Abandonware and the spy I loved

Legally tricky, culturally interesting
If games like “No One Lives Forever” end up in abandonware archives because nobody wants to sell them anymore, this is a culturally interesting, but legally sensitive thing. Often there are still copyrights – sometimes split between several companies – that are infringed by free download offers. On the other hand, abandonware archives work according to the motto “where there is no plaintiff, there no judge” and trust that if no one is interested in selling a computer game, no one has a problem with it being offered for free.