Playing JJ1 in your browser probably isn't legal, sorry
- Posted:
- 9 Jan 2015 at 09:01
There was a newspost here earlier about being able to play a commercial release of Jazz 1 in your browser on a certain archiving website. I have deleted that newspost. I don’t have specifics available for you yet, but based on my private communication with an Epic Games spokesperson, it seems Epic was not made aware of the archiving website’s intentions and is now in consultation with its legal department. (3D Realms, another publisher with games playable on that website, is already aware of the issue but last I checked hasn’t yet taken specific actions against it.)
It’s certainly possible that Epic Games will decide that they’re okay with this, but at the moment they have very much not done so, and in the meantime this should be viewed as analogous to any other warez/abandonware site. Links will not be appreciated. (Or if you’d like a more flattering comparison, consider how many full movies and TV shows are hosted on YouTube until the rights holders complain to Google about them.)
In the meantime, if you really want to play JJ1 online, Classic Dos Games has had the shareware version (with HH94 included) available for years…
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Yeah, the more you look into it, the more the games section if [that website] looks like an abandonware/warez site.
A shame, because if they did things similar to Classic DOS Games(Or partnered with them), it could be pretty great.
(Name purge. You did nothing wrong, I’m just being cautious. -Violet)
Well actually, i once found a site that’s dedicated for just playing JJ1.
When you enter it, it ‘downloads’ the jj1 data and you just play.
That’s just about as illegal.
Like i don’t know? I just said this cause this was a fuss about playing jj2 on your browser when that was already possible.
Well, I was pretty sure it was illegal. The game was working kinda bad anyway. I hope Epic will release Jazz 1 as a free game…
Well, LGR posted a video of that famous site that everyone now knows, but you didn’t have the guts to share. But it’s also on such websites as the verge, gamespot, giantbomb, gizmodo, ign, rockpapershotgun, neogaf, gameinformer and others, but here – censored.
6 of those you listed are awful websites ran by awful people
And they’re also disgusting, horrible, terrible and most of all – eeeeevil :S.
Do any of those websites have any incentive to find out whether something is legal? No. They get more hits for telling you that a bunch of games are playable than for telling you not to play them. That doesn’t mean they’re terrible people, it just means they have no reason to care.
I see it the other way around. Putting aside the content of that website, my point is: always provide links to tread your visitors well, if you really care. You see, your news post made me curios about this and I was disappointed that it is censored. I needed to do a research until I find out what you were talking about. It turns out that everyone else was talking about this with links (not only the big websites and their reasons, qualities etc. are not important) except here. Funny.
There was a link that was removed because it was illegal. Deleting it wasn’t a choice on behalf of the site administration, it was an action taken only because it was required by law. J2O doesn’t create law. If you want J2O to provide links to abandonware, you’re talking to the wrong people – rather than J2O administrators, you should mail your local politicians and explain your stance on piracy and how it should be legal.
If it was up to me the link could’ve stayed there, actually (also note that JJ1 and co are still on the site, while games like Commander Keen are gone). But “better safe than sorry” is a valid angle of approaching this too, though I don’t think linking the site here would really have lead to any problems.
3D Realms knew about the problem before Epic did, and they haven’t gotten all their games taken down yet either. Proving the theft would seem to be a time-consuming process.
Epic has a set of rules that they demand fan websites must follow. We do not follow those rules. There’s no sense in taking any more chances than we already are.
Well, Cliff linked to it on his twitter (@therealcliffyb) which says that playing it is, in fact, legal – otherwise he wouldn’t do that.
CliffyB doesn’t work for Epic anymore, though obviously it’s an indication that it’s probably not a huge issue to spread the link.