My Abandonware

My Abandonware The best website for finding shovelware games. Date of launch: February 2009 Status: Active Predecessor: oldware.net

My Abandonware is an abandonware website that hosts abandoned video games that are impossible to buy anywhere and it's probably the most popular website that hosts abandonware software. It was founded in 2009 and belongs to UtopiaWeb that's based in France.

Bad Qualities

1. This site does not host almost any good game because it is afraid of platforms such as Steam, GOG (Good Old Games), or Origin, despite the fact that the copyrights to these games have long expired and (in most cases) no one would complain that these games are there. For example, they are afraid of sharing games such as Postal, Tyrian or Warzone 2100 because they are available on GOG, Steam, or Zoom, even though they are available there completely for free, so they could easily host these games for users.
   • For some unknown reason, sometimes they are afraid to release the game despite the fact that it can't be bought anywhere like Panzer General or Allied General, and they try to justify this by the alleged IP despite the fact that even Abandonia or Abandonware France are not afraid of sharing the games.
   • In rare cases, there is a link on the website where the game cannot be purchased at all and the website staff does absolutely nothing about it, which is why some pages are empty (for example, games from the Hardball series).
2. They also confuse the original with remasters and compilations, one of the most infamous cases is the GTA trilogy or Age of Empires, where users complained that they are not the same and that these games are absolute abandonware. In almost all cases, the creators don't care at all whether the original is hosted somewhere or not, so again, they could do it without a problem and even Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 has a redirect to the Epic Games platform on this page when it is shared elsewhere to download, you also can't download Halo from a site when another site is literally giving you the game for free and also afraid Steam, GOG or Origin.
   • Sending a link to remasters kind of messes up the pages, a good example of which is the System Shock page where there are 2 links pointing to GOG.
3. Despite the fact that this is the most famous abandonware site on the internet, sometimes there are no pictures to show the game, despite the fact that there are a lot of such pictures about the game because they only rely on MobyGames instead of looking for pictures elsewhere. Strangely enough, provide the ability to upload photos to the site, but this function is hardly used at all, so the site still looks confusing.
   • Basically, they could take these screenshots themselves and upload them to the website, especially since they have copies of these games, and using emulators and sometimes even the operating system themselves, they could run these games and simply photograph them using Bandicam or Fraps.
4. The server is terrible because, first of all, it breaks down very often and the website itself undergoes technical breaks, sometimes it happens that even for a couple of times, at least once a month, this website has a technical break. The problem, however, is not only this, because sometimes it happens that the game that they recently uploaded may also be unavailable due to technical problems and the "not found" error pops up, also when you try to download more than one game, these will take a long time to download, and most often even the download freezes and fails due to a network error.
   • The browser sometimes is also broken because if you write sth for the first time, even if you write the title properly, it will show 0 results and only in second time it will show, this mostly includes when you're asking for another game in the search menu.
5. It is remarkable that they very rarely add a well-known game to their site, and mainly focus on long-forgotten games that were sometimes only available in one country, sometimes even some niche free productions, which makes the site sometimes look poor despite the fact that that this is the most famous abandonware site and there is no shortage of people who know games from those years.
6. This site offers the possibility to create an account, which is completely useless because literally all activities that can usually only be done after creating an account, such as adding comments, rating games, or adding to favorites, can be done without creating an account, which makes this feature pointless at all.
7. Their game launching guide is poorly written, as it only recommends emulators, and only a few at that, despite the fact that they have a whole bunch of platforms. A good example is that they only recommend DOSBox and a few ISO emulators and a few others, and that's about it. There is also no information about emulators for platforms other than DOS and Windows, despite the fact that they have a whole lot of them in their library, which is unforgivable because it shows the laziness of the site owners. They also don't tell you how to use them or how to run the games, instead, they make you ask Vogons for it, which is both silly and ridiculous.
   • Not only that, the site also doesn't give you any advice to install or run the game and once in a Russian year it happens that they will give you an installation key for a commercial game that requires a key, so you have to look for a key or guide in the comments or on another website regarding the installation.
8. This service has an exaggerated amount of advertisements on its pages, which, fortunately, do not cover any part, but they often clog the places with links to their pages and make a mess because of it, which can become annoying and it looks like it is not they were able to decide where the ad should be placed. Most popular sites don't have this clutter, nor is any site cluttered with it that much.
   • Despite all these tons of advertising, they want support from users with payments, which also makes them look incredibly greedy.
9. They also care very little about what some platforms have, because some of them only have a few games and sometimes even one despite the fact that you could find many more games available for a given platform, which shows that they don't care too many deficiencies they have and instead add games for more well-known platforms.
10. Although this is the only Abandonware site that allows you to play games in the browser, sometimes this browser emulator instead of launching the game just gives a game setup where the player has to install the game himself, this can be noticeable in DOS games from the 80's where an inexperienced player can have really serious problems with installing and launching the game, in addition to all this, the site, as mentioned above, does not provide absolutely any advice on how to install or launch the game and you have to rely on the comments. This is quite clumsy for the most popular website from Abandonware.

Good Qualities

1. There are still well-known games that are possible to download such as Lemmings, Prince of Persia, or Supaplex, it can also be useful for finding obscure games that cannot be downloaded from any other abandonware website.
2. This site was not afraid of other gaming sites before 2020, which made them much better.
3. The staff sometimes takes criticism when, for example, they make the game available so that even downloading all their files will make the game unplayable, but unfortunately, that's about it.
4. The interface is very nice and easy to use, mainly due to the high recognition of this site and the fact that it is sponsored by one of the companies.
5. Like the Internet Archive or Classic Reload, they give the opportunity to play the game in the browser, which is rarely seen on websites, although this emulation can be unreliable at times.
6. They have a very extensive browser so you can easily find the game you are looking for because you can choose the year, manufacturer, publisher or platform, and even genre.