"Abandoned Games" exemption?

[Arcana]

Can't think of any other product where consumers are not allowed to maintain functionality of goods once the producer ends support.

Actually, I can reverse that statement.  I can't think of many product categories where the producers of the product lose their legal rights to protect it when they stop supporting it.

The game client hasn't stopped working.  You can still play demorecords with it, and you can also use it in projects like Icon.  The client still functions just fine.  You're trying to split the hair that because the game servers no longer exist, the game client should be considered to be "broken" and you have the right to "fix" them by recreating the servers and all of the content that existed on them.  But that's like saying if you bought a radio to play a very specific set of music from a specific radio station and they go off the air, that entitles you to make your own copies of that music to play yourself.

Ultimately it does come down to supplier vs. consumer rights. If all we did as consumers was subscribe on a monthly basis, then NCSoft reserved the right to shutdown the servers. But we actually bought the clients themselves, and certainly have a right to maintain client functionality on some level.

I should also point out that you did not actually purchase the client.  You purchased a box with a manual and a disc.  The EULA specifies that you purchased a limited license to use the client.  NCSoft explicitly stated in the license agreement that they had the right to revoke the right to use the client at any time, and had the right to shut down the servers that contained the game content at any time.  You have no ownership rights to the game client software.

[Arcana]

Not true. Cryptic sold everything to NCsoft. They retained the rights to the base engine the game is built on, but the engine at sale and the engine at game-close are so different as to be completely incompatible with each other.

Although I'm obviously not privy to the NCSoft/Cryptic acquisition agreement I'm quite certain it either states that Cryptic sold the CoH software engine to NCSoft but required NCSoft to grant them a license to use it and any of its technology components in their own software, or conversely (and I think far more likely) they sold all of the IP to NCSoft but only granted NCSoft a non-exclusive license to use the CoH software and to extend and modify it in any way to support City of Heroes and any derivative work.

The latter is I think more likely than the former for the simple reason that if Cryptic actually sold NCSoft the software, including all copyright ownership, then if anyone at Cryptic made the mistake of using some of that code in another product at Cryptic then NCSoft, as the new owners of all that technology, could hypothetically claim that software infringed on their rights.  By licensing the game engine to NCSoft, Cryptic avoids the problem of having to make sure none of CoH's code exists in any other Cryptic work.

It would also explain why Cryptic's name was still on City of Heroes screens: it incorporated a licensed work of Cryptic's.  It could also explain why in discussions about acquiring CoH from NCSoft it appeared (if I'm remembering correctly) that NCSoft was willing to sell the IP but only license the game software.  Maybe they *can't* sell it, only sublicense it.

NOTE: this helps us not at all.  Even if Cryptic still had rights to the game software, talking to them helps nothing because without the game content, the software is worthless.  For technical reasons, the software and the content are intertwined in complex ways: if you were to get the server software without game content, making all new content from scratch would mean it wouldn't work with the current game clients: you'd have to purge all the content out of them as well, and in effect you'd be making a totally new and unrecognizable game, using a game engine with a lot of strange hooks to non-existent content as your starting point.  That's actually taking a significant step backwards, two steps sideways, and doing so blindfolded.

[JaguarX]

Actually, I can reverse that statement.  I can't think of many product categories where the producers of the product lose their legal rights to protect it when they stop supporting it.

The game client hasn't stopped working.  You can still play demorecords with it, and you can also use it in projects like Icon.  The client still functions just fine.  You're trying to split the hair that because the game servers no longer exist, the game client should be considered to be "broken" and you have the right to "fix" them by recreating the servers and all of the content that existed on them.  But that's like saying if you bought a radio to play a very specific set of music from a specific radio station and they go off the air, that entitles you to make your own copies of that music to play yourself.

I should also point out that you did not actually purchase the client.  You purchased a box with a manual and a disc.  The EULA specifies that you purchased a limited license to use the client.  NCSoft explicitly stated in the license agreement that they had the right to revoke the right to use the client at any time, and had the right to shut down the servers that contained the game content at any time.  You have no ownership rights to the game client software.

indeed