Original Bsky post

piracy is the only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now, you might find it morally reprehensible but there is literally no other institution that will keep games alive in 25, 50 years' time

Frank's reply

As the director of a historical video game preservation institution, and someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to this cause, this is accurate. We have attempted to work with the industry's trade organization to find a legal path forward, but they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative.

The full statement from the Video Game History Foundation:

This is unfortunate news for those who still prefer buying games on physical media, and is certainly a hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the physical market. But from the perspective of professional preservationists, this doesn't have as much of an impact as you might expect.

The reality is that the vast majority of video games produced over the last two decades were not made for dedicated home video game consoles, let alone pressed to physical media. And even when they were released on physical media, a day-one digital patch was all but guaranteed, meaning that even though a disc is preserving data in an accessible way, it may not represent the game that people actually played. Museums and archives have been preparing for this future for a while, with the expectation that putting discs on a shelf isn't going to be a long-term solution for preserving new games.

What continues to baffle us is what the industry expects institutions like ours to do about it. If platform owners are deciding to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, then we'd also like to see trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research. Everyone agrees this is a serious problem, but the ESA has repeatedly opposed the efforts of cultural heritage institutions to reform digital copy protection laws to make it easier to do this work. The industry needs to meaningfully come to the table on this issue, because asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto VI and hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution.

I've actually watched those attempts at negotiation via the Copyright Office (basically a few video conference that are a couple hours long) and the ESA makes the most absurd maximalist arguments about how they should be able to control their works...truly infuriating.

Even with industry stonewalling, the VGHF does great work—check out their blog for some highlights; their podcast where they talk with people involved in game preservation, history, and development; and their free digital archive where you can peruse (and do full text searches of!) game magazines, art assets, trade show ephemera, and game development material (they've got a huge Cyan collection for the Myst/Riven fans).