The Iso Zone takes down all of the games it hosts.
36 replies, posted
http://www.theisozone.com/statement.php
HOWEVER - That stated - Times are changing. There are now growing ways of obtaining these retro titles through avenues which DO benefit the copyright holders and it seems clear due to recent events, that there are a lot more avenues in development.
This is why we decided to throw in the towel of our own accord. It was a good ride and it was a just ride, however it is clear that in the not so distant future, distributing retro titles could be a serious case of copyright infringement.
We would like to explicitly state that we are not re-branding or moving, despite the general consensus.
There is a new project underway by retro gaming enthusiasts to rebuild our original archive. And we wish them well.
Imagine if we locked old works of art, paintings, etc away in vaults or literally destroyed them and then sued the fucking shit out of people who looked up the images on google, printed copies, etc.
Fuck that website was actually great.
Sigh the internet is getting worse and worse I bet a shit pie has something to do with this.
That fucking sucks. The games I used to have that were stolen, lost or broken over the years didn't always have a torrent, but there was always an ISO Zone download.
It was a great website for getting those ps2 games.
Sad to see it go.
It is a shame that several of these websites are deciding to throw the towel, but it is to be expected. There is a bright side as there are several small private teams out there who are dedicated to the preservation of these old games. Just the because the bigger more popular sites are deciding to bow out, doesn't mean the small groups will.
watch tons of torrents pop up
Pretty much. Spreading these things via torrents is much less fragile than via http.
Especially if it's on a tracker like rutracker which is basically never going to go down, and even if it did, it'd be trivial for anyone to move to new ones.
Torrents are a temporary solution that relies on seeders being active. What happens years from now when everyone seeding gets new computers, or wipes their hard drives, or just clears up some space? More permanent hosting is an absolute necessity.
I get what you mean, and agree to an extent, but it's really not the same. An image of a painting is not the same as a painting - it doesn't provide the 'same' experience. A ROM is the original data, and can be played on original hardware - providing the same experience. Copyright holders are well within their right to order take downs of games that can still be bought (for other platforms). I agree it's kinda fucked when companies zealously take down games that are no longer available for purchase legally, though it's obviously still their right to do so - and definitely okay if they have a remake or rerelease planned.
I don't think ROMs really hurt a publisher much, but your analogue doesn't really hold up to this.
Until near the end of the 70s places like the BBC lost or destroyed massive amounts of shows, broadcasts, film etc of even popular things like Dads Army and Doctor Who, for of all sorts of reasons but it essential coming down to a lack of care about preservation. When they finally realized their mistake and decided that backing up and preserving these things was probably a good idea, it was too late - those are now lost, most likely for good. There are already lots of games that aren't able to be bought properly and have been for many years, are being shown no consideration at all by their developers/publishers and likely won't ever be made available again. It's pretty much repeating the huge mistakes made because of the attitudes those media companiesmade just a few decades ago, there being no consideration at all to preservation in some form is appaling. Imagine if older movies had been given their initial VHS release and that was it, with no re-releases in any forms at all after that.
"Everyone" won't do it at the same time, also if you get a new computer you can just add the torrent and point it to the folder.
You can accomplish the same thing a central server does by having a server seed the torrent. The difference here is that if it fails, your whole system of distribution doesn't go down.
It's getting really difficult to find roms, which really sucks, I've been on a kick of emulating a bunch of games I already own, but are in storage. It was a pain in the ass to find a working Metroid Prime Trilogy rom.
Well, that analogue would work if the OWNERS weren't alive.
Man, could it be that Nintendo finally killed emulation?
Lawmakers don't care enough about video games yet, even DIsney archives their shit.
We definitely need to update our copyright law to reflect the technology we have today. As someone said above, works of art were always tied to a person, but now companies are basically immortal people in the eyes of the law and so therefore they can always justify protecting their 'property'. Information should be classed as a different type of good.
Ah lovely, now if I want to get old games I have to get over priced copies from scalpers on amazon, which still gives no money what so ever to the original devs any way.
Shit.
Iso Zone was my jam for picking up obscure PS2 games I wanted to play again.
Same for obscure Xbox games. They had an insanely good collection and no BS.
I hate this. So many good games out there that are being reduced to total Unobtanium because downloads are being wiped off the internet, and none of the responsible companies even give a shit to make them purchasable again.
What is there to lose by making older games accessible via re-release??? Especially in this day and age where you don't even have to spend money to print physical media to store them on because everyone just makes shit digital download from online stores anyway!
Seriously, companies lose out big time on money they could make by offering their old games for a reduced price, and there's no real shortage on ways to to run these games, either, for the most part.
But no, the small ways we DO get companies to re-release their old shit, it's hard to access because it's behind some pay-to-use online service, or only has a really, really really tiny handful of only the absolute most popular games and nothing else.
I just do not understand why some publishers and developers are so against preservation or resale of their older games.
Fuck.
All this so that nintendo can announce 15 NES titles as their bonus for their shitty online platform...
Fuck that, they better have Netflix but for old games on their service.
No, there are still PLENTY of sources on the internet to get ROMs of old games.
Two ROM sites dying does not constitute the death of emulation.
rip my only source of a lot of original xbox games.
Looking around the various threads on their forum, it seems as though they're rebranding and moving the downloads offered to external services rather than their own servers as to avoid some legal trouble.
Fucking Nintendo is the worst offender here, they seem hell bent on making things hard to get both in new and old products.
Nintendo wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep re-selling the exact same couple of games over and over again for each new console. I'm not spending all that fucking money on the one or two games i want over and over.
Partially - but I bet the real reason is because they have a half dozen more Classic plug-and-plays in the works for everything from Gameboy to N64. They've discovered its far more profitable to sell 20 games for 80 dollars instead of letting people buy individual titles for 5 to 10 dollars. They literally are profiting off of the virtual console not being available on their current machine, which is why it will never happen, and why they've suddenly going after rom sites en-masse.
Looks like it's time to get those all-in-one fuckoff huge Linux distro packages
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