If you questions or concerns aren’t answered in this guide, you may contact any of our staff with your issue and we will do our best to answer all of your questions. -The Management

Abandonware:

Abandonware One of the most common questions a webmaster receives is what is Abandonware. Abandonware is categorized as software of any kind for any platform which is no longer sold in retail or online and is no longer supported by its manufacturer thus making it nearly impossible for the general public to have access to such titles. Abandonware sites have two general goals, to provide the public with their favorite oldies which they can no longer buy and to motivate developers to begin selling and supporting their older titles as 3D Realms, Lucas Arts and ID Games have done (just to name a few). If anyone tells you Abandonware is legal, they are dead wrong. Though we believe Abandonware should be legalized, the game manufacturers hold a 75 year copyright on the software even if the company no longer exists. Thus, all Abandonware is illegal and you are excepting all legal responsibility by downloading Abandonware titles.

Warez/Old Warez Warez is a term used to describe an illegally distributed software product which is still sold and supported by its developer. Old Warez are simply Warez titles that date back several years. As an Abandonware webmaster you must make sure not to mistake Old Warez titles for Abandonware as many developers have now began supporting titles that may have been Abandonware a few years back. Do NOT assume just because a game is old it is automatically Abandonware, that kind of thing WILL get you kicked out of this ring.

IDSA You may often hear about the IDSA and its crack down on Abandonware. Organizations such as the IDSA are hired by developers to protect their copyright rights. If an IDSA representative contacts your site, immediately remove the content in question or serious legal consequences may follow.

Software:

File Extensions Most Abandonware games are distributed with one of the following extensions: .ace, .zip, .rar or .exe. If the file has any of the first three extensions, you will most likely need a program called WinAce to “extract it” because the file is “compressed”. You can download WinAce from our downloads section. If the file has a .exe extension, it can be one of three things, a setup file that installs the game for you, a self extracting archive which extracts the game for you or it could be simply that the game is a single .exe file. In either scenario, no special software is required. Once you’ve extracted the archive, look for a .EXE file as that will most likely be the file that will start your game.

DOS Games Many old DOS games such as Pac-Man or Space Invaders will run too quickly on modern computers. A DOS game can be identified by the black window that appears prior to the game launching. In order to slow down your computer, you can pickup the Mo’Slo utility from our downloads section. If you are using a recent version of Windows such as Windows XP, you may have trouble running DOS games. Download the DosBox and see if it can be of any use to you. Feel free to use our forums if you have any further issues playing DOS games.