Dune 2000 Distribution

[EagleEye]

I was wondering what the community's position on distributing Dune 2000 was. Abandonia says it's Abandonware (and that Emperor is protected by EA until 2017), but Abandonia isn't a CnC site, so I have no clue if that's how the CnC community feels about it.

[MrFlibble]

Quite simple, the game was never officially released as freeware, but since it is no longer sold by EA, Abandonia considers this abandonware.

 

In short, distributing the game without official permission is not allowed.

[EagleEye]

Okay.

[EagleEye]

I PMed EA_CIRE and asked him how I would ask EA for official permission to distribute Dune 2000. If he sends me a reply either way, I'll post it here.

 

EDIT: He's looking into it.

[MrFlibble]

Well, I must say that if they really decide to release the game into public domain, that would be an awesome accomplishment

[Revolutionary]

Was the problem not to do with rights to the Dune franchise? I remember reading something about at least one of "the games" (not necessarily Westwood's games) was made with the same licenses as the film.

 

I know there are still soldout software copies of Dune 2000 in circulation in Britain however they are very rare and out of print. As they never come up north i was forced to acquire my version through other (although not through insecure sites) means. My downfall with this stuff however is i never record where i get things from, i had found a reliable nocd version and lan patch (which although had a habit of hanging temporarily when lan was selected) worked.

[MrFlibble]

I think the license from Dine De Laurentiis under which Dune 2000 was created had expired quite some time ago, but the exact details of the situation with copyright around the game are unknown to me. I suppose it is possible that EA won't take steps towards liberating the game simply because the copyright issues are not cleared up.