Unpopular opinion: paying full price for retro games is dumb when abandonware exists

Had a convo with this guy at a flea market in Austin last weekend. He was selling a beat-up copy of System Shock 2 for $60 and I laughed. He said 'you gotta respect the history' but I told him I just played it for free on archive.org. It hit different because I realized a lot of collectors are just gatekeeping old games behind high prices. If the devs aren't even making money off those copies anymore, why should I drop $60 on scratched plastic? I still buy new indie games on sale to support devs, but for pre-2005 PC stuff I'm done paying. Has anyone else just stopped bothering with physical retro collecting?

2 comments

2 Comments

henryf531mo ago

Heard a podcast say most of that plastic ends up in landfills anyway.

the_kim1mo ago

Wait I think the podcast might have gotten that part wrong. A lot of recycling facilities just don't have the tech to actually process those plastics so they do get sent to landfills. But there's different types of plastic and some are way more recyclable than others.