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[The Fifth Horseman]

We stopped adding reviews of ESA-protected games. My question here is, why? We can always add the download later on when we get the permission from ESA back. And there are some great ESA'ed games that would deserve getting reviewed and discussed on the site.

PS. Does anybody knows when we'll be able to apply to ESA for getting the hosting permissions back?

[ReamusLQ]

I say we wait until their management changes, or their Public Relations guy or something like that. Anyone know any good hitmen?

[Sebatianos]

No. I agree with the horseman.
It has been done before! We did add some games (Simon the Sorcerer...) that were not downloadable from day one.
This is not a download site - it's mainly a site paying tribute to great old games (so if you prepare a review of a great game - like example Sam'n'Max Hit the Road I think it should be added to the site (but the truth is, we give priority to games, that we will host - so people can download too).

[Tom Henrik]

IF we add only reviews for games, we will get tons of e-mails flaming us for not hosting them. HUGE negative side-effect.

By adding only reviews for games, we will get a lot of visitors. HUGE positive side-effect.

We will consider it, but it won't have priority.

[A. J. Raffles]

But the thing is that when we add reviews for those games, we can't really mention it in the news section or we'll have lots of those angry "WHO R ESA? I WANT THIS GAME!!!! WHERE TO DOWNLOAD PLZ??? " posts. Amazingly enough, there seem to be quite a lot of people who don't actually read anything on the site and just head straight for the download links.
And I suppose you could also argue that Abandonia is primarily meant to be an abandonware site, so adding too many reviews for games which aren't "abandoned" will only confuse the visitors of the site. It might also give us new visitors of the kind we don't really want, because Abandonia would then turn up as a search result for people searching for illegal downloads.

Edit: Meh, Tom beat me to it. That's what you get for taking too much time to imitate an anti-ESA post. LOL

[MrBackAlleySka]

Originally posted by A. J. Raffles@Jul 18 2005, 07:48 PM
"WHO R ESA? I WANT THIS GAME!!!! WHERE TO DOWNLOAD PLZ???"

ROFL!!!
Im SO adding that as a quote

[Shifter]

Originally posted by MrBackAlleySka+Jul 18 2005, 09:42 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (MrBackAlleySka @ Jul 18 2005, 09:42 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-A. J. Raffles@Jul 18 2005, 07:48 PM
"WHO R ESA? I WANT THIS GAME!!!! WHERE TO DOWNLOAD PLZ???"

ROFL!!!
Im SO adding that as a quote [/b][/quote]
Haha

Right on man :P

[Shrek]

Originally posted by A. J. Raffles@Jul 18 2005, 08:48 PM
But the thing is that when we add reviews for those games, we can't really mention it in the news section or we'll have lots of those angry "WHO R ESA? I WANT THIS GAME!!!! WHERE TO DOWNLOAD PLZ??? " posts. Amazingly enough, there seem to be quite a lot of people who don't actually read anything on the site and just head straight for the download links.
And I suppose you could also argue that Abandonia is primarily meant to be an abandonware site, so adding too many reviews for games which aren't "abandoned" will only confuse the visitors of the site. It might also give us new visitors of the kind we don't really want, because Abandonia would then turn up as a search result for people searching for illegal downloads.

Edit: Meh, Tom beat me to it. That's what you get for taking too much time to imitate an anti-ESA post. LOL

IMHO, i don' t see that as a problem, in fact i belive we already have some games here that are not downloadable, meaning we only have the reviews. yes, i' m refering to the games we had and that have becomed ESA protected - note that i' m not against ESA, they are just doing their job and should be respected for that.

and if people in search for illegal stuff just turn up here, that' s good, as long as they understand they won' t get any of that here and why (i' m not even going to bother with that "is abandonaware illegal?" stuff) - maybe we can make some of that people aware for what the are up to.

as for visitors to be confused, as long as there is an explanation to why they can download the games, they will have nothing to complain. besides, this site is the best for people who have problems running old games; and it would be great to get some recognition for that.

[Sebatianos]

Originally posted by Shrek@Jul 19 2005, 12:25 PM
and if people in search for illegal stuff just turn up here, that' s good, as long as they understand they won' t get any of that here and why

Good point!

Most people don't even know it's illegal to download stuff - because they simply do a few clicks and off they go. I doubt they are being told - you are not alowed to do so - it's wrong.

This could actually help them to become aware of their own law braking (and it might be just a tiny step towards cleaning up some completely warez sites).
But it would be a whole lot of work!