this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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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.
Except that that is largely not even true.
87% of games made before 2010 are completely commercially unavailable.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/23792586/classic-game-preservation-video-game-history-foundation-esa
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.
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.
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.