Games that no longer support their creators

This is a poor article since few readers will have any idea what point he is making. No references are provided nor insights into what exactly is meant by saying they don't support their creators.<p>Is it a comment about the studios having gone out of business because subsequent titles were not as popular?<p>Is it an acknowledgment of the fact most game developers work long hours for below market rate pay, and receive no royalties for their creations?<p>Is it a comment that distributors like Steam, or corporate fat cats take all the money?<p>No idea.

If the point is that there are no residual payments[1] for individual game creators, this list is ridiculously short. Practically all games ever on a shelf are in that category, where the individuals worked for hire with only the hope of short-term bonuses or profit-sharing for successful games.<p>Instead, this list seems to say that sometimes the corporate entities who developed the game, and their shareholders, sometimes aren't getting money anymore for whatever possible success the games get. This doesn't seem to be riddled with moral complexities as much as business complexity. But I know this is an "abandonware" [2] apologia and so I'm not expecting this to be totally serious.<p>I think individual residual payments are a much more provocative idea. I've programmed on games on and off this list, and when I was younger I acted in a few TV shows. I've gotten a couple dollars (literally[3]) in residuals from the Screen Actors Guild, which is 100% more than for my work on games after leaving the developer. So hmm, what can I say about this?<p>First, the economics don't make sense for it right now. Games are like movies in the pre-TV era, where they earn 90% of all the money they will ever earn in the 12 months after their release. But I recognize that with emulation that is becoming somewhat less true.<p>Second, the project structure doesn't support this. This was actually easier to do in the studio system when you had more free agency, movies banked heavily on their highly-visible actors and movies took a few months to film at most. Major game projects require more creators than ever and are now longer than ever, so only a few creators have individual influence over the finished product. So game developers are not in a strong position to get them.<p>Finally, you can make an argument that a game is an work that encapsulates a performance of its creators. This is a rational basis for residual payments, because it's very comparable to acting. This is a promising angle to argue, but still, this is a very unrealistic possibility. But it was interesting to think about, right?<p>[1] - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_industry)" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_industr...</a><p>[2] - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware</a><p>[3] - <a href="http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/6620_102813931789_727716789_2590928_7932573_n.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/6620_10281393...</a>

I am absolutely not sure what to make of this. A lot of those companies have sad histories (Looking Glass especially) and went bankrupt or were closed, but rarely because of piracy. Some examples:<p>- Ion Storm built Daikatana (Romero, <i></i><i></i>*, you know the history) and Deus Ex 2, 2 huge time- and moneysinks that are widely regarded as failures. Add Anachronox, which was mediocre at best.<p>- Ensemble Studios was closed by Microsoft with no specific reason, most likely due to a shift of focus, after multiple really successful releases, piracy or not. Also, Halo Wars didn't get a lot of praise.<p>- Core Design is praised for Tomb Raider I and hated for running the series into the ground release by release. This ended in Angel of Darkness, which was bundled with some ATI graphics boards (9800) on which it didn't run (!). I still have an unplayed but not untouched version of this.<p>- Kaos Studios made Frontline and Homefront which were... ehm... yes. Okayish at best.<p>I could go on. Games is a tough market. Production costs are high and failures are costly. Companies surviving more than 10 years in the gaming market are great. So whats the point of this post? Should we start paying rent to developers that worked on games for dying companies? Should sales of these games be stopped because the money goes to whatever publisher that still puts these games out on the shelves? And whats the thing with piracy again?

Look, these studios/developers had the choice between retaining the copyrights themselves (thereby securing royalties for the life of sales of that particular product) leaving distribution and sales up to themselves, or selling the copyrights to a distributor for a fist full of cash...guess which option they chose! (protip: its the latter!)<p>Almost every developer I know who works for a large studio is paid by the hour for the work they do, not paid in stock, promises of shares of future royalties or in magic beans!<p>I'm not sure I want to live in a world where people help make one single (semi-popular) product and expect to live off it for the rest of their lives...

The saddest thing for me is how many great games and companies are on this list. The following are all games I bought, paid for and loved (one per firm):<p><pre><code> Thief Deus Ex Battlezone 2 Syndicate Wars Magic and Mayhem Planescape: Torment Startopia Hostile Waters </code></pre> The only one on this list I didn't play through to the end is Syndicate Wars, because it's rock hard.<p>Seriously, how come they don't make games like this anymore? Maybe, sadly, the answer is that I'm unusual. :(

The cop-out "no editorializing <i>nudge nudge wink wink</i>" is a bit disingenuous.<p>Even leaving that aside, the list is weird: you can <i>easily</i> argue that LGS folded because their publishers were incompetent (and therefore as an entity they "deserved" to survive), but Bullfrog were bought outright by EA--it's hard to argue that the creators of Dungeon Keeper 2 don't receive any money when in a legal sense the creators of DK2 are EA, as everyone who worked on it assigned their copyright to Bullfrog.<p>Perhaps "no editorial" just means "I'm a bit confused about what I mean"...it would have been nice to have something a bit more substantive (even if it's a position the author doesn't believe) so one could understand the point of the list.

It's pretty sad. I had lengthy talks with friends about this. Most of the games were absolutely awesome, but had bad marketing or had to be completed under time pressure.<p>Deus Ex Invisble War and Vampire the Masquarade Bloodlines for example are bot games that suffered from lack of polishing, performance problems and incomplete/disabled multilayer support. Both of them have great communities that still (yes, really) release very patches to fix bugs and enhance incomplete stuff.<p>I never got what happened to Startopia. It still is a great game. I think it suffered from marketing. There have been full shelves, but I guess nobody knew what it was about. It's a bit like a mix of an RTS and a tycoon game (Theme Hospital, which sadly is on that list too (and has an awesome open source engine remake called corsix-th)) like and features a lot of references to Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, aswell as its humor. It features a good balance of micro and macro management and incorporates features from multiple genres without failing. It even has something from Dungeon Keeper, which sadly is also on this list.<p>A öpt pf these things could also said about other games, like Populous II, Magic Carpet or System Shock. These all have been great games. It's sad that these studios died. I think it is the reason that a lot of people switched to indie games or completely stopped buying games.

This is a list of games produced by defunct studios. Whether a business closes or not may have something to do with piracy... and maybe it doesn't. It's a fairly large jump to make, but that's the apparently desired implication.

I don't see the point. Game developers sold the rights to games, and now they don't get more money. And?

Very few, only owners founders, developers get "supported" by their creations, games or other. They are employees, making works for hire.<p>The idea that copyright is for, or supports creators is the most successful propaganda purportrated by the rights industry.

What about developers that left the company after developing the game, like the Diablo teams?

I don't know what the author mean by that.<p>Of course the people that created Tomb Raider are no longer supported!(Quake, Dune, Deux Ex, Theme Park)<p>Some of them made millions of profit in the process, that was a good reward. They don't need to receive rewards because they already did.