October 2nd, 2005
Why abandonware distribution does far more good than harm
[A brief note: anyone who’s read my last English post on this blog may be interested in this series of article at Slate.com, written by a journalist who just spent five days in Thailand’s troubled Southern provinces. The last ‘dispatch’ was over yesterday, and I think the writer did a good job of presenting a balance of opinions on this crisis. Now hopefully the world will realize that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is an egotistical power-hungry autocrat who has no idea how close we are to a ‘religious jihad’ situation. I’ll post my comments in a few days; for now, I’d like to write about something else that I’m quite passionate about.]
As webmaster of Home of the Underdogs (HOTU), one of the Internet’s largest abandonware websites, I would be remiss if I never talk about HOTU or abandonware on my personal blog. For anyone who’s never heard of abandonware, that Wikipedia article sums it up nicely.
I started HOTU back in October 1998 as a ‘tribute site’ to games I feel are underrated, both new and old. The site grew to host downloads for thousands of ‘abandonware’ titles because, pretty much by definition, underdogs never sell well and tend to disappear from retail stores and everyone’s memory in a matter of months.
Over the years, running HOTU has become more than a hobby for me. It’s now a testament to a lot of things I believe in, something I can point people to and say “that’s what I mean” when I discuss my belief in the Buddhist philosophy of sharing, my disgust at how often large corporates successfully lobby for laws that protect their (debatable) interests but harm the society at large, and my fondness for games and gaming history.
HOTU is where my passions in Buddhism, free culture, and games fortuitously and gratifyingly converge. Running HOTU gives me no stress, no moral dilemmas, and no impossible demands to meet (well, freeloaders *do* make demands, but their e-mails are much easier to ignore than angry customers and bosses in real life 
), unlike my day job at an investment bank.
So despite massive bandwidth costs (thousands of US dollars a month) that force me to use annoying pop-ups and banners to keep HOTU free, sporadic threatening letters from the ESA, and a demanding day job, I am determined to keep the site alive for as long as possible.
Since the issue of abandonware and piracy in general has already been discussed very often on the Internet (you can read my general views on abandonware in this GameSpot article, and hopefully by now everyone knows that abandonware is illegal), here I want to share my thoughts on one specific issue: the question of whether or not abandonware distribution really ‘harms’ the copyright holders.
Let me first say that I am by no means an ‘expert’ on this subject. I’m just an avid gamer who follows the debate on intellectual property (IP) rights, and reads about the business of gaming from time to time. So if I make any stupid comments or if my ‘facts’ are way off, please feel free to post corrections/suggestions in the comment area.
As summarized in the abandonware definition at Wikipedia, some people argue that abandonware distribution is harmful because:
“…[as seen in successes] some companies like Nintendo and Activision have had in releasing old games for newer platforms like the GameCube, Game Boy Advance and the PlayStation 2, all abandonware has potential value, and that distributing it free on the Internet decreases the profits to be had from a legal rerelease.”
Similarly, the ESA argues in their anti-piracy FAQ that:
“…copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets that are sometimes sold from one company to another. If these titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the copyright owner.”
But what “value” a ten-year-old, long-out-of-print game could still offer its copyright holder? Companies argue that abandonware have two kinds of economic value to them: a) potential sales of a re-release or a modern remake of the game itself, and b) potential sales of new, commercial games that the company might ‘lose’ if people can download this abandonware game for free.
The first type of value does seem relevant. After all, classics like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and many others are being re-released and remade all the time for new systems. If I can download the original versions for free (and running them on modern computers is much easier now, thanks to emulators), then maybe I wouldn’t want to buy their modern versions anymore.
But how many oldies really have the potential to be re-released and remade? The ‘safest bet’ for a company that wants to re-release or remake game would be to choose titles that sold well in the past, i.e. best-sellers like Sim City or Civililzation. Since those games probably account for, at most, only 4-5% of the total number of games ever made, that means 95% of games are unlikely to ever be legally re-released or remade.
Because the vast majority of abandonware really have no more commercial value, abandonware distribution is actually adding value to the companies, not subtracting from it: people who download these oldies (because they are free) can discover great old games they might have overlooked (because of poor sales figures), and might then be inspired to buy new games from the designers or companies behind these games. I have received dozens of e-mails over the years that thank HOTU exactly for this scenario.
Abandonware sites essentially preserve and promote the companies’ back catalogs for free.
As for the second type of value (i.e. sales of new titles that might decline because of abandonware distribution), what many game companies don’t seem to understand is that gaming is not a zero-sum game: just because I can download 15-year-old games freely from the Internet doesn’t mean I will stop buying new games. Could anyone really say that sales of Civilization III were hurt because people can download the first game in this series, 15-year-old Civilization, from abandonware sites?
Some game companies are already smart enough to realize that releasing old games as freeware can have a hugely positive impact on sales of sequels. For instance, Sierra allowed people to freely download Starsiege: Tribes, Caesar, and Red Baron right before the releases of sequels, and more recently Rockstar Games released the first two games in their hugely popular Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series as freeware. I doubt sales of subsequent GTA games suffered as a result.
And Chris Crawford, in this Washington Post article, said:
…it would have been wrong to hold onto the rights to his creation just in case he decided to re-release it. “I feel strongly, if we’re going to do Balance of Power, I should redesign it,” he said. “It’s a different world, we’ve got newer machines. Just spitting out the same thing would be dumb.”
Nobody should force gamers to play crappy new games. If most gamers spend more time playing abandonware than new 3D-accelerated titles, that is not a sign that the authorities should aggressively shut down abandonware sites: it’s a sign that game companies should get their act together, play old games to see what make them tick, and stop putting out crappy products.
So, I really don’t understand how the ESA can claim that abandonware distribution “undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the copyright owner.” In contrast, distribution of the vast majority of abandonware does no harm to the value of IP because that ‘value’ is already nonexistent, and positively affects the copyright owner in the form of free press, free archive, and even free technical support (most abandonware sites have message boards where gamers help each other run oldies designed for old systems, like DOS). More importantly, a whole new generation of game designers is ‘studying’ gaming history from abandonware sites, drawing first-hand inspirations from oldies for their own creations.
Current copyright laws are horrendously out-of-date, especially with regards to software, and are being abused by corporates who are so possessive of their IPs to the detriment of society at large, like Gollum guarding his precious Ring, oblivious to everything else. James Boyle, in his excellent article at FT, says it better than I could:
Thomas Macaulay told us copyright law is a tax on readers for the benefit of writers, a tax that shouldn’t last a day longer than necessary. What do we do? We extend the copyright term repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic. The US goes from fourteen years to the author’s life plus seventy years. We extend protection retrospectively to dead authors, perhaps in the hope they will write from their tombs.
Since only about 4 per cent of copyrighted works more than 20 years old are commercially available, this locks up 96 per cent of 20th century culture to benefit 4 per cent. The harm to the public is huge, the benefit to authors, tiny. In any other field, the officials responsible would be fired. Not here.
In general, companies have to stop treating consumers like simpletons who have only two possible “on/off” behaviors: either they are ‘good’ consumers who never pirate and never make any demands on companies with regards to their IPs, or else they are ‘bad’ pirates who never pay for what they play. The existence of abandonware proves that the reality is much more complicated, involving many issues that are more important than ownership of IP. This “Should I Rip This?” chart to your left from Inreview (click to zoom in; the original is here) illustrates the complexities quite well. In fact, if you replace “artists/composers” by “designers/programmers,” “song/recording” by “software,” “CD” by “modern computers,” and “import” by “download,” you can transform it into a “Should I Download This?” chart for software.
Every company would do well to heed the first sentence on Rockstar Games’ free download series page:
“Respect is everything.”
Popularity: 8% [?]
October 3rd, 2005 at 11:05 pm
I just wanted to mention that I KNOW THAT SMILEY!
Thank you.
P.S: Nice article, UD.
P.P.S: Although we have been wondering why you included X-Com games and Metal Gear Solid, though.
P.P.P.S: It’s just a bit confusing, that’s all.
P.P.P.P.S: Love me two times, girl, I’m goin away!
October 4th, 2005 at 12:08 am
It’ll be interesting to see how this abandonware issue sorts out in the future, as well as other copyright issues. It would be nice to see more inventions and art revert to the public domain after a reasonable period of time, not a 100 years (like it is, in some cases).
October 4th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
as an old user of home of the underdogs all i can say is that you provided me and the nostalgic gamers alike, countless hours of good time with titles that are mostly impossible to find if it wasnt for your underdogs project,
the leading site for all of our nostalgic needs.
how many times i tought “lemme see if underdogs got this game even if i doubt it..” when everything else failed, and indeed was there!
mostly, it shows that exists alternatives to the mass consumption of videogames, where titles are sold,played and forgotten in a week, becouse the next hype-boasting title is already coming out.
gamers today are costantly waiting, waiting for the NEXT- whatever this might be.gamers for the big producing houses are nothing than a market, who need to be costantly fed to be happy.
well underdogs provides an alternative to this.
want to play that old gem made when games where meant for gamers?
want that game that becouse of stupid marketing policies never reached your country?
want that game made by this indipendent team group who realeased it outside the canonical distribution mediums?
or simply, you want that old game that made you dream when you was younger, and that today is impossible to find simply becouse old-dont-sell-anymore?
if the answer to those questions is yes, then the underdogs is your choice.
i live in italy, where a kid who downloads a movie from the net, risks till up to 5 years in jail, for the questionable law that differentiate “profit” from “making-money-out-of-it”.
it works like this:
before the average kid could download the pop song of the moment from the net, and if would simply listen to it, without attempting to make money out of it, it was all good.
now, downloading the same song, the kid supposedly WONT buy the song or the CD it comes from, thus, damaging a “future” profit, even if only the kid knows if he would have bought the cd or not, and obviously they not gonna ask him.
now, bear in mind that im simplifying things at theyr most, but apply this idea to all the “old” markets that now are being changed by the net (basically all the multimedia enetertainment industry like games, movies, music,books etc)
and you realize that a police like this is worst than anything they could have come up with, in a strictly “philosophical” thinking.
now i dont have to try to make money of of some intellectual property of someone else, to operate “illegally”
now if i use any other meaning than theyer “standard procedure” (whatever it is for the appropriate media) to obtain some piece of intellectual property, im damaging an inexistent but assumed “profit”, thus im breaking the law.
im a gamer, a dreamer, i love to read books, to watch movies, and to listen to music, and so does hundreds of thousand of people of my county.
if before i could come across a book by any way, wheter i bought it or i found it, or a friend lended to me, or i downloaded it from the net, and simply read it, now i cant get a book any other means than going to buy it, or go to a public library -IF THE BOOK IN QUESTION IS COPYRIGHTED-.
consider that today everything is COPYRIGHTED, from books too movies,to games to software.
but are we really damaging the intellectual property if friends share books? or are we doing whats is supposed to do with books, sharing its stories it contains?
the law was meant to defend the intellectual property,but now they want to defend profit. the copyright now is a law that not only abuses the consumers, but uses the artists rights to defend theyr creation as an excuse to pursue other means, namely the money-making ones.
im sorry for this long ramble, but i wanted to share my views with anyone concerned the situation we are today.
and being able to do so, on the hotu’s webmaster blog simply makes it more cool
ps.
im sorry for my english, as is not good as i would like to be.
i hope i managed to make some sense.
Mork
October 5th, 2005 at 3:03 am
I agree. and I would offer my own rehashing of exactly what you jsut said, except you already said it and I don’t neeed to parrot what you jsut said. :0 what I can say, though, is that so many older games have a soul and spirit that new games can’t hold to. it was wonderful to see so many SNES games rereleased for the GBA… but not all of them were.. sadly. and a portion of the released games that were rmade… were subpar. isn’t that always the case? At least in most cases.. the original being the best, the new one over shadowed by shiny graphics and loosing hte soul of the original game.
Could, say, Eye of the beholder be ported to a new system successfully..>? yes, actually, I thinkso. but it wouldn’t be the same. it would be tweaked for better story, easy of use, and more shineies. if the right company did it, it would be grand.. but I don’t htink they’d ever revisit an old property and old story. not with so many other games set on similiar.. >neverwinter nights… D&Donline.. etc.
Mostly.. I think.. I jsut wanted to thank you for providing such a service to us all.. if I coudl donate money to you, I would, but ‘m barely makign ends meet… but if there’s another way I can help.. . please do tell me? I love old games.. and I love gettign the cahnce to see and play games that I might never have been able to play otherwise, but for they being before my time (I’m only 21 and I didn’t get my first PC til.. 7th or 8th grade… Never mind when I really started gaming..)
October 5th, 2005 at 4:09 am
Hello Fringer (or should we use “Underdogs”?).
First of all, I had never thought of the “sharing” on HOTU as a part of a buddhist approach… but it really makes sense.
The matter of copyrights/patents and the surrounding subjects is also a topic that I’ve been thinking about since I dived into the world of GNU/Linux and other free software. If I may remind a few fundamentals (based on French law) for the people who are not familiar with the debate:
- copyright (”author right” in France) is granted to authors, but when you are working for a software company, the company retains the copyrights.
- author right lasts until the death of the author + 70 years.
- software is covered by author right(European and French law don’t allow to grant patents on software “as such”).
…but one aspect of the video games industry (in fact, all types of softwares) is that it evolves fast in terms of technology as it relies a lot on the possibilities of the hardware. Computers today are 150 times faster than the one I bought 10 years ago. Compare “Far Cry” with “Castle Wolfenstein”. Playing a 10 year old video game today requires as much passion/nostalgy/curiosity as watching a 50 year old movie… but finding it for sale can be tough. And you also expect it to be cheaper than the modern games.
So why all these troubles with ESA members (and editors)? I can just try to guess. And I guess they have understood that the society of tomorrow will rely even more on “information”, and that their approach is to lock the culture, the information, all that is not material… to label it as “product” and sell us our own cultures, sell us “ideas”, sell us something that rightfully belongs to everyone by common sense but not by law (any more). But this is just a guess…
October 5th, 2005 at 11:09 am
First off, for the sake of brevity in the rest of my comment, I’d like to point out the one major issue I have with this post: that the Wikipedia article and GameSpot articles you mentioned are both absolute garbage. The Wikipedia article has always been rather disorganized and the GameSpot was so poorly fact-checked that it’s little more than a poorly-written editorial. But that’s beside the point as neither of those articles have anything to do with your thoughts (I would suggest that you consider providing other resources of a higher quality for any non-abandonware-familiar readers you might have — or acquire in the future — such as Trixter’s excellent MobyGames editorial).
That out of the way, I think that you take the wrong stance in your assertions on IP by missing what I feel to be the most important point. Copyright and patents are ideas that I believe to be of the utmost importance in the progression of the arts and sciences because they work. However, the modern concept of “Intellectual Property” (the penultimate of baseless corporate legal-speak) is the commoditization of human knowledge and culture, a fact so succinctly encapsulated in software patents. Software patents are diametric to the spirit of the scientific process, they should be abolished for the same reason that patents were never granted on mathematical theorems in that they are universally constant (when referring to algorithms, UIs and other “concepts” are so vague they’re little more than legal leverage). Similarly, copyright is now treated as an aspect of the “IP commodity”. Originally copyright was intended as a vehicle by which an author, a creator, an artist could afford themselves a livelihood based upon their work — the fiscal security to continue to continue in their artistic endeavors. Now, it’s a legal tool by which a select and centralized few control the works of others.
When copyright and patents ceased to be reasonable methods to foster innovation and became commodities to be bought and sold the world took a giant step backwards. You, more than anyone, UD, can empathize with the hundreds of developers whose work has become so far removed from their control that mass “piracy” of it has no effect whatsoever on the original author. Sure, the industry likes to put forth the straw-man argument that without them the developers would lack the requisite financing, an argument that quickly looses any semblance of truth when put into perspective. 75+ years is an obviously inflated number, a number which represents exactly what copyright has become: an insurance that future products based upon a brand need no innovate to capitalize.
A direct result of this issue is a point you indirectly hinted at through citation that I don’t think you paid enough attention to in your article: that abandonware serves a critical purpose in the archival of classic game, and no site exists that better serves this purpose than your own (which archives the games of which the fewest copies exist), something it does fantastically, I might add (I think you were excessively humble in your mention of it above). If measures are not taken now we’ll find down the road that due to “innovations” like DRM and further copyright-extensions that all but the most mainstream has been lost to the annuls of history. We’ve regressed from the Library of Alexandria to a world in which so much of our film and written word of the past century has been permanently lost. “IP” is costing our society far more than money, it’s costing us not only progress, but our history.
October 5th, 2005 at 11:11 am
I’d also suggest providing at least some information as to how posts should be formatted so that petty things like line breaks aren’t lost without the possibility to edit
October 5th, 2005 at 11:28 am
Jim9137: Hey, what are you doing here! Stop monkeying around and finish those reviews! *cracks whips*
From reading your comment, I’m not sure how I take the “wrong stance” in my “assertions on IP.” First, this article isn’t realy about IP in general (that’s for future articles) - it’s just about a very specific issue of how abandonware distribution is not harmful to the copyright holders (and that’s why I chose to restrict the discussion of “value” to foregone profits only; although abandonware does have a lot of social value in the form of preserving history, etc., that’s not the kind of things that companies are interested in, so this issue isn’t really relevant in my argument. I just wanted to show that even if companies care only about economic value, abandonware does not hurt them overall). Second, I agree pretty much with everything you said in your comments - I never think copyright laws should be entirely abolished; I just think they are severely inadequate. Anyway, your comment is probably more applicable to a future article that I have yet to write, but thanks for sharing anyway 
I’ll look around for some hacks or mods that can make comments look much nicer.
Plix: Hey, nice to see you here
I link to Wikipedia and GameSpot articles because these are decent “mainstream” articles on abandonware that are good introductions for those who’ve never heard about it before.
I’ve never figured out how to make line breaks and other formatting work properly in WordPress, sorry about that
October 5th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
A preview button would be beautiful
To clarify my point, I see what you’re saying about the focus of the article, but I consider it impossible to argue about the economic value of abandonware without addressing the underlying issue of copyright. Furthermore, I wasn’t by any means trying to imply that copyright should be abolished, nor presuming to assume you thought otherwise (since obviously neither of us do). Rather, I was attempting to get at the underlying truth of the matter: that copyright and patents no longer serve the purpose for which they were originally intended.
As for the articles, I understand your intention, but I don’t think the Wikipedia article is of a high enough quality to suggest linking to it, and that GameSpot article is wrong and misleading in so many respects that I think it’s best left forgotten. For example, I’m not a laywer, but even I can distinguish between trademark and copyright, something Will Wright confuses quite severely. That’s a single example from a laundry-list of mistakes and misleading comments in that article, an article which presents many of those developers as versed in the laws which they’re referring to (which they are quite obviously not) and treats the statements of the publishers as real, rather than PR + legal team, responses. It’s not perspective, it’s spin. The article doesn’t even bother disclaiming the interests and benefits. The biggest irony here is that you make the point that abandonware webmasters put quite a lot at risk to do the publishers a service. I’d submit that it was abandonware sites and classic emulation sites (such as Dave’s Classics back in the day) that proved the interest, stirred the demand, and instigated the rerelease of many of those classics compilations (Namco Museum, etc). So, it basically reduces to the classic gaming community taking a large legal risk to foster a market which has earned the big publishers a good deal of money, and they’re still leaving the original developers out in the cold.
October 5th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
Oh, and as for seeing me around: these days I’m far more involved in the discussing the philisophical aspects of the scene. I still frequent a few forums and DFL and rarely actually hit the sites. I’ve dipped into the HOTUD forums a few times, but they’re not really my type of place (the signal-to-noise ratio is rather poor, the population isn’t quite as tightly-knit and consistant, etc. which is why I much prefer something such as this).
October 7th, 2005 at 3:27 am
Certain forums have been clinically proven to drive you insane. I see you’ve met Stryke 9 recently. You’re way out of his league intellectualy and emotionally/spiritually (good comments here btw), and I can certainly understand what you mean by the signal-to-noise ratio. I’m masochistic though.
You might like to check out my board (see link) if you’re interested in studies like philosophy. It’s a very close-knit community, but diverse. All subjects welcome, and they’re even discussed seriously most of the time.
And Underdogs (Fringer), I’m afraid I didn’t win the powerball jackpot so I can’t donate to the abandonware cause just yet!
October 7th, 2005 at 5:32 am
I’ve met Stryke 9 before (check my post history) and I’ve visited the HOTUD forums once every blue moon since they were first put up. I’ve actually been a HOTUD visitor since UD first created the site 7 years ago (I was a essentially an employee of Surf Solutions during the days when it was hosted there).
It’s a great forum, it’s just a little off-balance, which can cause massive headaches. BrendanD, for example, was a really nice and helpful guy (in many parts of the abandonware community, not just the HOTUD forums), he just had a little trouble putting things in perspective. Stryke is a fairly insightful person, too, he’s just extremely obtuse and doesn’t see things from more than one perspective.
October 7th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
It’s very difficult to be insightful when you’re narrow-minded. I’m not saying Stryke 9 isn’t intelligent, but he has very little wisdom.
Personally, I never got along with BrendanD, and don’t really agree with your assessment of him at all. But nevertheless, everyone has their good and bad side.
What I like to see in people is their willingness to improve themselves, admit their mistakes, and go forward. There’s a difference between taking responsiblity for what you put out into the world and denying you ever put out anything.
There’s a buddhist principle that I use to violate often, and I know it. Since I consider myself mostly buddhist and it’s always bothered me. It has to do with the way I use speech. But anyway, I suppose we’re really getting off topic here, so have a good one Plix.
October 8th, 2005 at 8:12 am
Companies often use the argument that the programmers and artists who toiled on the work deserve to get paid (ignoring that most of them aren’t getting residuals). But my guess is that 10 or 15 years down the road the original designers would rather see people using their product even if it has to be free. I feel the same way about authors. Publishers drop books out of print after 15 or so years (far less if it didn’t sell to begin with). I’m betting most authors, given the choice of their work being unavailable at any price or free would choose free. At least there is some chance that the user will like the early work enough to purchase current work.
October 8th, 2005 at 10:42 am
There have been a good number of interviews and articles about abandonware which have posed that very question to developers and elicited that very response. The saddest part is that the few developers who do take reservation (Will Wright comes to mind) almost always do so because they believe that old games falling into the public domain will hurt the publishers, not them. Hell, even Al Lowe (who does recieve Leisure Suit Larry residuals) has repeatedly stated that he loves the fact that people are still playing his games after all these years.
October 17th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
One of the major issues, and one that appears to be changing, is the fact that a lot of older games RE being ported, or redone, or rebuilt. Fanmade remakes are appearing more and more.
Sourceforge alone has seen what could be considered to be a major turnaround in gaming perception. In terms of adding value per se, one of the perceptions from the companies point of view is that these games are “on the shelf” and really not of commercial value (to them anyway) with the followon that you mentioned..they stay to see the new shiny things on the shelf.
Customer loyalty is an intangible asset at best..and yet any business owner knows the value of “goodwill”, in an IPO or in a small mom and pop store on the corner, “goodwill” remains a major part of any business.
Repeat clientele (cashflow) is the lifeblood of any company anywhere. My guess is that in the rush for newer and better and faster with more bang and boom….they’ve forgotten the issue of quality gaming.
Yet it remains.
The fact, UD, that you are still up and running is a tacit admission by games companies..and an acknowledgement that perhaps, in a small way, the spirit of the law is more important than the letter.
Only time will tell.
October 19th, 2005 at 2:37 am
Hey, Brendan! Sorry, this is kinda offtopic, but I cant seem to contact him in any other way. ;D
This is Drunk Cow, so, yea, you should send me a e-mail sometime, I havnt crushed you in starcraft in far too long ;D
So, yea, send me something at davidrose349@hotmail.com
November 3rd, 2005 at 8:25 am
Just thank God for HOTU….You have archived and kept alive so very many old, forgotten treasures….More than anyone else on the face of the Earth.
I’m always amazed at the sheer number of old forgotten games that you have saved from total oblivion…and I, for one, am grateful from the bottom of my heart that SOMEONE out there cares as much about gaming and the history and culture of gaming as I do..
Thak you, thank you, thank you…You DO have the undying gratitude of more of us than you may ever know.
November 27th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
I found it so kewl upon finding out in addition to what a wonderful site HOTU is for doing expeditions into the history of interactive entertainment, that you are THAI! I can relate, being partThai myself. You’ve given lost pets a loving home. I’d like to graciously thank you now after several years of having been aware of this… I didn’t speak up before, but I will now.
(Ahhh… if only a new version of Cosmic Osmo would finally come out. Doesn’t look like it’s likely with Cyan’s current state.)