this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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The article talks more about being able to legally play old games without downloading roms or anything, but that's a different topic from video game preservation. Video game preservation itself is doing just fine though. The vast majority of games are archived online and emulators provide super easy ways to play games that are impossible to find now.
Sure, companies should allow people to play older titles in easier ways, but to say "efforts to preserve gaming's rich history are failing" is just wrong.
I do think there are some real concerns, including how institutions can maintain (and share) collections, and best practices being influenced by fear of getting attacked by Nintendo lawyers, etc.
Play Beyond Earth. You can’t.
Overwatch 1?
Also there is a world of difference between quality of emulation vs hardware.
It’s very noticeable with games from ps1 and forward.
FPGAs are great, but there is so much that just isn’t kept in an archival state, especially to be publicly accessible.
Leave it to Gamesindustry.biz to conflate "preserved" with "in commercial circulation".
The entire article bends over backwards to present "people having drm-free digital copies of the game" as not being an option, to the point where, as Redkey mentions elsewhere in this thread, GoG doesn't even come up when one game sold on there is framed as being "lost".
Even the guy who wants old games freely playable will only go as far as saying they should be playable "online".