Do you collaborate with legal games sites?

We do indeed try to collaborate with legal games sites. Any site that can prove they have permission to distribute a game is welcome to host the IPF images. We would be very happy to supply the archived software to them.

Please note however that we need to see express permission from the copyright holder and not “some email from the guy who did the sound”. Even if a game was completely designed and written by one person, they may still not legally be able to grant permission for their game to be distributed, as it is entirely based on their work contract. You could argue that they have a moral right, but that is sadly not how the world works.

As you may realise from this, there are legal games sites and there are “legal games sites”.

This is not surprising, as it is far from simple. The problem with most games is that although you might know what company originally produced a title, the copyright holder is now unclear, unknown, or they simply cannot be located. This is especially true if that company was disolved or bought out. These companies frequently (perhaps even most of the time) do not even know what copyrights they own, and finding out would cost more money than they are likely to gain from it.

It’s a terrible situation, and one that will never be solved unless there is a change in the law, or the copyright expires.