All the emulators, etc., work has had its merits, both for cultural preservation effects and for the hacker-y craft achievement, but...
Business-wise, had that bootleg environment not happened, I suspect someone could've made a killing by re-releasing vintage games on current devices.
Now I suspect most of the nostalgia/familiarity demand is satisfied, and won't return even if you were able to delete every existing emulator, unlicensed ROM image and AV assets, etc.
> "Business-wise, had that bootleg environment not happened, I suspect someone could've made a killing by re-releasing vintage games on current devices."
In many cases, the "legal re-release" is leveraging the technology that was used to emulated the games in "less than legal" situations. For example, GOG wraps DOS games with DOSBox, which is how we in the (illegal) abandonware community used to run them anyway.
Another thing to consider: back in the 2000's or so when I discovered abandonware, almost nobody was legally wrapping the games I wanted to play. I wanted to play them back then; now I have no interest. So the illegal abandonware way was the right way for me. Who cares what would eventually happen 10 or 20 years later? I wanted to play the games then.
> I wanted to play them back then; now I have no interest.
IIUC, you're saying that a commercial effort couldn't/didn't offer the vintage games at the time that you wanted to play them, and now you no longer want to play them?
You're also saying that, although you played the games then (with abandonware), the reason you no longer want to play the games now isn't because the abandonware satisfied the desire?
(You think the nostalgia was time-limited, or something else changed for you? Is this generalizable to the rest of the market for vintage games?)
Let me clarify: there was a time in my life, almost two decades ago, where I had no family obligations and lots of spare time, and I went through a nostalgia thing where I played lots of DOS games from my youth. Nowadays this thing holds no interest for me, except more abstractly: I want old games to be preserved, as curious artifacts of an ancient time. I'm sad when a game "dies" of neglect. But playing them? Not for me anymore.
Back then there were "sub-communities" in abandonware. Most abandonware groups were keen to make a difference between them and the so-called "warez kiddies", i.e. people who just downloaded games because they didn't want to pay for them, often recent games but usually whatever. Abandonware in contrast was about preservation, i.e. "how can I play this game? Is there a legal way, or must I pirate it?". There were different degrees of compliance with this "line", but almost everyone understood that Abandonware was about preserving old games, not about piracy just because. Legally there was no difference, piracy is piracy -- but for people in the abandonware community, there was a world of difference.
One of the biggest abandonware websites back then was Home of the Underdogs. The webmaster (a Thai woman who was an investment banker in her country) made a big deal about legality: if she received a takedown notice, she promptly took the download down. And if she found a way to link to a legal way to buy the game, she did so. She provided reviews of the games, so HOTU wasn't just a link farm. If people requested game downloads for games that were obviously available commercially, they got banned promptly.
So let me get back to your final question:
> You think the nostalgia was time-limited, or something else changed for you? Is this generalizable to the rest of the market for vintage games?
- Yes, nostalgia was definitely time-limited for me. I seldom buy DOSBox-wrapped games in GOG anymore; I prefer newer indie games (that I end up not playing because I lack the time, anyway).
- Yes, something changed in me: I grew older, my interests changed, and my spare time became more limited.
- Yes, this is generalizable to all vintage games: if copyright owners don't make an artifact of the digital past available for playing -- and games "want" to be played, they are not static webpages -- then I have the moral right to download them. Within reason, I'm talking about games neglected for decades, not a game temporarily unavailable. Common sense applies.
Would I want to play those oldies now if I hadn't played them back then, thanks to abandonware websites? I dunno. I doubt it, but everything is possible in the realm of "what ifs". Who really cares though? Publishers didn't care back when I had the time and inclination to play them, and that's all that matters ultimately.
And one last thing: some games I downloaded from HOTU that I played the heck out of, like "Sword of the Samurai" [1], which I consider a masterpiece, I later bought from GOG. Why? I dunno, I think I won't ever play it ever again. I simply bought it legally from GOG out of a misguided sense of duty, since the game provided me so many hours of enjoyment almost 20 years ago, when it was abandonware.
So it's not even true that abandonware always translates to lost sales :)
I disagree. Getting MAME running with the ROM you are interested in on modern, consumer hardware might be easy for you and me but I suspect the majority of your target audience for retro games do not know how.
There was always a market there, it just wasn't big enough for the copyright holders to want to bother with.
Business-wise, had that bootleg environment not happened, I suspect someone could've made a killing by re-releasing vintage games on current devices.
Now I suspect most of the nostalgia/familiarity demand is satisfied, and won't return even if you were able to delete every existing emulator, unlicensed ROM image and AV assets, etc.