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[IbizaPocholo]

Video Game Preservation has been in the news recently with the US Copyright Office just striking down an effort to make it easier to preserve and play legacy video games. Many in the industry say that more needs to be done but is it just talk? The ESA along with game publishers don't seem to be interesting in preserving video games at all. This is why me, you - the community - need to take charge and do it ourselves. We discuss the complex landscape of Video Game Preservation, Piracy and Emulation in today's episode.


This video is for entertainment purposes only. The video is not meant to promote software piracy in anyway. You're an adult, make good choices.

TimeStamps:

00:00 - 04:00 - The complexity of preserving video games
04:01 - 07:12 - The ESA's stance AGAINST preservation
07:13 - 13:55 - How the community is leading the fight.

 

[RagnarokIV]

The big bad devil, Piracy, will preserve games just like movies and TV.

How do you get a game long out of print with no modern re-release? Ebay or second hand? Nobody gets money except for some random guy selling it. Not a cent goes to the original publisher or developer.

Piracy has preserved lots of cool stuff. Thanks to those VHS pirate tapes I still have Dragon Ball + Z original broadcast Ocean dub!

 

[Griffon]

I don't get why there's no official rom selling sites for each big publisher. It's easy money. GoG could do that too.

 

[AJUMP23]

How do you get a game long out of print with no modern re-release? Ebay or second hand? Nobody gets money except for some random guy selling it. Not a cent goes to the original publisher or developer.

And the Game publisher/creator tells me I never owned it to begin with. I just bought a license for that SW on that HW.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I don't get why there's no official rom selling sites for each big publisher. It's easy money. GoG could do that too.

Seems like one tiny company in an office building in a corner of Tokyo could fill the entire worlds orders for all the old games complete with packaging and booklets.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Licensing, publishing, and defunct/closed original IP holders prevents this from happening.

 

[Pandawan]

Please not let physical games die

 

[ReyBrujo]

I don't get why there's no official rom selling sites for each big publisher. It's easy money. GoG could do that too.

If you can download it anywhere (especially on PC) you can probably hack it and distribute it for free. And even then you wouldn't be able to get the original copy of Moonwalker with the Michael Jackson background music on stage 3 which was cancelled shortly after release because of licensing issues. GoG and HB just choose to ignore piracy, others companies don't.

My issue with this editorial is that "preserving" games in typical MVG fashion means "being able to play it anywhere, anytime" because "players have no other option but to pirate" (because "not playing" something you don't own is not an option apparently). That's not what preservation is about. Sure, the clothes George Washington wore are "preserved" but that doesn't mean you can just go to a museum and try them out, you can only admire them. Any company could zip the whole source code, assets and binaries, put a 2048 character long password and put it so that anyone can download it and say "Here, it's preserved". Or they could calculate a hash of that zip and then publish it in their website saying "Here's the unique hash for every file that was used to create the game, you just need to find a way to reverse it".

Mentioned this several times: fix the damn law. This loose "preservation" concept only makes people who take decisions to equalize preservation with piracy which doesn't help efforts for real preservation to take place.

 

[deriks]

Please not let physical games die

People are buying less and less everyday...

I try my best to do it, but I admit that GamePass made me choose this path. Still, when it is a game that is not on it and probably won't go anytime soon, I'll buy physical

@thread
Remember that we have midnight releases and they're a great event? It's dead, Jim



...I miss it like hell

 

[West Texas CEO]

We must protect this man by all means.

 

[MMaRsu]

People are buying less and less everyday...

I try my best to do it, but I admit that GamePass made me choose this path. Still, when it is a game that is not on it and probably won't go anytime soon, I'll buy physical

@thread
Remember that we have midnight releases and they're a great event? It's dead, Jim



...I miss it like hell

Midnight releases will be back for GTA 6 tho, you can bet on that

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

overall agree, but not with the whole "piracy isnt stealing because you have no other options" spiel.

nah, you're stealing, but im ok with that--game preservation matters more

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

overall agree, but not with the whole "piracy isnt stealing because you have no other options" spiel.

nah, you're stealing, but im ok with that--game preservation matters more

How do you steal something that isn't for sale anymore? Also, stealing means you remove access from someone to grant access to yourself, which does not happen in this particular case.

I'll stick with the overall agree, because I guess that's the most important part.

 

[chakadave]

That's not what preservation is about. Sure, the clothes George Washington wore are "preserved" but that doesn't mean you can just go to a museum and try them out, you can only admire them. Any company could zip the whole source code, assets and binaries, put a 2048 character long password and put it so that anyone can download it and say "Here, it's preserved". Or they could calculate a hash of that zip and then publish it in their website saying "Here's the unique hash for every file that was used to create the game, you just need to find a way to reverse it".

You can't wear the original but someone could make the exact same clothes and no one can stop them.

At some point the US government will end. Maybe 100 or 1000 years from now. Maybe a few months. If that happens IP means nothing. Just like how it is illegal to talk on most HAM frequencies. Yet people still plan to use HAM once the system collapses because at that point it being illegal won't matter.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

stealing means you remove access from someone to grant access to yourself

arguing about the definition of "stealing" always comes up with this topic, and it never really moves the conservation forward. people just get stuck arguing definitions.

what matters is getting paid.
when you take a copy of a game from a physical store without paying, the store doesnt give two shits that you "removed access" from someone else.
they care that they lost money, because you didnt pay.

and most creators, you know the people who make the stuff that we love, want to get paid.
so its their stuff, and they get to dictate how people consume it, and thats how modern markets are set up and protected.
this encourages creators to create.

if we "steal" their products, i.e. circumvent the creator's ability to distribute their creations as they see fit, were cutting into their revenue, directly and/or indirectly.
and this may lead to creators creating less.
shooting ourselves in the foot a bit there.

all that said, i support games preservation big time.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

arguing about the definition of "stealing" always comes up with this topic, and it never really moves the conservation forward. people just get stuck arguing definitions.

what matters is getting paid.
when you take a copy of a game from a physical store without paying, the store doesnt give two shits that you "removed access" from someone else.
they care that they lost money, because you didnt pay.

and most creators, you know the people who make the stuff that we love, want to get paid.
so its their stuff, and they get to dictate how people consume it, and thats how modern markets are set up and protected.
this encourages creators to create.

if we "steal" their products, i.e. circumvent the creator's ability to distribute their creations as they see fit, were cutting into their revenue, directly and/or indirectly.
and this may lead to creators creating less.
shooting ourselves in the foot a bit there.

all that said, i support games preservation big time.

I think you missed my main point, what's being lost if the games are not for sale anywhere? We are talking about games that had their sales cycle and that are not being supported or sold anywhere anymore. We are talking legacy games that used legacy hardware that will inevitably fail and is not being sold.

So take this into account and recalibrate the response, because the word "steal" does imply something that is completely not at the core of what's being discussed here.

Preservation is 100% needed as we have the means to do it. We shouldn't have to face the same blackhole of lost media we had with cinema, for example, throughout the 20th century.

 

[KloetenQuetsche]

I saved my stuff on my fpga Analogue Pocket. Thousands of games. From arcade to snes games. Gameboy, gba...

 

[squidilix]

We need to preserve concord.

All to the PlayStation HQ !

 

[ArtHands]

Isn’t this just a console issue? Preservation is just fine on PC. No need for disc that gets disc rot inevitably or incompatibility issue due to hardware obsoletion