Publishers are absolutely terrified "preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes," so the US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation
(www.gamesradar.com)
from minnix@lemux.minnix.dev to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 28 Nov 17:24
https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/633067
from minnix@lemux.minnix.dev to retrogaming@lemmy.world on 28 Nov 17:24
https://lemux.minnix.dev/post/633067
threaded - newest
Not The Onion version: “‘People might actually have fun’: Publishers squash video game preservation movement”
If folks today learned that games existed which could be played offline, had no dlc, no microtransactions, no skinner boxes. And those games were actually fun, clearly the whole industry would collapse lol.
Guess I better make a copy of the shit ton of emulated games on the thumbdrive that I have. How stupid.
This has been an issue since copyright came into being. Money is at odds with the preservation of art so shareholders are incentivized to limit access to older titles and keep control in case it turns out they can sell them for profit.
Keep circulating the tapes, as they say
Which is why I bought a
16 bit[8 bit] Nintendo system a year ago with Super Mario / Duck Hunt and Tetris … I also bought a little 14" CRT TV that I can plug in to play everything like I did when I was ten years old.I spent hours and hours having fun with it back then … I’m having hours and hours of fun with it now.
Correction: I have an 8bit not a 16bit game system
FYI, duck hunt was an NES game, which was an 8 bit console, the SNES was Nintendo’s 16 bit generation
Shhh they’re too busy playing Sonic right now
Right you are Ken … I goofed because I never understood in then as a kid and seldom remember it as an adult … the original unit I have is an 8bit Nintendo system … but I’ve also been on the lookout for the 16 bit SNES and I hope to get one eventually (my favourite on that unit was F-Zero)
If you want an SNES that’s going to take a while, but it’s definitely findable. If you want a device that can play SNES cartridges (along with many others) look into getting a Retron. It’s got NES, SNES, GBA, Genesis, Famicom, Super Famicom, and Gameboy plus a place to plug in those old controllers.
Wow … I love the nostalgia of the original old units but this is definitely an option I’ll have to look into.
Lol … I feel like a 12 year old fantasizing about the latest 16bit and 32bit gaming systems
Thanks for this
Sure thing! I had an older one before my current emulation setup. It worked really well.
In my humble experience the SNES was totally where it was at! It was just advanced enough to have more complicated titles, but still had so much charm.
Happy you’re enjoying that NES though. Duck Hunt is still impressive and fun. I also loved that “click-ftinnng!” Sound of the lightgun trigger.
Lol I remember asking my mom during like, the X-Box era if we could get an NES and a couple games for a deal going on at Funcoland. She was a little confused since it was so old, but I really missed that system. I’m so glad I did. We walked out of there paying like $70 or something for the console and like 5 games. Before the retro-collector-craze really hit.
I’m pretty sure my favorite NES title turned out to be Paperboy. That game was so ridiculously hard but had such a solid loop that made you keep retrying for hours haha. Highly recommend if you haven’t played it!
Imagine if you weren’t allowed to watch your favorite movies from the 80’s or earlier unless you managed to have a still working VCR and VHS copy from your childhood. No Goonies, no Godfather, no Star Wars original trilogy. They decided to wipe these films from the face of the earth so that you could no longer enjoy them and had to go buy their new movies, exclusively, if you wanted entertainment from a film. That’s what games publishers are trying to do, so they don’t have to compete for you attention with older classics.
You can still watch those old films, as long as you are paying a subscription to a streaming service so the studio can keep making money off of them.
That’s what video game publishers want too. Nintendo doesn’t want to wipe SMB3 off the face of the earth. They just want to make sure the only way you can access it is to pay for Nintendo Switch Online.
*if they feel like offering it
And this is the real cost. Sorry Mario Brothers will pretty much always be available as long as Nintendo is around, but obscure games or classics with disputed Copyright will disappear.
Who is out there even trying to stream the old Sierra games? At least they are on GoG, but I know even GoG has tried to track down current copyright holders for old classics and the are plenty of orphan games where after several mergers and divestments, there is some uncertainty, and it’s not worth it for any of the potential copyright holders to sort it out and license it, and unfortunately it’s not worth it for GoG to publish it to find out if they’ll sue GoG.
This is why Abandonware is such an important concept.
Oni, Alien Vs. Predator 2, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, MechWarrior 2/3/4, Black & White 1 and 2…
And that’s just at the top of my head. Copyright hell is awful.
One thing I’ve heard is it’s sometimes a weird stalemate where companies might have the property in their basement somewhere, but if there’s interest in it, suddenly the value will shoot up, so nobody wants to confirm it in case they’re the loser and will have it extorted from them.
I’m probably explaining it wrong. (Because it’s absolute nonsense.) But someone might know a better explanation than I.
I know there are several seminal works locked in archives or even just lost.
I couldn’t think of any specific examples off the top of my head, but I was considering the fate of Microprose, Sierra On-Line, and other studios that were gobbled up, disbanded, broken up, etc.
Your Mechwarrior example is a good example of licensing, where you might have defunct TTRPG studios (FASA) licensing a property to a have company it studio that has also gone though several mergers.
There should be a “use it or lose it” provision in copyright law, kind of like back in the day with what happened to “It’s A Wonderful Life”. The only reason IAWL became a Christmas classic isbecause it became public domain.
This is such an incredibly naive take that has already been proven wrong by multiple publishers going out of their way to do exactly what you just said. There’s also a ton of abandonware which is not being sold and never will be again.
Except that that is largely not even true.
87% of games made before 2010 are completely commercially unavailable.
theverge.com/…/classic-game-preservation-video-ga…
They do not even want to be in control of retro games to be able to sell them indefinitely.
With the exception of certain, wildly popular games they know they can still charge a high price for, they do not want the vast majority of retro games to be legally available at all.
Further, with books, film, other kinds of art… a legal carve out exception does exist for the purposes of academic study and research.
Basically, accredited academic institutions have the ability to rent those out to students, people writing studies on media and cultural history.
Video games? As of this ruling, nope, they are special, studying the history of video games functionally requires breaking the law.
They just get shoved into the vault, never to be seen again, by anyone, ever.
This reminds me that 90% of silent movies are lost forever because there was no effort to preserve them at the time.
If it wasn’t for people going as far deliding chips and breaking encryption, a good chunk of gaming history would be lost by now.
Would be interesting to know how many are unavailable because of licensing or rights issue. Racing games like NFS Underground or Most Wanted, for example, aren’t available anymore because of music license wasn’t renewed by studio.
Or many games aren’t available because the developer/publisher studio doesn’t exist anymore.
You can still watch those old films, as long as you are paying a subscription to a streaming service…
And they feel like releasing the content you want to watch. And they don’t try to ruin the experience by remastering it. And they don’t try to ruin the experience by upscaling or recreating the film in a different style. And they don’t triple the price of content that used to cost a quarter of what it does now. And your device is compatible with their platform, service, and encoding formats. And the DRM implementation is compatible with your device, your cables, your speakers, and your ears. And you can pay to access that content in the location you happen to be living in, which is not always your choice. And you don’t have to buy a peripheral device just to access the content. And you trust them not to enshittify everything that you held dear about the original.
And and and… so the studio can keep making money off of them.
Keep Circulating the Tapes
Did you just link tvtropes with no warning?
yes Chief, yes I did… and I did it deliberately :)
It’s been hours …help.
I have dozens of tabs open in Edge on my phone and I use Edge there mostly for TV Tropes since the Preview Link lets me look at other tropes without having to open another tab. I’m currently reading Discworld tropes.
Buystream their new movies.FTFY
i would be okay with this. we should still preserve games of course, but i wouldn’t mind losing out on those movies
Good for you?
Eat shit, troll.
It’s just bonkers to me because they do everything for profit anyway; what the fuck profit do they get from not selling shit anymore? I said this not long ago about Nintendo, but other companies are guilty of it too. Spending money attempting to stop piracy, instead of making money by just giving customers what they fucking want. What crazy company secrets are they hiding that not continuing to sell a product is better than selling it?
It’s like a toxic romantic partner: if I can’t make a lot of money doing this one thing, then no one can.
Come to think of it, a lot of late stage capitalism behavior is like a toxic partner.
Not in any way defending Nintendo - seriously, fuck them, I will pirate their entire catalogue and not feel one iota of guilt.
But, what mix of those 87% of games no longer commercially available fall into one of these three categories:
So I guess what I’m asking is, what percentage of those games aren’t economically viable to resell, or are stuck in licence limbo?
Sort of like how they erased all the evidence of “Sinbad’s Shazaam” and then gaslit everyone that remembered it?
Oh c’mon don’t screw with my head like that. I specifically remember seeing the “Shaq Genie movie”… Wait that was Kazaam! Dang it!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/5e922358-22d6-4cb9-92f1-5adc70547bc3.jpeg">
Americans are so obsessed with money, they forgot about actually living.
My dudes. Money is just a means to an end. It is not the end goal. Wake the fuck up.
I started you a slow clap. Neither one of my dogs joined in, but I just wanted you to know I tried.
I mean, it’s not just Americans, it’s the whole world. EA, Nintendo, Sony, Riot, Nexon, Tencent, and basically every other major gaming corporation are part of the ESA, who lobbied to kill this exemption. If left to their own devices, corporations will never do anything that could hurt their bottom line.
TFW when your entire 1000+ game library of roms fits in a tiny corner of storage on my phone
True. Unless it’s MAME. I download everything AND the CHDs. I do this for games I don’t even WANT to play.
Steal everything that isn’t nailed down while you’ve still got a chance.
At least Jesus is safe from burglary then.
When the programmers of these old titles are saying they’d rather have people keep playing them even if they’re only available on archive site, I say screw the publishers.
Of course!
Wow, imagine money just flowing into your account because you own the likeness of something.
Of course they’d get riled up if it sounds like that might be affected. They’d have to make something new instead of reselling their hits from 25 years ago and licensing their IP for movies and
immortal wastemerch.Media needs to be future-proofed or else we risk repeating the around 75% of original silent-era films have perished and are forever lost.
Yeah corporations are terrified of you having fun without paying money to them.
Note that this really only affects researchers/historians who were hoping to have a copyright exemption for controlled digital lending. This would let them virtually borrow a copyrighted retro game ROM file (from an archive such as the Internet Archive) and play it via emulation through the browser. I have actually played a few retro games on IA using their browser emulator and while it is playable it wouldn’t be my first choice.
For retro game enthusiasts who weren’t aware of these browser emulators not much will change. You still have the same exemptions covering abandonware for personal use and for playing multiplayer games where the publisher has shut down the servers. No, you’re not entitled to the publisher helping you run those games but you are protected if your goal is to reverse engineer the game code in order to create your own fan-made server. Several old multiplayer games have open source servers for this!
Also if you’re playing on original hardware then of course you’re still fully in the clear to buy used cartridges, make backups of them, play them all you want. Yes, some rare are super expensive but a lot of that stuff is due to people collecting sealed and graded games which really has nothing to with actually playing games. You’re not going to spend thousands on a sealed game and then crack it open to play it when you could just buy an open copy for far cheaper or even download a ROM for free.
Anyway, yes, these publishers are idiots pushing out crap games we don’t want to play. That’s fine. If their goal was to kill retro gaming to try to force us to buy new games then they’re still a thousand miles away from that!
Classic USA
Thread closed
It feels like companies are worried about people not wanting to play new stuff if they have decades of old stuff available. Just like movies right guys?
Watching a movie from 1979
Uhh yea… right.
The hoops i had to go through, to backup my old end of-lifetime-DVD’s on linux. Not to mention the people who figured that stuff out.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of art to enrich society. Making money for copyright holders is a means to an end, not the end itself.
We need a new copyright law that shifts media to public domain if the copyright holder no longer makes it available.
Sure you can buy this - for just $1000000 you can watch this movie on Amazon.
Technically it’s available.
This is why the word “reasonable” comes up in a lot of laws. “What counts as reasonable?” You ask? This is what judges are for; to examine the circumstances and make a judgement call.
In an ideal society sure, we don’t live in an ideal society
Then whats the purpose of existence if not to strive for a more ideal society?
I think your comment is the most succinct summary in and of itself. It exists like a perfect quote from Greek philosophy. I was purely pointing out the broken issue of copyright as it exists.
The point of existence is to struggle for better existence in some schools of thought as you’ve summarized.
In others, it’s to realize that by struggling through cycles of existence you are not aware of the trap of existence, like Zen Buddhism.
In traditional Abrahamic schools of thought it’s to honor God enough and follow your creed that you get rewarded after you die.
I think the way I feel about existence is more Nihilist. Something like youtu.be/E_qvy82U4RE
I was where you were, a nothing matters, what’s the point nihilist. But I learned that I had skills and talents that could help people. Ended up going to law school and now I helping folks.
I believe every person can put their pants on in the morning and go out and make their local community just a little bit better. People get caught up in macro morals but just giving your neighbor a plate of Thanksgiving goods goes such a long way.
Oh hey don’t get me wrong. I switched my job from an ad agency to an emergency management SaaS company that was crucial during COVID to ensure vaccines went out to people when they should have and continues to have beneficial applications. I took a big pay cut, but the work is far more fulfilling.
I’m by no means saying we should treat our lives as if nothing matters, and I apologize that it came off that way. I think moreso my message was that there’s no great creed or so we can look to for guidance. Wake up every day, do your best to help others, then sign off of the toxicity that is most social media and do your best to treat yourself and those you care about with love. Go to sleep, and rinse and repeat.
But just don’t expect some magic eureka moment of where it gets easier. We’re all just struggling, and unfortunately I don’t think the forces we struggle against like greed will ever go away.
Cheers, thanks for the discourse, and I hope you find yourself with increasing happiness as the days flow by
You too!
Damn, I enjoyed reading this wholesome conversation.
Yea, I always liken nihilism to being an asshole, because you reap the rewards, however small or large, of peoples’ labour who didn’t think that way. The least you can do is pay it forward, so it’s more an obligation then anything else.
Profit for a ever dwindling number of individuals. /$
Copyright and patent law is a social contract and a very fundamental one.
United States Constitution has some pretty cool ideas in it. Freedom of speech? That the government cannot punish you for expressing an idea? That was added as an afterthought. Freedom of religion? That congress shall make no law establishing a religion, making our society secular and preventing the government from punishing those who do not conform? Afterthought. The right to a trial by jury of peers, the right to not be compelled to testify against yourself, the right to be secure in your person and property? Afterthoughts. All of that, all of the things we call the Bill Of Rights, were added on the basis of “Wait we should probably have this.”
The basis of intellectual property law isn’t in an amendment, it’s too important. It’s in the main body of the constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 Intellectual property:
To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respecive Writings and Discoveries.
We The People grant creators for a time exclusive right of way over their creations to monetize and profit from them as incentive for doing the work of creation so that we may have the creations, after which the creation becomes the heritage of all mankind forever so that other creators in the future may build upon it. Americans tend to view our first amendment right to freedom of speech, broadly defined by our supreme court to include symbolic speech to include overt actions such as burning a flag, as near absolute. Even the allegedly liberal allegedly enlightened democracies in Europe will outlaw ideas; America will not. Copyright and patent law is one of the very few where we will limit speech or the press, for it is one of the few laws that came before the first amendment. You may not be free to print an idea if it currently belongs to someone else.
Without that incentive, the ability to personally profit form the works you create, you get the Soviet Union, which invented…Tetris. Whose inventor didn’t earn a single kopek from his invention until he became an American citizen. Without the expiration date for copyrights or patents you get…Disney. Who gobbles up creative works without the intention of letting go with the apparent goal of monopolizing the very idea of storytelling itself, hoarding wealth in perpetuity and simply buying any competition.
For a society to properly function it is important for patents and copyrights to be temporary in nature; they must exist and yet they must within a lifetime cease to exist. Lack of either condition is an intolerable rot. Copyright terms being the lifetime of the author plus seventy years is a rot the United States probably has not survived. I think we’re soon to find out.
That is an excellent write up! Well done OP!
My only critique is you seem to downplay Tetris like it isnt one of the greatest games ever developed. You are right in that Pajitnov had to straight up move to have any right to reward from it. Also the Soviet Union had to collapse
Tetris is a cool game, sure, but my point is the Soviet Union had a short list of hit video games. Name 5 other famous Soviet video games. Not a major exporter of cultural works.
While you’re right, its a really poor way to phrase that. Compare to something like, “In 69 years, the Soviets only managed to make Tetris, and even then the creator didnt see a cent until he emigrated to America”.
Could also mention how they failed to keep up with American computing
I don’t disagree, though another nuance is that…The Soviet Union wasn’t empty of people with creative capacity. A Soviet invented Tetris, and Tetris is an excellent game. But the way intellectual property worked (or not) meant not many had the opportunity and motive to try, and look at the result.
I dont disagree. Never did
Meg: Well I’m gunna…
The library shouldn’t preserve books because people might read them.
The worst part is that it may really come to this
Fuck this, fuck these guys, and fuck them to hell.
I said this many years ago and I will say it again on here to be brief: Emulation and amateur game preservation by moving them from their original media (such as floppy disks, tapes, CDs, and other physical media) onto newer stuff and be able to move it around better is an act of historical defiance.
You see, throughout history, especially in the past 150 years or so, almost all early iterations of recorded media are just gone. Whether it is cylinder recordings from the late 19th century that preserved human voices, to the first music records, to the first silent film, and even the early talkies. 90% of all silent movies from all over the world are lost. What we have available is only a small sample of what existed. Even 75% of all early sound film from the first half of the 1930s are gone. For non-Western countries the number can be higher. The first ever South Asian language sound film is lost, and practically all films made in Indonesia from 1945 and back are also gone. Have you ever noticed how in terms of music, almost all the Christmas jingles are from the late 40s to 50s? There were a lot made before then, and it isn’t just because the newer stuff is more relatable… a lot of the older stuff just doesn’t exist anymore.
For TV, the majority of the first broadcasts were never recorded. Even as late as the 1960s some TV stars from Canada will never have their work shown because they were broadcast live and never recorded.
The list goes on and on… except for video games.
For video games that rule was broken. We have early computer adventure games from the 1970s that we can still play, ditto for console games and arcade games. The original Pong and Computer Space are still playable by anyone. The Atari 2600’s original game library is almost 100% preserved, with even the destruction of E.T. the video game en masse anyone can play it (I have it on emulation, because every single Atari game ever made so small that they take no space).
All legal attacks on emulation have failed ever since the 90s. Look up the history of MAME to see how hard amateurs have fought to allow us to revisit the classics and allow people for generations to come to see what things were like before they were born.
I feel like locating any kind of a not for profit foundation in the US is not going to end well.
You’re not allowed to have fun without paying for the privilege.
More like you’re not allowed to have fun, even if you pay for it.
Nah they want Mandatory Fun™©®
It’s a very specific kind of fun. It needs to be deep enough to hold your attention, but not so deep that you don’t drop it even the New Thing releases. It needs to be formulaic so they don’t have to spend much money making it. That’s the ideal for these corpos.
Oh no! Recreation!
Greedy fucks
Video games always used to be an economic way of entertainment. With an amount equal to a restaurant dinner you could be entertained for hundreds of hours.
Nowadays, video games follow the trend of enshitification. Low quality, repeated material, bad gaming experience, data hoarding, the need to be always online even for a single player game and of course, the “you don’t own, we can take it away anytime we want” mentality.
According to the court rulling, if you essentially want to play retro games, you should find a way to access the original hardware and run the software in mostly proprietary mediums like cartridges that could be damaged or corrupted. And the reason you can’t do it is because you may actually have fun!
This ruling is so bongers it blows my mind.
So you should never, ever ever
After all, as a researcher you have to be able to tinker a little bit.
Enjoy your research ;)
Patent law is 20 years. Copyright should be no different.
US copyright was originally for 14 years, with the option to extend it for another 14 years. It kept getting extended over the years. I think it’s life of the author plus 70 years now.
Isn’t that Disney’s fault (and their government lapdogs) with their efforts to hang on to Mickey Mouse as long as they can?
Yes
It’s the fault of a political system that allows private companies to lobby for oppressive laws.
The current iteration is, yes, which was created in the 90s. Copyright lawyers sneeringly called it the ‘Mickey Mouse Act’ due to just how involved they were in writing it.
But before that in the 1970s there was another major rewrite that gave them the original extension. Without that law in the 70s Mickey and Minnie Mouse would have entered full public domain in… 1984!
Can you imagine a world where the most recognized cartoon characters have been in public domain for over 40 years? If that law didn’t it, the entire original Disney cast (Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald Duck, Goofy, et al) would have been public domain, and ditto for Warner Bros characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and others. They all would have entered public domain in the 80s to the first half of the 2000s.
Comic book superheroes like Spiderman would have entered public domain in 2016! Can you imagine what the cinematic and comic landscape would be if anyone can publish their take on the majority of superhero comics?
To be clear, only the original versions would have been in public domain for over 40 years. Every time they change something about the character, it creates a new copyright for the new version.
Basically, Steamboat Willie Pete (released in 1928) would have been in the public domain decades ago, but Kingdom Hearts 2 Pete (released in late 2005/early 2006) would have only recently entered the public domain a few years ago.
There are even conspiracy theories that this is why Disney has been so focused on creating awful live action remakes of all of their old works; It resets the copyright timer on the new versions. Disney has historically used copyright as a cudgel to bully smaller content creators, because they took all of the old fairy tales (which were in the public domain) and slapped copyrights on them with their movies.
The conspiracy theory is that the awful live action remakes are simply a way to maintain copyright claims over those original fairy tales. They don’t care if the movies are successful; They just want to prevent anyone in the foreseeable future from ever making a Snow White/Sleeping Beauty/etc film based on the same fairy tales. Because even if a smaller content creator’s work is only based on the original fairy tale, Disney’s army of lawyers can claim that it is based on the Disney version. And the smaller content creators (who can’t afford a long drawn-out legal battle) will be bullied in court and forced to concede.
copyright should also expire when something goes out of print or, if its hardware locked, when the hardware is no longer available.
I’ve been collecting abandonware since 2000. I lost good chunk of my collection due to a harddrive crash some years ago, but I recovered it and expanded upon it. My logic has been the same. It isn’t about wanting to play it (I don’t play the majority of the games I download) it is entirely about perserving them. Maybe one day I’ll make my collection a torrent for all to share.
Copyright should belong to the lifetime of the person who is creator or 20 years from the original creation if transfered or created by a non-person entity.
Nah, even an artist should lose monopoly after 20 years. What is their incentive to make new stuff otherwise?
Their incentive is… making art is fun and a passion. Holding copyrignt allows artists to earn a living while freely pursuing their passion. Artists already struggle to get paid well for their work… and you want to strip away their rights to their work? Do you also pay your artists in impressions?
An artist isnt stripped of anything, they can still work on an old IP. Fans will likely follow if they’re actually good. They just would lose the ability to stop anyone else from profiting off it. I happen to be a content creator and aspiring writer myself, and have every intention on placing my works in the creative commons
This is a mistaken take driven by corporations. Artists and creators generally don’t own their own copyrights. It’s the first thing they’re forced to sign away to get any kind of contract, publishing deal, or other form of access from the big players who hold the keys to the kingdom. Nobody is making even a million dollars let alone more without going through them, and they don’t agree unless they own those rights.
Small time creators can own their own work, but even then you have countless examples of creators who wouldn’t play ball so the bigger companies just plagiarized them and they don’t have the money to fight it. You need the backing of a big company to even enforce your claim against the other big companies that threaten it if it’s actually lucrative. And, again, they won’t unless they’re the ones that own it because you signed it away.
Copyright does not protect creators in the slightest. It’s a tool by and for large business used to legally steal from creators.
Exactly why i said copyright should be limited by non-person entities.
Stupid thing is, if they sold it, people would still buy it, even if it was easy to pirate.
Yes, fucking sell snes games built in a small emulator. Done. This is why I hate people going to “business school” they don’t know how any one business actually works they just enshitify everything
There was the Snes mini a few years ago, that had a few select games on it. It was sold out everywhere instantly, to noone’s surprise. No N64 mini ever made it to production, to everyone’s surprise.
They do. It’s called Nintendo Switch Online and is managed over a subscription service. They’re never going to just sell you a game anymore. They’re going to force you to pay monthly for it for the rest of your life.
Pay up or skill up. $ is the price for ignorance.
It ain’t the world I like but it’s the world we have.
And this is why I sail the seven seas and have zero reservations about doing so.
Do you seed, though?
Nah I hit and run like a bastard
Sailing bastard
This makes you no different to a gold hoarding dragon.
⚔️ 🐉 ⚔️
Yep.
Toproms collection. If you can hold it, give us a hand.
I’m sitting on the RetroAchievements collection over here. It is my single most seeded torrent, by leaps and bounds. I went with RA, because it means I can throw any of them at RetroArch and the RetroAchievements integration will work without having to fiddle with game versions. It also has a surprising number of ROM hacks and homebrew.
.
Ay, elaborate a bit because I see a lot of unofficial RA collections and the official one on archive.org doesn’t list a magnet or torrent file.
Are they seriously just hosting their most current archive in one place?
Seed your mum
Of course they’ll be used for “recreational purposes”. How do they think museums are supposed to work?
Educational purposes? But yeah the difference is thin in my opinion
god forbid
What good is preserving old cultural products if you can’t use them the way they were intended? Oh yeah, we’ve got that old record of a book/piece of music/movie in our archive. No, nobody can access it, it’s not fair for people selling newer ones!
Why do we still teach children the classics? Can’t you see that’s hurting profits?
Damn right that old video games would be used for entertainment. I have old books, which predate me by decades, that I still read. I watch old movies on DVD’s. I see no reason why games should be any different.
I’m lucky that ever since I’ve been a gamer, I had a PC. Hardware is thus not a problem, and in my case, so is emulation, via VirtualBox. I kept the install disks and license keys (if applicable) for all operating systems I’ve used, so now I have several virtual images I spin up when I want to play a certain game. And I’m finding that I’m still spending most of my time with the older titles…
This will not help anyone who’d like to play their old favorite from the NES or Dreamcast era. And it’s too late to advise only buying games that are platform independent. So kerp up the good fight. In the past you purchased games to own, not a “limited license”. You are entitled to kerp using your entertainment product as you see fit.
I read an old book, and it didn’t need batteries, nor had it microtransactions, nor advertisements, nor did it need updates. Worst of all, I got it for free at my local library. The terror!
I always enjoyed the ads in some youth books, like the “one chapter teaser” of the next adventure in the local translation of “Famous Five” by Blyton
Yeah, but those X-Ray Specs worked about as well as anything bought from an Ad thase days
We never had that kind of ads in our books, they came in catalogues I sadly never got to order from even if the "make your own radio"kit with crystal always looked awesome
Those radio kits with the crystals actually worked, I remember building one with my pa. I forget the principle behind them
Sounds like I should try to find a kit before they go all DAB
Trump: “lol, you mean you used to.”
Ha! I used to do that, too. They also had video tapes at mine, and audio. You could do all sorts of things there. It was publically funded, as it should.
Ugh, playing games for fun? They’re not toys!
Just use it for llm training and it’ll be OK!
Umm, yeah, that’s what a lot of preserved media is used for. You think publishers are losing their shit over people enjoying Shakespeare?
Big Book hates him!
I subscribe to a lot of YouTube channels that have silent films and films from the 1930s and 40s. Also I have a lot of movies from the 70s to 90s on my drive (and some more recent, too). I don’t always watch the more recent stuff.
It is ironic, too. Because when VHS first came out, it didn’t take long for film studios to start to release tons upon tons of their old classics (that were often shown on TV anyway) on tape and frequently capitalized on people’s desire for owning and watching older media. Sure people got the new stuff (for both rental and ownership) like there was no tomorrow, but if you were in the 80s and wanted to watch 40s stuff (which was like the 80s for people living in the 80s… feeling old yet?) you wouldn’t have had that hard of a time finding the classics.
This is what really baffles me about the industry. They could be making some real decent cash off of this old IP if they just made it accessible and put a tiny bit of effort into it. Imagine all the old games the switch already runs. Imagine it running EVERYTHING! ugh. Dummies!
I wonder at what temperature do preserved video games burn?
Fahrenheit 999, then the score counter ticks back over to 0
198451° degrees
Yo ho…
games being used for recreational purposes? the horror
More proof that if they were a new idea, libraries would be fought tooth and nail by book publishers
Could you imagine trying to get there to be libraries today if the concept was new? “We can’t possibly just let people read for free! What, do you think literacy is a right? It’s a privilege!”
Same for firefighters.
“PAY people to sit around in case a fire breaks out?? That almost never happens! Also, ignore everything else they do. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep fires out of their homes. We’ll sell them a new one if something happens, though. And their neighbors. And THEIR neighbors. Also, literally buy a fireplace from us, please.”
Ironically that was the case for a good long while, and has been the case on exceedingly rare occasion in the more modern era.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Firefighting_in_ancient_Rome
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Uni…
www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39516346
see: the internet archive
What’s the fucking point of preservation then?
Oh, heaven forbid someone go to the library and enjoy a book they check out.
Among us
Yeah because I go to the library and complain and scowl the whole time I’m reading. Occasionally I make sure to belt out “I’m not enjoying this! I only do it for preservation reasons!” bunch of greedy fucks.
k I guess everyone will continue to dump roms and make emulators.
I m sry but the title of this post cannot be true unless it’s sarcasm because it sounds really stupid, what else games are used for!?
guess what publishers, your videogames are going to be preserved if you allow it or not.
I suppose you could have allowed it to happen to garner some goodwill from the community, but you have instead chosen to shit on that goodwill.
guess we’ll just do whatever we’ve been doing for the last 25 years and continue to “archive” your “property” that’s been abandoned.
What I don’t get is that they’re not sizing the opportunity to do this on their own terms and maybe make some cash off it. Idiots.
Cool. Guess I’ll leave you and them in the past.
All the best games are cool about providing software resources to players, mod abilities, self-hosting, so on. It’s kind of like the Steam license thing. I love Steam but there’s no way I’m starting Helldivers 2 or Destiny 2 up in ten years to play nostalgia. But Shattered Pixel Dungeon? Deep Rock Galactic? Valheim? Minecraft. I’ll still be rocking those.
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