One thing the Vega campaign has again showcased is that people who love old games also happily pretend that basic copyright law does not exist. To anyone wondering about how Vega was going to legally bundle 1000 games with its fake Spectrum, the response was generally “Who cares?” or “All those games are public domain now anyway.” It’s a curious idea that old games alone have somehow fallen out of copyright in only about 30 years, just because people want them to.

As a thought experiment, imagine equivalents in other media. Try reprinting a bunch of books from the 1980s into a single volume and selling it in stores. Do you think you’d get away with it? Or what about 1000 music tracks from the 1980s, bunging them on a hard drive and selling that? Again, you’d be mad to think this could be in any way legal. But people think this about games.

It’s either ignorance or entitlement that results in this belief. The facts are simpler though: unless a company or individual officially releases their IP into the public domain and without caveats, subsequent distribution of any kind is simply not legal. For example, even though hundreds of ZX Spectrum games are legally available via World of Spectrum, the rights for doing so are usually single-site, meaning you can’t suddenly create your own similar site and host the same games. And even when old developers say “Do whatever you like with my old games,” that first assumes they actually own the rights (some won’t) and secondly often comes with the addition of “But you can’t resell them in any form—they must remain free”.

The Vega team is reportedly aware of this issue, and I would be disappointed to say the least if it bundled 1000 games without securing rights to all of them—a mammoth task, but one the team promised rather prematurely. For fans of old games, I’ll concede that individuals are unlikely doing any harm by downloading and playing a copy of Deathchase on an emulator, and at any rate, if you’re strongly guided by morals, you can just buy legally distributed versions of classic games you love when the opportunity arises; but it’s another thing entirely when a commercial product dances with the concept of abandonware, and people think that’s perfectly fine, largely because they have rose-tinted glasses glued to their face and a fondness for Jet Set Willy.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega got a ton of press yesterday, mostly by tech blogs copying and pasting a press release. The Indiegogo campaign, now successfully funded, resurrects the much-loved 8-bit computer as a kind of mini-console. It’s essentially an emulator — a Spectrum version of those tiny Master System consoles that do the rounds every Christmas.

However, the tech press didn’t seem to pause and ask two important questions: can you really run “all of the games” released for the system on this device, and how can the device come with 1000 games pre-loaded?

If the prototype and render images are in any way accurate, the first question is a flat no. The Spectrum was a very keyboard-oriented system for games, unlike rival the Commodore 64, which was largely joystick-based. Therefore, the expectation was most Spectrum users would control games using keys. The Vega, however, provides only four directional controllers and four action buttons. At best, the controls of all pre-loaded games will have to be remapped to whatever keys the Vega uses. Any game that requires more keys simply won’t be playable, which not only includes all text adventures but a fair amount of arcade efforts and other classics. (Good luck playing Elite with only eight keys, for example.)

The second answer, regarding pre-loaded games, is that I have no idea. I asked the people behind Vega for an answer and was met with silence. The Eurogamer reporter did at least ask about game rights and was told the Vega creators are “speaking with the owners of software rights to Spectrum games”, which is a far cry from “and we have the rights to 1000 games”.

Securing game rights is notoriously tricky at the best of times, but even more so when it comes to retro games. IP changes hands alarmingly quickly and so while the Vega team now has upwards of 100 grand to spend, it’ll need a ton of that to secure game rights, assuming it’s going to do this legally.

Of course, judging by the comment threads underneath reports of the Vega, quite a lot of people don’t seem to think games retain or should retain any copyrights at all. But that’s just flat-out wrong.

Update: Developer John Pickford, co-creator of the superb Magnetic Billiards—but also a load of Spectrum games—notes: They’re seeking permission from copyright holders but not offering a royalty. Instead they propose a charity donation. So the devs are expected to donate their work despite this device being sold for profit. I hope the copyright holders turn them down.

Some recent mobile gaming highlights:

Angry Birds Transformers launches. It is a surprisingly good game, retaining the series’s penchant for wanton destruction, and wrapping it in a playable and engaging mechanic where you auto-run along levels and shoot directly at targets. But it’s a freemium game, heavily and arbitrarily gated with all kinds of timers, IAP and ads. People complain: they just wanted to play the game.

The Silent Age‘s second episode arrives, hugely expanding the award-winning adventure title, initially downloadable for free. Those who pay $4.99/£2.99 to unlock the full story are treated to a compelling and beautiful gaming experience. But instead many people complain: they just wanted to play the game—for free.

And now paid game Monument Valley has been updated with a new set of gorgeous Escher-like puzzles to explore. The ‘forgotten shores’ is roughly the length of the original game, at least as visually stunning and inventive, and costs roughly half the price. Again, people complain. They don’t understand why they just can’t play the new levels immediately; the developer is, apparently, “greedy”, and those who bought the game are now busy downrating it on iTunes. Their original four- or five-star experience is now only worth one or two stars, because the developer had the audacity to want income for months of effort, in order to fund further games that those who bought it would presumably enjoy in the future.

On Twitter, developer ustwo half-joked:

Seems quite a few people have gone back and 1 star reviewed Monument Valley upon update because the expansion was paid. This makes us sad. That’s it, we’re giving up the premium game. Next time we’re just going to sell you 500 coins for $2 instead.

It’s hardly surprising everyone took the comment at face value. Why wouldn’t they? Developers take months crafting something, and they need to pay the bills somehow. But too many mobile gamers don’t want to pay; but they also don’t want IAP gating or adverts. They want something for nothing.

I don’t know how this plays out, or how it can be fixed. It’s too late to put the entitlement genie back in the bottle, and I suppose developers have to weather the idiocy storm and just hope enough people remain to make their efforts worthwhile, whether that’s from buying apps with price-tags, or paid upgrades, or from flinging a few bucks into the IAP well in order to make a freemium title less hideous. What I do know is that we’re still seeing the most innovative and exciting of gaming platforms continue to get a kicking, all because of greed—but from consumers, not developers.

The Guardian criticises the iPad Air 2’s display, due to Apple using what the reviewer refers to in the verdict as a “square screen”. Of course, the screen isn’t actually square, but it’s squarer than the bulk of those used by its rivals. Apple, since the original iPad, has provided a tablet with a 4:3 aspect ratio, somewhat aping the printed page. By contrast, most competing tablets have primarily been designed for landscape orientation, in 16:9, common for movies.

If nothing else, this showcases assumptions regarding intentions for the devices themselves. Android tablets have been more geared towards movie and TV consumption, whereas iPads ‘compromised’ that use-case in order to provide a device with wider scope. I explore this further in a piece for Stuff, which examines Google’s new Nexus displays, the tablet now following Apple’s lead.

The short of that is about versatility. 16:9 leaves little room in landscape for content when using the virtual keyboard; in portrait it’s often unsatisfying for reading, because the viewport is so narrow. (Oddly, the Guardian reviewer calls out the iPad for having black bars at the side of comic books, despite those blank spaces being perfectly good for placing your thumbs and flipping pages, without covering content; by contrast, tablets closer to 9:16 aspect ratios in portrait may have black bars at the top and bottom, which the reviewer had a go at the iPad for regarding video.)

Of course, the best aspect ratio for you depends entirely on what you’re doing with a device, and if you only want TV on the go, then having a device with a screen ratio similar to a telly’s makes sense; however, if you want a device suitable for a much wider range of tasks, 16:9 isn’t the smartest move, something Apple knew all along, something Google’s now embracing, and something Microsoft’s also figured out with its new Surface Pro tablets, which use a 3:2 aspect.

The Magazine is shutting down. Created by Marco Arment and taken over in May 2013 by Glenn Fleishman, The Magazine was a pioneer, thinking different about digital magazines. Initially inspired by Arment’s Instapaper, it stripped things back, emphasising content in a manner that chimed with an audience tired of ad-infested websites and poor digital magazine user experiences.

It turns out whatever The Magazine was doing isn’t enough; although it’s been profitable throughout its entire life (extremely rare for any publication), subscriber numbers continue to fall, to the point Fleishman believes the magazine will eventually not be sustainable. Better to go out with a kind of controlled bang than gradually sink into quicksand.

There are undoubtedly all sorts of reasons why The Magazine is closing, some of which are explored in a Cult of Mac interview with Fleishman, but Newsstand seems to be key, having transformed from a well of potential into an empty bucket of pain as far as publishers are concerned. Jim Dalrymple, editor of The Loop, pointedly commented: “Apple should just admit that they don’t give a shit about digital magazines and be done with it.”

He’s right. At one time, Newsstand was touted as Apple redefining magazines, saving an industry in serious decline. In iOS 5 and 6, it resembled iBooks, in being both an app and store, but also used a custom folder to showcase cover images, making new issues very visible. This was irksome for those who didn’t use Newsstand, left with an empty wooden shelf (as ever, Apple could really do with enabling you to disable unused default apps), but handy for publishers and readers alike.

As of iOS 7, Newsstand was overhauled to fit in with Apple’s philosophy of flat design. The icon became a generic picture of four publications, and you now have to tap this to view magazine covers. So instead of a custom folder, Newsstand now has a strange ‘apps within an app’ set-up that doesn’t really seem to benefit anyone. This also means Newsstand now behaves like other iOS apps, in that it can be stashed in a folder. Visibility of new magazine issues has been seriously hit; coupled with this, ongoing abuse of system notifications has led to many disabling them, closing off another avenue for alerting readers about new issues.

Fleishman himself reasons that these changes “did not help [The Magazine] thrive”, and he’s far from alone. In 2011, publishers were full of hope regarding Newsstand; now, pretty much every one of them I know hates it. They think Apple’s practically abandoned Newsstand and just doesn’t care — it’s turned into an afterthought product Apple feels it must have rather than one it wants to keep evolving as part of the core iOS experience.

Perhaps magazines are simply doomed—digital or otherwise. Maybe people just don’t want to pay for content bundles and either want free websites, churn-based humour on Buzzfeed, or some kind of system where they can self-edit and cherry-pick what they think they’ll like (rather than possibly discovering something new). But while some kind of magazine industry does still exist, it’d be great for Apple to do more than turn Newsstand into the publication equivalent of Stocks. Maybe iOS 8.1 should silently admit Newsstand is a failed experiment, and simply remove it entirely. Put individual magazines back on the Home screen as standard apps, with (standard-sized) icons developers can update as and when a new issue goes live and standard alert badges, and therefore provide the flexibility that might reengage readers.