Release Lucasarts Games To PD

[Lechuck]

Just a petition I started to make Lucasarts put the old games to Public DOmain or re-release them as a collestion.
http://www.petitiononline.com/RLAGTPD/petition.html

Don't know why the formating got messed up, it looed good on the preview.

Hello Lucasarts!

We are big fans of the old school point & click adventures and still play them, there has however come up a problem with this among the fans. It's staring to be very hard to get a hold of the games in a legal way, the games have become collector items and fewer of these get on the market all the time. Even well done pressed bootlegs are being sold as originals today, so the hunger for these old games is very big now since the ScummVM project was released. We can now play game like The Secret Of Monkey Island with better graphics and full compatibility with the latest systems, so the interest has begun to rise to get these old games again.

But how should we get the games? You don't make sell them any more, so the only way is to buy a used item that even can be a bootleg of it. The more collectors that buy them the fewer will get on the market, so now there is getting harder and harder of us to get the old games.

But there are some pretty easy alternatives to end this little problem:

• Release them into Public Domain so everyone can freely download the games.
• Re-release them in a single collection and sell them.

We really think Lucasarts should take care of the heritage to the old point&click adventures that made Lucasarts the good name it has today.

The games we would like you to put to Public Domain or do a re-release of are:

Maniac Mansion
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Loom
The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Full Throttle
The Dig

We hope you will take the time to listen to us fans of the point&click adventures.
Take care of the heritage!

[clem]

even if they wouldn't care about the rights to those old games, releasing games is not free - they'd still need to employ some lawyer to check problems with rights (aren't the rights to Samnmax owned by Purcell? The Dig by Spielberg? probably not, but you got to check that kind of stuff first)

and even if, what would Lucasarts gain by it? There used to be instances where an older title was made available for free to promote a sequel (Betrayal at Krondor comes to mind) but these licenses often get revoked (you're not allowed to download BaK anymore) - plus LA isn't going to do any more adventure games.

I'm also not sure if the market is big enough to justify re-releasing the games (from a simply economic point of view) - for years everybody is just 3D-crazy, who would spend money on games a decade old?

anyways, when was the last time any huge corporation followed such a petition?

sorry for this kinda pessimistic point of view

[sev]

anyways, when was the last time any huge corporation followed such a petition?

Vivendi and King's Quest IX comes to mind.

Really, I think that idea about asking them to freeware their games will get no support. If it is possible, I suggest you to change the wording and leave only re-relase bits. I am sure they will not even consider freewaring at this time. This way you can concentrate on a more profitable solution for them and with your petition you can show amount of potential buyers of such collection, so they will be able to have more solid ground for investments.

Current LEC doesn't seem to care much about adventures because they think they're not well-profitable. You can prove the opposite. After all re-release is always cheaper.

It's a pity that starroms went down for an unknown reason. Otherwise it could serve as example when some company sells their old IP without care of making it work on current platforms themselves, but instead pointing to a working OS community project, i.e. MAME in starroms case.


Eugene

[joachimeberhard]

I've signed your petition.

All I really hope for is one big English collection with all the games in it, preferrably all different versions of games in it.

At least, I have that kind of collection in German, that is 10 Adventures collection.

Something similiar for English and the other languages would be great, of course, below the price of 450$ that you have to pay on eBay for a game, to a person who has most probably made himself a copy of the game before selling it to you without the manuals.

Anyway, PLEASE SELL the games again, I wanna GIVE YOU, DEAR LUCASARTS the MONEY instead of those greedy ebay sellers.

[Lechuck]

I know this is pointless since this has been tried before but with individual persons only, but I just wanna get a point out.

Lucasarts don't give a s**t about the fans of point&click adventure games, not until we download thier old non-produced games for free they scream at us.

However I would like to see the retail collection more than freewared ones.

[sev]

However I would like to see the retail collection more than freewared ones.

Then stress on that in your petition.


Eugene

[glokidd]

I actually sent LEC a similar letter not long ago saying that if such a compilation was released id probably buy like three copys just to make sure that i could never lose the ability to play these games. Not to mention it would be a lot easyer on my wallet. Even if you find a good deal on e-bay for these games you are still gambling a little (mosly with postal services. Im still waiting for a boxed version of SMI on 3.5 floppy that i won 30 days ago.
What would be great (although impossible) is if they would re-release the full retail boxed versions, but this wont happen as these boxes take up to much shelf room. What would be even greater is if some private distributor licenced the rights to distribute these games, like how softgold, U.S. gold, software toolworks etc. did way back when. Or maybe if there was some sort of magazine about freeware and open-source development, that did a story on ScummVM and the games it supports, could include a disk with encrypted versions of the games that you buy the 'keys' for like PC-gamer did with MI 1+2 when LEC was promoting COMI (since i'm dreaming anyway).

[Ender]

In any case, I would suggest replacing 'public domain' with 'freeware'. Public Domain means something different, and its not a word LucasArts likes :)

[fingolfin]

Indeed. Public domain is *much* stronger than freeware. In fact, not even ScummVM itself is released as public domain.

[Collector]

On a side note, VU is releasing new compilations of several of Sierra's old Quest series: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6144828.html

[joachimeberhard]

On a side note, VU is releasing new compilations of several of Sierra's old Quest series: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6144828.html

WOW!!!!!!

FINALLY A COMPANY THAT WANTS MY MONEY YAHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

A MUST-BUY!

[glokidd]

On a side note, VU is releasing new compilations of several of Sierra's old Quest series: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6144828.html

this is great, adventure gamers rejoice

[eriktorbjorn]

On a side note, VU is releasing new compilations of several of Sierra's old Quest series: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6144828.html

Not only that, there's a rumor that Activision is planning on releasing a collection of the Infocom games again. Maybe they'll finally get it right this time.

[joeystitch]

With ScummVM being so popular, you'd think LucasArts would be dying to re-release these games. Nostalgic gaming is very big right now and I think that a re-release could spark new interest in the genre. But I think all we'll get out of LA is more mediocre Star Wars games.

[MetaFox]

But I think all we'll get out of LA is more mediocre Star Wars games.

They're not all mediocre. Every once in a while a gem comes out. Though their quality to quantity ratio is way off now since they became exclusive to creating games based on Lucasfilm film licenses.