Please support video game abandonware preservation initiatives in any way you can. Iâm about to start my shift at work so I donât have the time to do the write up Iâm planning in my head but Iâll update this post this evening with resources and links. But please⊠we canât let these companies keep playing in our faces. itâs starting to get out of hand đ
I think "game preservation" initiatives was more what I meant when I wrote the original post in kind of a huff, but I digress. Pls support game preservation.
What is abandonware? To put it as simply as I possibly can, abandonware is software that is no longer for sale or handled by its owners/copyright holders. You can typically only get abandonware secondhand and/or through piracy. Yo ho ho.
Most of the time, when you buy a game digitally, you don't actually own that game. You own a license to play that game on the console or platform it was purchased for. These licenses are guard rails put in place by companies to protect against piracy (if you have ever had the experience of torrenting a game only to be barred from playing it pending receipt of a code, this may be why).
This also means that the company that owns the game has the right to remove the game or otherwise reduce your access to it. If a game is digital only, you run the risk of losing that game to obscurity (Delisted Games started as a way to keep a running archive of games that were removed from sale and distribution) if they're taken down by publishers. Video games are an art form and art is conversational by nature. Chipping away peoples' right to access and maintain games strikes me as antisocial, but I'll leave the editorializing there for now.
Here are sites to support. Emulating games is fairly simple and is one of the most common ways games are preserved. There are many step-by-step guides on both Youtube and the wider internet that are easy to follow, even if like me, you don't consider yourself tech-savvy. Sites like Vimm's Lair, Old Games Download, and the Internet Archive come to mind as safe collections of ROMs
As a Silent Hill enjoyer I was fairly recently introduced to Gog.com for PC games. They recently restored the nigh on unplayable Silent Hill 4 for use, as well as another favorite of mine, the Dino Crisis series. Gog collects license free games to be shared again. Games are not free on Gog, but in my experience are never "release day" expensive. I think the costs are fair because all the games have been vigorously bug tested and otherwise modernized before being shared again, and there's the option to use a totally offline installer. Unfortunately, Gog is going offline in a few months, so this is a finite resource as of today July 5th 2026.
Here's some other groups to support
Video Game History Foundation
International Center for the History of Electronic Games (Strong Museum of Play)
MyAbandonware
This post is unfortunately US centric as that is where I feel most confident. I didn't want to just randomly add links for things I have not used myself. If you are a supporter of any international or country/region specific preservation initiatives, please feel free to add on to this post
