I used to play a superhero game that suddenly got abandoned in 2012 by the admins with this particular excuse of a lack of player support. The thing is, the admins themselves suddenly gave up on updating the game before the claimed lack of players hit.

Now, three years later, the game still hasn't continued its story, and only the barest minimum of requirements keep it online. Since the admins don't want to get rid of the game, but clearly can't be bothered nor capable of maintaining and continuing it; would it be best if they gave the rights away to some other company? I am mainly concerned because the admins refuse to reuse the superhero characters in other projects, they're dead set on medieval pantomimes.

I'm sure that similar situations have cropped up in the history of gaming. In such a case, is it appropriate to let the abandoned game have an open copyright so that resources like characters and story lines can be used? What's the alternative if an open copyright is unfeasible?

You are refering to abandonware en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware (it's Wikipedia so by no means it's official), and there are some interesting issues here.

The way I see it, copyright still applies, so no sale/reuse or resaurces is allowed. However when it comes to abandoned games, most developers didn't care for use of their resources (in-game assets) for non-profit purposes, like modding and such. Even some devs released source code to further support such incentives. Some standalone games have been distributed for free by the fans (FreeSpace for instance), but... Since GOG started seeking original copyright holders and legally selling the games, free abandonware became less frequent.

When it comes to online games it is a bit different since devs have to run servers which costs money, so in some way they are still engaged in that game, and therefore I don't think it qualifies as abandonware.

What happens if the online game finally goes down for good? Say if an MMORPG like Ultima Online was taken down and never revived in another form because the company gave up on the Ultima Series altogether, what happens to the copyrights then?

Well... heh heh...

I'm no "legal person" by any means, so my "opinions" here are worth about as much as my arse (although I do feel obligated to state that I consider myself of having a mighty fine arse). But...

The way I see it, copyright applies to MMOs in the same way as to everything else. So legally you can't do anything with "abandoned" game, partly because you agreed to it when you signed EULA (you know - End User Licence Agreement - the massive wall of boring text that everyone quickly scrolls to the bottom and ticks "I've read, understand and agree to the terms of the above EULA" box so they can install the game). That means that officially the you can't "copy, distribute whole or parts of the software", and that the owners of copyright can do whatever they want with their property, even if it means leaving it to gather virtual dust on some forgotten hard drive.

BUT...

Reality is somewhat different, and it varies from developer to developer. Often devs do not mind if someone uses their work from "way back" for personal, non-profit goals. If devs do not care for their abandoned programs then they will "let it slide" if someone makes a mod or a freeware using parts of their program. They might request crediting original creators/owners but that is IMO obvious and should not even be mentioned. If someone makes money by using their stuff then that's different and, quite possibly, a hell will break loose causing a demonic horde of lawyers to decent on the "thief".

With free mods/games made by fans using game assets it's really dependent on devs. For instance, a few years ago Blizzard shut down a group of modders who were porting StarCraft to WarCraft 3 engine. At the time both games were "not really supported" by devs, but still in their catalogue. What was strange, is that the modderts were using ST assets such as videos/sounds/scripts and combined them with WC3 engine and their own models/textures, but in order to run this conversion, end-users had to have both ST and WC3. But nevertheless Blizz said NO and project was killed.

On the other hand CDProject RED said it's completely fine to use their assets for non-profit as long as they are credited, and that resulted in Skyrim nexus having a shedload of models exported from The Witcher 2 available for download in form of mods.

So as you can see, it really depends on the will of the people behind big desks. If you ask me, it's fine to use other game's assets for non-profit as long as you are not charging money for "your" program and credit original authors / copyright owners of part of your program. In that situation the worst that can happen is you receiving a letter saying to stop what you are doing.

I did ask one of the admins of Artix Entertainment whether I could reuse the HeroSmash characters as they don't want them anymore. His response was pretty much "Okay, but give credit and don't use them for profit," like you stated in your post.

I've only reused the HeroSmash scraps in my Sims story so far, as I have no clue about programming to redesign their assets properly.