why discontinued?

[starlord]

I've been away a while from the matrix forums, and thus, I may have lost track of corporate developments lately, but I wonder, why discontinuing starshatter: the gathering storm?[:(]

I've met many many people yanking their hairs off their craniums because they can't find where to buy the game anymore (download content or retail)...

Couldn't we expect another stock of starshatter: TGS CDs in the future please?[:)]

thank you for your advice.

best regards.

mikael.

[GREAPER]

The game has been discountinued because it cannot be finished without crashing. The developers will no longer provide any support for there great idea but lousy playing game. What good is a game you can not see to it's conclusion. For the complete story check the forums for the Lack of support for starshatter tgs thread.

[wdboyd]

Salutatons,

Others have reported successfully completing the game campaign after installing Patch 5.0.3.

From my point of view, Starshatter as a platform for space sim modding, is outstanding.

Regardless... the bottom line, for a business, is sales or sales contract expiration. [:(]

The above mentioned lack of support, obviously contributed to the current situation.

[Desertcyclone]

Hey, this isn't directly a related question to the thread but it kind of is... if the game cannot be found without ridiculous searching and has been discontinued, is it legal to "pirate" it?

[Bob M.]

No. The rights holder for this piece of intellectual property would have to formally relinquish those rights and place the code in the public domain. Abandonware is a myth. It's just that the owner of the intellectual rights for many of those games is often unclear because many older, low value titles weren't included specifically in buyout contracts of failed game makers. Thus the company that should own the intellectual rights for an older game won't sue site posting those games because of the legal costs to sue versus the return from a small web site's coffers given the unclear status as to whether they actually own the intellectual property. You might try contacting the author and see if he's willing to release the code to you.

If you need a more concrete example of your logic for pirating the software - if the diamond mining companies reduced production further to drive up diamond prices and increase scarcity, would it be ok to steal diamonds from the mines since diamonds are really expensive and hard to find?