Downloading Retro Video Games For Free
Generally people consider “criminal offence” as strictly illegal because then the country will intervene. But in case of civil offence, companies have a choice to take you to court or not (at least how I seen practically) One example is that it is against copyright to upload songs on Youtube but you can notice there are many songs on there as well but none of the music producer request them to take down or take anyone to court because they benefit from the public exposure. As long as the owner of copyright doesn’t do anything neither does the state. But my point was that, it is a civil offence and a lot of time, companies allow it because they can’t be bothered to take everyone to court. But it seems you have concluded it is a sin for the individual because they are only allowed to do it because companies are too weak (time and money constraint) to stop them even when it is within companies’ legal rights to stop them, right?
How about games considered abandoneware? There is a website called http://www.myabandonware.com where you can download old computer titles which are no longer in store and lost support from their devs. The thing about this site is that if the devs decide to republish the retro title by bringing it back on gog.com or any other old game service, this site prohibits free download of those particular titles and rather directs people to the gog.com link. So is it okay to download and use the abandoneware titles from this site until those titles are officially rereleased?