Petition for Warcraft 2 Remastered?

[Cel]

Blizzard announced a long time ago they would stop and they did stop any support relative to their old titles such as warcraft warcraft2 lost vikings diablo etc...
Their product are only playable because fans keep them updated but most of these games cannot even be installed properly on modern machines without external inputs.

They still own the right on these games and can still oppose their free distribution though this is very unprecedented.


On a side note:
Imagine one second that Blizzard did what gog did directly, re-releasing warcraft2 with nothing changed just making sure it runs on modern computers and making people that already bought the game buy it again for it to be fixed.

Do you think people would think that is ok?

Now if yes then what stops them and any company from making you pay your games all over again the next time DirectX or your OS is updated?

Why do you think no one does that or at least used not to?

All things considered...
I guess people buying WOW extensions after they were sold a subscription that was supposed to be for the game to receive new content makes me doubt my point still holds, but I think you get the idea...

Companies used to have standards, and customers used not to buy video games like a 10 year old buys candies...
 

[Zelya]

Imagine one second that Blizzard did what gog did directly, re-releasing warcraft2 with nothing changed just making sure it runs on modern computers and making people that already bought the game buy it again for it to be fixed.

Do you think people would think that is ok?

Yes, this is OK. Except one item "buy it again". If you have your historical copy, I think you can play it with DosBox, new ddraw, on old PC whatever you have. From another side, I had no possibility to have a legal version of Warcraft 2 at all. It was crazy situation in my county in 90th and Warcraft 2 was available only like this:



When I wanted to organize an offline tournament it was a trouble that I have no any legal version of the game. The only workaround was CD from e-bay, which cost very much. Now this is not a problem. And I have bought both of GOG versions immediately, to pay Blizzard for my happy hours I had 20 years ago and have now.

And new players had no possibility to get a legal version if they want. Now they have. You can play as it was before GOG release.

Now if yes then what stops them and any company from making you pay your games all over again the next time DirectX or your OS is updated?

I don't pay Blizzard for "updating" my Warcraft 2. I pay only for old game as a whole product.
OK, lets talks about OS. I have found a rare, old but very useful specific hardware. It run under Windows 3.1. I cannot buy Windows 3.1. because it "has no updates" and it is "abandoned". So I cannot use my specific hardware in a legal way. I want to pay money but I cannot. Is it OK?

By the way I had a similar situation ~10 years ago and MS send a response that I'm free to buy any modern OS, but do not install it. Then I can install old OS I need in any way I want, but without using illegal sources (like forbidden torrents or pirate's disks) . And this installation will work for me.

PS In any case I'm happy that anybody who want to BUY old software has possibility to do this.

PPS And one more related to my first post in this topic. I just wanted to point that there is no term "abandonware" for market. We can talk a lot if this game is old or not, if we need it in shop or for free, and so on. But this is just abstract discussion. Just for fun. And it does not make sense for real life now. But any discussion is good, because it can change something in future.

[Cel]

Say you bought Warcraft 2 BNE edition, you had already bought Tides of darkness and then Beyond the dark portal you basically bought access to Battle.net and a cd that works directly on OS no dosbox shinanegan anymore that is what it was.

Except that installation wont update anymore it wont allow you to play legally on GOG either and you cannot register these CD keys and simply download GOG's version either this product is broken on its own.

Unless you get external softwares and hacks you cannot play your game anymore the way you used to unless you buy it all over again from GOG and it still wont work as well as it used to since GOG was barely even working for multiplayer from what I've read.

New ddraw is not supported by blizzard they did not release that, fans did if you are using it you are not following their old TOS policy...

Abandonware never was a "legal" term no one ever said it was, but it does represent a category of products.
These products usually companies do not milk or enforce copyrights on.
Again not saying they cannot do it just saying it is very unlikely and unprecedented and there are reasons for that.

And most of the time the reasons involve company brand standards and respect for customers...

Now GOG could have released a patch for BNE edition available for those who already have the game to fix it legally but they did not, and you can certainly already guess why that is...