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.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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      4 days ago

      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.

      • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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.

      • DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        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.

        • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          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”

        • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          The AAA warning label is pretty much like the Enterprise warning label for other types of software.

        • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          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.

      • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
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        4 days ago

        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.

  • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    When they kill the games, they no longer make money on them. So playing without paying is not a lost sale, even if the player is corrupt enough to enjoy playing. So there’s no problem yeah?

    • III@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      This reeks of selling games on a “pay per new game save” kind of move. If “replay” is a threat, how long until they move to eliminate that?

    • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
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      3 days ago

      Why play old fun games, when you could subscribe to the latest bland live service FOMO skinner box masquerading as a game?

      I don’t know where this industry is headed but it isn’t to a good place.

  • alphabethunter@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    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.

    • Pirky@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        two 8 TB drives in RAID to back them up

        Obligatory “RAID is not a backup”

        • Pirky@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          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).

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            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.

          • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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            3 days ago

            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.

      • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        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…

  • radix@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    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.

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      You can’t have criticisms about the game if you put it on a shelf instead of playing it.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        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”.

        • yeather@lemmy.ca
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          3 days ago

          Good thing the games are digital now! Your virtual shelf (steam library) looks perfect with our 600gb slop shooter game!

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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            3 days ago

            Knowing the game industry right now they will probably sell you different colored shelves and wallpaper and dividers,… for a premium.

            • T156@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Mustn’t forget the limited edition pre-order special shelf wallpaper.

  • Mango@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Well isn’t it just convenient that I don’t give a damn what the US copyright office thinks?

  • Jarix@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    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.

    • III@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Given the industry’s “you aren’t buying, you are renting” mentality… very, very optimistic.