Civ2 is Homeless!

Kull · February 14, 2001, 01:25

That's right, the Microprose site has closed down! Worse, the follow-on location at http://www.hasbrointeractive.com/ has also vanished. I searched high and low on the Hasbro web sites and can find almost no mention of Civ2 anywhere! I did finfd the words "Civilization II" in a knowledge base drop down box, but there are NO documents associated with it.

There is a Hasbro site in Germany with a Microprose section (http://www.microprose.de/), but that's not real helpful to English speakers. (Yes, that's right, now I know how the other 95% of the world feels!)

MarkG: Could you see if Hasbro is willing to comment officially on this? If they are dropping all pretense of supporting Civ2 in all it's incarnations, I'm sure that plenty of Abandonware sites would be happy to provide that support in their stead.

February 14, 2001, 16:54

http://www.hasbrointeractive.com/ is back up with one page saying "undergoing routine maintenance"
this all probably because of the sale of Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames.

still, in the "summary page" for patches http://www.hasbrointeractive.com/patches.html
civ2 is not listed

as for the support pages http://support.hasbrointeractive.com/
there are no info for "Civilization II", but there is for "Civilization II/Gold/Test of Time" (go figure

)

Ming · February 15, 2001, 09:21

I had to reinstall Civ MPE on my comuter a week or so ago. I went to the microprose/hasbro site to download the latest patch, and the link to it went nowhere. I did end up downloading it from Apolyton...

Has anybody else run across this?

finbar · February 15, 2001, 18:06

Yep. Someone in one of the other threads had the same problem. The Microprose patch link seems to be dead.

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Kull · February 15, 2001, 22:18

It seems to me that this should be getting more attention. How can this not be a big deal, especially here at Apolyton? We're talking about the game which STARTED this place, for God's sake!

Hasbro/Microprose was more than happy to use Apolyton as a sales and marketing adjunct for YEARS, so the least they can do is offer some comment on the ultimate fate of Civ2.

February 16, 2001, 08:53

quote:

Originally posted by Kull on 02-15-2001 09:18 PM
It seems to me that this should be getting more attention. How can this not be a big deal, especially here at Apolyton? We're talking about the game which STARTED this place, for God's sake!

Maybe we all here are in shock of the fact that Civ2 is abandoned by Microprose.. and can't believe if it really is true.

MacUser · February 17, 2001, 00:40

Gee. And I thought the Estonia thread was sad...

So this begs the question: if Civ2 and/or MPG have been abandoned (I even had a hard time finding more than two online stores sells the Mac version and it's only a few years old), what are the ethics of distributing copies for free? Especially if the recipient lives in a country where the software is absolutely unavailable? At what point does Civ2 become abandonware? Maybe we need a "Napster" for old games!
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Be what you is and not what you is not. Folks who do that are the happiest lot!
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[This message has been edited by MacUser (edited February 16, 2001).]

Kull · February 17, 2001, 01:30

Here's the announcement of the purchase that MarkG mentioned. There is some indication that support for Civ2 may continue, although perhaps only as a Console Game:
http://www.infogrames-corporate.com/x2000/eng_index.htm

MacUser · February 17, 2001, 17:30

Near the bottom of the announcement, they mentioned "personal computers" and listed MacSoft and Humongous Entertainment in the list of acquisitions. So maybe there is hope yet.

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Be what you is and not what you is not. Folks who do that are the happiest lot!
- Mr. Wizard the Lizard,