious sources).
Where are you getting this number? The lost media wiki shows about 900, but many of these appear to be unpublished builds. If we’re talking about published console games from about 1970 through 2000, we have almost all of those, and full sets of pre-CD games show up periodically if you know where to look.
Probably many amateur PC games, written by high-schoolers and maybe published on BBSes or not at all, are actually lost, but that seems unfair to count. I could just as well say that 90% of all written literature created in the last 50 years is gone (e-mails, shopping lists, unpublished story fragments, school essays, etc.).
Goodbye, Chucky Egg. Gppdbye, Q*bert. Goodbye, PowerSlave.
The whole bargain that is copyright law is that creative works are granted a limited monopoly on the production of that work, with that work eventually arriving into the public domain. If that arrival is not allowed to occur, the bargain is broken, and not by anyone who would supposedly “infringe” on the copyright of that work.
All of which serves as a great justification to go back to opt-in copyright and mandatory registration to get it. Want to have the full power of copyright law on your side? Then you’ll need to upload a copy of the work in question so that when/if it the copyright ever ends the public will have access and won’t have to hope that there’s a viable copy already out there.
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Which only ensures that people without sufficient money to pay registration fees have copyrights. Way to cut the legs out from under (genuine) impoverished creators.
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I have to agree with AC here. If we go back to mandatory registration, then only companies will have copyrights and not only will the status quo currently maintained by one-sided contracts be irreversible (until the law itself is repealed), but things will actually become much worse for innocent ‘infringers’ in a world where everything is so easy to copy and no notice of copyright is required to protect a work.
Well, until someone destroys the Archive, that’s really cool.
Here’s hoping the Archive does survive the current round of crap.
Two timeless classics preserved and free to play? What can I say other than:
Double Kill!
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mah mah mah Monster kill!