A three-year fight to help support game preservation has come to a sad end today. The US copyright office has denied a request for a DMCA exemption that would allow libraries to remotely share digital access to preserved video games.
“For the past three years, the Video Game History Foundation has been supporting with the Software Preservation Network (SPN) on a petition to allow libraries and archives to remotely share digital access to out-of-print video games in their collections,” VGHF explains in its statement. “Under the current anti-circumvention rules in Section 1201 of the DMCA, libraries and archives are unable to break copy protection on games in order to make them remotely accessible to researchers.”
Essentially, this exemption would open up the possibility of a digital library where historians and researchers could ‘check out’ digital games that run through emulators. The VGHF argues that around 87% of all video games released in the US before 2010 are now out of print, and the only legal way to access those games now is through the occasionally exorbitant prices and often failing hardware that defines the retro gaming market.
You must log in or # to comment.
“No! They’ll enjoy preserving our history to muuuch!!”
They know the dark secret of book preservation. The people preserving the books… gulp READ THEM!
Libraries facilitate widespread piracy of books, by allowing people to read them without a distribution licence, or even take them home!
This is a clear violation of the DMCA, and thus must be stopped immediately!
I get the sarcasm even if others don’t.
Someone else on Lemmy said you couldn’t invent libraries today. It’s true.
There’s a group called Improv Everywhere that used to do really creative flash mobs like the No Pants Subway ride where they would all claim to have forgotten to put on pants that day, or going into a cafe and lugging 90s desktops in and dialing in, or during the Great Recession they had a suicide jumper on a 2ft high ledge which they dramatically had to talk down.
They once tried to do a “writers against libraries” stunt but it ended up not being funny enough because people kinda went “oh yeah libraries are kinda weird in that they just give out books for free”
Criminal contempt of business model, indeed.
Well, time to finally make my own collection to play
That’s what I’ve been doing. Been collecting various PS1-4 games on top of GameCube, Wii, and Switch games over the past year to rip and save digital copies for myself. Then I play them on emulators.
I have roughly a few hundred so far and plan to expand it further.
I have a NAS with two 8 TB drives in RAID to back them up and it’s already over 50% full. I want to start collecting OG Xbox and 360 games in the near future, but I need to get jailbroken consoles for them.two 8 TB drives in RAID to back them up
Obligatory “RAID is not a backup”
Sure, but it’s a start. It’s certainly better than trying to keep them on my laptop. And I do hope to add more forms of data backup/storage as time goes on. It’s taken several hours ripping all those games and I’d hate to lose them all.
I also have an external 4 TB SSD that I keep most of the games on (excluding the PS4 games because they simply take up too much space).Make a torrent, best backup.
I used to have a RAID6 (could lose two drives) without a backup, then some power surge killed 5 of the 12 disks. Trust me, you do want a backup.
Probably the easiest way to do an off-site backup for low-double digit terabytes is an external drive in a bank safety deposit box. Remember your home could burn down fall over and sink into a swamp and no amount of parity drives within the home would keep that data safe.
Especially RAID 0.
That would be funny if someone thought RAID 0 was a backup solution, ahaha
Original Xbox modding is fun as hell. You need to track down a 300GB PATA/IDE hard drive, then load the sucker up with ROMS. The modded OS comes with a built in FTP server so its pretty effortless to load up it with ROMs. Last I tried (like 10 years ago) Xbox reliably played roms from SNES and older, and could less than reliably but still successfully play N64 and PS1 games. I was even able to change CDs on FF7.
Man I want to mod an Xbox now. If I remember right, you need a copy of mech assault…
Actually explains a lot of decisions by game publishers the last 5-10 years if their official position is that games are meant to collect dust on a shelf rather than being played.
You can’t have criticisms about the game if you put it on a shelf instead of playing it.
Sure you can, criticisms like “takes up too much shelf space” or “is too heavy for my shelf”, “doesn’t go with the color of my wallpaper behind the shelf”.
Good thing the games are digital now! Your virtual shelf (steam library) looks perfect with our 600gb slop shooter game!
Knowing the game industry right now they will probably sell you different colored shelves and wallpaper and dividers,… for a premium.
Mustn’t forget the limited edition pre-order special shelf wallpaper.
They really want to force gamers to buy their new games which are pretty much like the old games but now with extra helpings of ads, gambling mechanics and micro transactions on top
They really want to force gamers to buy the old games, just as they were, because those are next to free to adapt to a different platform and people will pay for them.
Not to be my usual old codger, but a lot of these game in questions were microtransaction-based to being with, in the very Farmville-y format of charging you a quarter for each set of three lives and then being ungodly broken and difficult to make sure those three lives didn’t last any longer than a minute each and entice you to pay for three more.
This absolutely sucks, is based on unjustifiable logic and takes the side of business over a demonstrable common good, but let’s not pretend the business logic behind it was invented in 2005. Game publishers have been game publishers longer than many of the nostalgic posters have been alive.
They really want to force gamers to buy the old games, just as they were, because those are next to free to adapt to a different platform and people will pay for them.
Nah, if they had wanted that, they would continue to release them in that format. As it stands, they don’t, so you can’t buy those old games from the publisher either.
They absolutely do. The market is full of remasters, remakes and re-releases. Having the originals readily available presumably diminishes the value of those, by the count of publishers.
That is not the same as saying that old games are available. Most of them are not, the market keeps reissuing the same handful of hits and landmark games (although we’re in an era of deep cuts now, we even have a Pocky & Rocky remaster, somehow). But they can’t set up regulations where you are allowed to lend out Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin but not Resident Evil 2, so here we are.
The stories have also gone downhill to accomodate new bastard genres with fomo shit
Love how the people don’t get represented or supported because of corporations and their insatiable greed.
The weird thing is, corporations can’t even make any money from these older games. I guess they think that means people who can’t play older games will just buy their newer garbage, and yet that’s not how it works at all lol people just end up buying indie games instead these days.
It’s about preserving the consumption culture for the mainstream. If playing older games for free was easier and legal, more people that now only play the newest AAA garbage would start doing it, and corpos don’t want to risk that culture change, because if it gets big enough it would definitely impact their sales.
Unfortunately not many people know or care about indie games and free games like Beyond All Reason, Shattered Pixel Dungeon, etc. as is.
They could and sometimes make a relatively small amount of money, but it’s more about trying to legally protect their trademarks/intellectual property as I understand it. These days I’d much rather support an indie dev over a shitty “AAA” company for sure, tired of them price gouging people for games that aren’t even that good.
Right, “if they can access the old games still, we can’t pay a understaffed 3rd party a pittance to slap a coat of paint on it and resell it at full price”
The AAA warning label is pretty much like the Enterprise warning label for other types of software.
They’re really in a bind though. Indie games are great because there are thousands of indie developers out there making games and we get to play any ones we want. All the indie games that fail don’t matter because we don’t need to pick the winner ahead of time.
AAA studios can’t operate this way because they can’t predict what will be a great game that everyone wants to play. The only leverage they have is that they can afford to hire a large team of artists to create all the graphics.
It’s really the same situation that Hollywood film studios are stuck in and the result is basically the same. Hollywood makes their MCU graphics extravaganzas and AAA studios makes their Call of Dutys.
Depending on marketing & their dedication to bringing it to market…again… they can & they do. Digitally. Nintendo has sold old video games on the Wii, Wii U platform. Then, they packaged & released the NES & SNES Classic consoles, very smart move actually & it was a cute product that appealed to many consumers.
Since then, Nintendo’s greed has grown. They no longer sell because they don’t want you to own copies of old videogames…they want to rent them to you by the month or year. Via Nintendo Online subscriptions, you can browse the whole catalog & play all kinds of old games. It requires a Switch, an internet connection, and don’t forget that sweet, sweet Nintendo Online subscription. Once you’ve gotten your fix & you cancel your subscription, you own nothing & they’ve got your money. This is their goal, everything is going according to plan. Subscription models for endless reven on old games.
You will give them your money, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
and hilariously, Nintendo uses emulation themselves.
https://gamerant.com/nintendo-emulating-own-games-museum-windows-pc/
Hypocritical fucks
Damn, that’s crazy. Here I am being happy that I have their older consoles that I’m still playing their best older games, even with modding them and using flashcarts too etc. I guess retro gamers are a bit of a dying breed, but there’s still some people out there like me.
Removed by mod
Capitalism
Well that’s fucking stupid.
… but not surprising.
Corruption from potato supreme all the way down and back up to Orange Hitler
🐶 NO PLAY
🐶 ONLY BUY
They can dick about as much as they want, piracy will make sure to preserve the things they want gone. The reason they don’t want older games to be preserved is that new generations, whilst playing them, may come to realize that you don’t need gacha mechanics, stupid fomo, micro transactions, 6 different currencies, 3 different shop menus, 2 battlepasses and so forth to have a good game.
Imagine Beethoven refusing to release his catalog of works because people might stop listening to newer music. Gg capitalism.
“Capitalism creates innovation” - one of the best jokes out there
Removed by mod
we should probably burn it
Agreed
Removed by mod
I specifically need to not have those things. Those are the things that I’m going to games in order to avoid.
I wonder if the EU can somehow prevent DMCA being applied to European internet users.
Wouldn’t hold my breath, they’re just as rabid about copyright as the US is.
You haven’t sold this game in 30 years - why do you fucking care you drooling troglodite?
I don’t think I’ll ever buy a game from a AAA publisher again,they can’t be trusted and the quality of their goods has fallen sharply the last few years.
Smaller dev teams have better/more interesting IP AND seem to care what I think as their end user.
The only AAA game I WAS interested in was GTA6, but after that they just did to GTA5 I’m not interested anymore. I use Linux and they just added anti-cheat that is compatible with Linux but never enabled compatibility. They don’t want me to buy their game.
If im reading it correctly only the sharing is prohibited not the preservation.
I can live with that and fight again another day. As long as they still exist in an archive they will see the legal light of day someday(im being optimistic)
The high seas will take care of retro gamers who want to play them im sure, as Gaben says piracy is a service issue.
Given the industry’s “you aren’t buying, you are renting” mentality… very, very optimistic.
Well isn’t it just convenient that I don’t give a damn what the US copyright office thinks?
Removed by mod
Publishers are absolutely terrified “preserved books would be used for recreational purposes,” major book burnings ordered by federal court to be carried out in every state…
The book industry will be doing this with digital copies if they haven’t already.
Guess I’ll have to start hoarding games now
