Got rambling on bluesky about it so I might as well post it here to make it official.
Having become frustrated with companies like Piko buying the rights to lots of old games, hoarding them, and generally just kinda being assholes about it, my goal for 2025 is to do what these companies won't and buy the rights to a 20+ year old game and make it public domain. It may be a terrible Klik & Play game that someone made when they were 10, but it will happen.
This is getting a lot of shares on a thing where there's a caveat that it's probably going to be something awful I buy for $20 and dump into the public domain
Like it'll happen somehow, hopefully it's a multimedia cd-rom from the 90s but....y'know
@MichaelKlamerus Klik & Play, now THERE's a blast from the past for sure!
@MichaelKlamerus yes! Could we make a club to do this?
@HauntedOwlbear Sure! I was serious when I said "this may just be someone's Klik & Play game" but if we can double the budget to $50 and get a DOS game, that would also be acceptable
@MichaelKlamerus how would one even go about doing this? I'm curious how this sort of thing would work if you're not a company.
@tipsheda I have no idea! I guess I should find out
@MichaelKlamerus I wholeheartedly support this endeavor
@MichaelKlamerus I love this idea and I think we should probably organize a group to buy up old game rights like we have to buy up old medical debt. Hell, not just game rights, all intellectual property we can get our hands on and just shove it into the public domain.
@MichaelKlamerus Yes! I have also had this dream.
@MichaelKlamerus
Finally Bob gets his time in the lime light!
@MichaelKlamerus games have been an important part of my life. I'll chip in on this!
@MichaelKlamerus @mos_8502 is there some kind of eBay equivalent for old IP? I bet there's some good stuff out there.
@MichaelKlamerus Start a coop, get some tax breaks, and buy the back catalog of Commodore games. I'm in
@MichaelKlamerus I've often wondered about this myself, specifically how to track down just who owns the rights to a given 'abandoned' title. I'm not a lawyer but I'm convinced that the most surefire way to discover who holds the copyright is to simply put the title up for sale somewhere and wait to see who contacts you with a cease and desist / court summons
@voxel @MichaelKlamerus what if nobody shows up
@eniko @voxel @MichaelKlamerus
Tell you what, a number of the people publishing "official" re-releases to which they've "bought the rights" do not appear to have the correct rights at all, but merely a trademark (which of course does not confer copyright or license to reproduce, port or sell the actual software).
Which means that exactly this is happening.
So the answer is "you get to make money off the back of other people's work". Including the efforts of the pirate preservationists whose de-DRM'd copies are in several cases (cough) Ziggurat (cough) are now being sold.
@MichaelKlamerus haha, i got a job jn the games industry by showing them the klik&play games I made as a 10 year old. Never sold those, though :D