1. What's Abandoneer?

Abandoneer is an online community dedicated to the reviewing and distribution of very old games no longer supported and/or distributed by their original copyright-holders. To date, the newest game that you'll find at Abandoneer was released in 1996, around a decade ago. Our main goal is to provide an excellent service through a functional design, providing excellent files and serious reviews of the classics found here, offering even some degree of technical support on the games, all for free. Maybe we couldn't achieve our goal entirely as of date, but we're working on it.

2. Does Abandoneer charge for games or any service on the site?

No. And we'll never do.

3. Why do you do this stuff?

You could say we're some of the most fanatical fans out there. We do this because we truly love these old games, and feel that the newer games do nothing to replace the classics. If you try them out, you'll see why we go through all the problem of designing a site and mantaining it for nothing in return.

4. Do you get any profit at all from Abandoneer?

None at all. Even the few banners on the site are nothing compared to what we spend in domain names, hosting and, ultimately, bandwidth. Great bandwidth is required to mantain such a site, and it's very expensive.

5. Is there a way I can contribute with Abandoneer?

Yes, actually.

The easiest way to contribute is by visiting our sponsors. Every click on the ads on the right side, below the allies and communities links, can be turned into revenue that is used to pay server expenses. To date, that revenue still doesn't pay even our limited hosting plan, but you see, every little bit counts. If we can get a better revenue, we'll be able to pay for more bandwidth, host larger files, and so on. The good part is that the ads usually have interesting sites to offer, seriously.

If you want, you can also donate any amount of money through PayPal. Again, every little bit can help us expand and improve your experience here. Donations always make a difference, in any amount.

For the regular user, another thing you can do is to register a free account on the Abandoneer Forums and bring us comments on games you play, discussions about the abandonware scene, requests for specific games, cool sites, etc. All this helps us improve the dialog and the community feel on all the scene. Not to mention that the forums are extremely useful, the regulars are really resourceful and most of times do help a lot.

1. What's the criteria for the games listed at Abandoneer?

All our games have been "abandoned" by their copyright-holders as not commercially viable, thus they are no longer sold in stores. They are ultimately out of print at any rate, and the developer generally doesn't offer any support even for those who actually purchased the game long ago. That's mostly why we call it "abandonware". Still, they're true classics, our favorite games of all times.

2. What is "abandonware"?

From Wikipedia: "Abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Alternately, the term is also used for software which is still available, but on which further support and development has been deliberately discontinued."

To even define abandonware and its legitimacy is a complicated matter, so if you want to know more, click here.

3. Is the free sharing of "abandonware" illegal?

Yes, indeed. Even if no longer supporting or selling the games in point, many copyright-holders feel that having their old games online for free is too much competition for their new games. What we don't accept though is to be fooled by the idea that the new games have any originality or fun factor in comparison to the old classics. If we are to pay for the purchase of a game, we'll accept only to do so for a worthy game. The classics were worthy of every cent spent, but now, you can't buy them anymore. That's why we're here. They feel it's too much competition? Understandable. Their new games don't stand a chance.

A game can be released free from their copyright holders in good will for a number of specific reasons, they vary. Sometimes not only they're no longer sold, support has also been discontinued.

A few enlightened companies (such as Rockstar Games) decide to release their classics in a state that it can be freely downloaded even from their official website, thus making legal their free distribution. The idea here is that if no one can profit from the intellectual property over these games on the market, it's pointless to keep people from using them. They don't fear the competition of their old games, on the contrary: they feel these games still have strong appeal and honor the name of the company, even promoting their current releases. But these companies are quite rare unfortunately.


4. I couldn't find game "xyz" on the site. What now?

Be sure to leave a comment on our forums! If the game is a worthy classic and can be enlisted as abandonware, we might as well think of adding it to our selection. If the game you want is still sold in stores, don't even bother contacting us. We're not that kind of site.

5. Would you please e-mail me a certain game?

No. Doing that would pass the idea that we can attempt to distribute (old) "warez". That's NOT the idea. And even if you're looking for legitimate abandonware, the only way to download things from Abandoneer is through the download links. We're not e-mailing any files either way.

1. I clicked on a link and it returned a "download error/anti-leech notice" page. What's wrong with you guys?

If the link was on another site, read our anti-leech notice carefully.

If not, you're most likely behind a restrictive firewall, or maybe you're using some download manager (Go!Zilla, GetRight, etc.). We're aware that popular firewall programs like Norton Internet Security and some download managers mess with our anti-leeching scripts, so you might as well want to disable all of these programs before trying to download anything from Abandoneer. Yes, we know life's a bitch, but our scripts protect this site from file-leechers that would otherwise make the site run a lot slower (or even go offline) on you. It's the price to pay for quality.

2. I just downloaded a file, but it only returns an "Error reading archive" message. It seems to be a corrupt file and can't be executed!

Again, maybe you're using some download manager (Go!Zilla, GetRight, etc.) or it's just your firewall. Disable it before downloading anything from Abandoneer.

If that's not the case, be patient. It's most likely not a broken link or a bad file really. We check all files all the time. Try and download again. If your internet connection is a little unstable, you can get disconnected for a few seconds and that's enough for our anti-leeching scripts to block your download, so downloading can be tricky. Try again, and enjoy!