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The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, have unveiled a new study regarding the current state of classic video games and their commercial availability today.

The results obtained in the study for the US; which goes into great detail going all the way back in 1960, going through each of the video game generations up to 2009, and how much of their library has been preserved or is available to any extend in the modern day, has shown that overall a minuscule 13% of all classic video games up to that date are currently available in some form in the modern day. To make matters worse, their study revealed that no video game generation has even surpassed the 20% mark when it comes to availability.

Availability rate of historical games, by period, between 1960 and 2009. (n = 1500, ±2.5%, 95% CI)
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Basically, it means that nearly around 8 or 9 out of 10 games, the user has to go out of their way to access these classics, from options going to retaining the original releases (alongside their hardware, both in working conditions that is), to travel to another country's library, and of course, the most common form of piracy, or "self-preservation" as some might call it.

The goal of this study is expand the exceptions that libraries and organizations focused on preservation get, which for some reason seem to be heavily limited compared to other media, like movies, books and music, and while the US Copyright Office claims that the industry already does enough to preserve the games, the study shows quite the contrary, with absolutely no sign of it getting better to any extend.

The study brings up this important facts about gaming preservation:

• 87% of classic games are not in release, and are considered critically endangered
• Availability is low across every platform and time period tracked in the study
• Libraries and archives can digitally preserve, but not digitally share video games, and can provide on-premises access only
• Libraries and archives are allowed to digitally share other media types, such as books, film, and audio, and are not restricted to on-premises access
• The Entertainment Software Association, the video game industry’s lobbying group, has consistently fought against expanding video game preservation within libraries and archives

The culprit of the limitation is the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), Title 17, section 1201 according to VGHF. The DMCA will have a new rulemaking proceedure scheduled for 2024, which they hope the study will help to make a change into the limiting DMCA law.

Video Game History Foundation Study

 

[Taleweaver]

Very interesting. And I'll be taking the full report (54 pages not including potential links) on vacation for a thorough read. Thanks for sharing.

It's not hard to predict the general tendency of the replies (it wouldn't be gbatemp without closet pirates, wouldn't it? ), but I don't want to blindly follow the masses.

For one...the graphic is very misleading. Here...take this sample from page 34:

So they couldn't find the three games they picked from the 60's (I presume space war's the first). I have no doubt it's the same for other games of that era, but with a population so low, charts showing a percentage are effectively meaningless.

There's also the "and so what?" factor. You don't think the first ever audio or video recordings were properly preserved, don't you? Let alone written text? Software requires a platform far more than any other medium, so retaining that platform is probably a major factor why most older classics are gone (I haven't read the full document yet).

I have to stress the age, as things are different now. The efforts of running even windows 95 games aren't unobtainable, and legal emulation goes a long way in making sure things can be preserved properly.
The problem now is that newer unobtainability is by planned obsolescence. And that isn't going anywhere soon, as we're actively paying into platforms that feed into that (raise your hand if your steam library is larger than your GoG one).

So...I'm cautiously in praising piracy as it's often just an excuse to "just not pay developers", but I feel that there's justification in proper emulation after an agreed period.

Unfortunately, corporations making money off of re-(re-)releases, remakes, remasters and such (and scalpers investing in old hardware) are a tough hurdle to overcome. Especially in the West, where sharing and vox populi have a bad taste in their synonyms (socialism! communism!).

 

[pustal]

I don’t support this line of thinking for the same reason why I don’t support any taxation of inheritance. All of that money and assets were already taxed when *I* first earned them, double taxation is not acceptable to me, you shouldn’t “tax the same dollar twice”. I’m a guy, I work, and I know full-well that I will not live long enough to fully consume all the fruits of my labour. That’s not the motivation here, the motivation is to leave something for my descendants, so that they can build upon that foundation and rise to even greater heights. The express purpose of copyright is to protect intellectual property from being appropriated, and it’s property just like any other. I don’t lose my real estate the moment I die, so I don’t see any reason why my ideas should perish with me either. That being said, ideas only have worth if they’re in circulation, same as capital. It is asinine to keep your inheritance under a mattresses, and for the same reason, it is asinine to allow intellectual property to become forgotten in some kind of vault. “You snooze, you lose” rules apply, same as with abandoned trademarks and patents - you don’t get to sit on them indefinitely. I would *expect* my inheritance to be re-invested and to progressively grow, I expect the same of my ideas. Should they enter public domain at some point? Yes, absolutely - when they’re no longer monetised *or* when they’re ubiquitous enough that not releasing them to the public would be no different than a monopoly. Things get more complicated with medical patents since, realistically, there isn’t a person coming up with those complex molecules - a computer does that. Whose intellectual property is that, the computer’s? Certainly not. Is it the company’s? The company just owns the computer. It’s difficult to even say that they’re intellectual property at all since they’re not works of intellect. It’s a nuanced subject, limiting our scope to media would be prudent here.

Walt had plenty of money to left to his descendants and made also plenty of money with the work of others that fell on creative commons, including works made with him already alive. It's hipocritical of Disney to say the least. Public domain is not a tax and it is a concept that exists since ancient Rome for a reason. Preventing works to fall into it limits cultural spread and actually stifles innovation.

Also patents and copyright are different things. And I also defend limits on patents. Take the medical field, companies hold patents for 20 years, get showered in money, don't even reinvest the money (most R&D pharmaceuticals do are low risk, high reward, the expensive and high risk stuff is left to public research institutions and bought out from them for cheap).

 

[Foxi4]

Walt had plenty of money to left to his descendants and made also plenty of money with the work of others that fell on creative commons, including works made with him already alive. It's hipocritical of Disney to say the least. Public domain is not a tax and it is a concept that exists since ancient Rome for a reason. Preventing works to fall into it limits cultural spread and actually stifles innovation.

Also patents and copyright are different things. And I also defend limits on patents. Take the medical field, companies hold patents for 20 years, get showered in money, don't even reinvest the money (most R&D pharmaceuticals do are low risk, high reward, the expensive and high risk stuff is left to public research institutions and bought out from them for cheap).

I don’t recognise “plenty” as a valid argument, it’s not a zero sum game. You don’t get to decide when someone made “enough money” on their idea - it’s their idea. It is far more agreeable to me to limit what actually can be protected by law as a work of intellect and what cannot, and is thus only protected for a period of time to recoup the initial investment. You can’t have a copyright on a cooking recipe, for instance - courts have repeatedly ruled that a combination of freely available ingredients is not eligible for *any* kind of protection - once it’s out there, it can be freely reproduced. This is specifically why many recipes are “secret”, insert your 11 herbs and spices joke here. Half of chemistry works in the exact same fashion, and yet it *is* protected, so what gives? It stands to reason that it is the process and not the individual components that are created by intellect, hence we have patents, rather than copyright - we’re not protecting a recipe for a chemical, but the process by which it is created. Media are the exact opposite - the process is widely known, but the ingredients themselves - stories, characters etc., are the work of intellect and a product of someone’s imagination. They’re the “meat and potatoes” of a media recipe, but they’re not freely available. That doesn’t belong to you, someone came up with that. You can innovate on a pill by changing the process or the molecule - a human didn’t come up with any of it anyway, not anymore at least, we’re well past that. A supercomputer was spitballing and one thing just clicked. You can’t innovate on a character - a character is what it is, once you mess around with it too much it becomes something else entirely. You can put that character in a different setting or situation, but you can already do that to a large extent through parody, the law makes such concessions (parody doesn’t have to be “funny”, by the way). I think the two things you mention as a counter argument are wildly different from one another. So long as a specific piece of media is widely available, there is no urgent need for it to be released into the public domain - such a need only arises when it is not available and at risk of being lost altogether. You cannot argue that cultural spread is being limited when the work is available, this only becomes a problem when it is not in active circulation - few things are indefinitely, that’s when they should become a public good. Naturally a patent or a trademark is not the same as a copyrighted piece of material, we’re comparing similar methods of protection of intellectual property here.

 

[EpikJimmer]

my take on piracy:
if it's for fair use, yknow, just to play the game, nothing else, cool whatever.
if you promote piracy, maybe that's where the line gets drawn.

 

[MarkDarkness]

But does anyone outside a very small group care about a shoddy licensed tie in?

Actually, yes. The preservation of art does not depend on current perceptions. If in 10 years there is a new dominant game genre (like battle royales were a little while ago) and it is discovered that Batman for the Atari was the first game to implement the ideas from that new genre, all of a sudden that game got way more important and you couldn't have foreseen that.

The reason why things are important or not shifts with time and is quite often unrelated to how subjectively good they are... it's the mission of whoever is around that art at the time to actually preserve things and make them available for the future.

 

[Hanafuda]

It's appalling, the number of 8-bit titty-reveal mahjong games we never got here.

 

[SylverReZ]

Sounds like it was made by a bunch of politicians.

 

[Noctosphere]

Hi @ShadowOne333 ,
I'd like to know, among those 86% that were not available here,how many were worthless trash games of the 2nd generation that caused the crash?
During 2nd gen, video game company (going by another name back then, like entertainment company or idk) were mass producing video games, and i mean video games as in not "video game cartridge". The mass production of video games led to very poor quality of them and were not a big loss in my opinion. I remember i had some games on atari 2600, and i had like 3 of them that were the same except for a different background color.

 

[Kwyjor]

how many were worthless trash games of the 2nd generation that caused the crash?

Probably only a very tiny percentage? There were probably a lot of "worthless trash games" then, but that was only a tiny slice of time and there have been many, many, many more video games produced in the years since then.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Hi @ShadowOne333 ,
I'd like to know, among those 86% that were not available here,how many were worthless trash games of the 2nd generation that caused the crash?
During 2nd gen, video game company (going by another name back then, like entertainment company or idk) were mass producing video games, and i mean video games as in not "video game cartridge". The mass production of video games led to very poor quality of them and were not a big loss in my opinion. I remember i had some games on atari 2600, and i had like 3 of them that were the same except for a different background color.

I think most people seem to think that the overproduced amount of that generation was a lot in variety (meaning different games), iirc it was mostly confirmed that most of those were unsold stock that couldn't go out in purchases, and compared to today's amount of titles released, it's almost nothing.

The quality of the games back then hasn't changed to today, at least from my perspective.

Also, take into consideration that this only seems to have affected the US, other countries and continents didn't go through this.

 

[Noctosphere]

I think most people seem to think that the overproduced amount of that generation was a lot in variety (meaning different games), iirc it was mostly confirmed that most of those were unsold stock that couldn't go out in purchases, and compared to today's amount of titles released, it's almost nothing.

The quality of the games back then hasn't changed to today, at least from my perspective.

Also, take into consideration that this only seems to have affected the US, other countries and continents didn't go through this.

1-im not sure i fully understand. What do you mean by it was mostly unsold stock? I mean, are we talking about "games" that were never released on market at all? Or "cartridge"?

2-when you talk about quality of games that hasn't changed, i guess you mean the efforts they put in games isn't more, it's just the tools to develop games that are better today, or something like that

3-are you saying the crash only happened in the US? First time i hear that, but i never went through research about this so idk ^^

Thanks

 

[gamefan128]

Our redemption arc.

A redemption arc requires an epic soundtrack.

 

[Bladexdsl]

many were worthless trash games of the 2nd generation that caused the crash?

the only game that caused the crash was ONE game: ET
after that disaster atari threw in the towel and if it wasn't for nintendo taking a risk the video game industry probably never would have recovered.
now if your talking about worthless trash games in a single gen allow me to introduce you to: the wii

 

[Noctosphere]

the only game that caused the crash was ONE game: ET
now if your talking about worthless trash games in a single gen allow me to introduce you to: the wii

One game caused the entire industry to crash? Sorry but no, E.T. was only one of those games that caused the crash. As i said, i had three games that were sold as different games, different cover, different title, but they were exactly the same game just with different background colors. Such games are among the cause of the crash

 

[Bladexdsl]

One game caused the entire industry to crash?

google it if you don't believe me. there's even a fascinating docco called: console wars about the whole thing. one game was the downfall of atari

 

[Deleted member 608654]

Actually, yes. The preservation of art does not depend on current perceptions. If in 10 years there is a new dominant game genre (like battle royales were a little while ago) and it is discovered that Batman for the Atari was the first game to implement the ideas from that new genre, all of a sudden that game got way more important and you couldn't have foreseen that.

The reason why things are important or not shifts with time and is quite often unrelated to how subjectively good they are... it's the mission of whoever is around that art at the time to actually preserve things and make them available for the future.

Maybe the batman and that new game are unrelated and the ideas were coincidental.

Post automatically merged: Jul 12, 2023

It's appalling, the number of 8-bit titty-reveal mahjong games we never got here.

Sarcasm

 

[djnate27]

Video games don't have ubiquitous government-funded public libraries lol

I don't know. My Public Library carries games from the past three generations. Does that count?

 

[gamefan128]

I don't know. My Public Library carries games from the past three generations. Does that count?

The public library in my area does too, although they’re all Switch games, mainly party games. They are also on-premises access only.

 

[Noctosphere]

google it if you don't believe me. there's even a fascinating docco called: console wars about the whole thing. one game was the downfall of atari

One game cannot do this all on its own.
It was only PART of it. Tons of companies make bad decisions. They dont fall because they make one bad decision, they fall when they make too many bad decision. We are now talking about a market. The video game market fell because many companies in this market were making many bad decisions. THIS is what caused the crash. E.T. was one of these bad decision, only one of them, probably the worse of them, but still, it was only one of them...

 

[HarveyHouston]

Having been in the hacking scene for years, I think the most likely reason for piracy is to preserve and distribute what pirates are afraid will no longer be available anymore. Soooo many games are not readily available legitimately, which is why there's a whole underground movement to keep these games from no longer being relevant.

When you have a game that people like, and you strictly tell people that they're not supposed to get it any way but through certain platforms and pay for it, it's a double-edged sword because while you may be making quite a bit of money off of it initially, when it's no longer for sale you endanger the intellectual property that YOU created by making it where it only exists with you and your distributors. This is especially true now, with monthly game subscriptions becoming more common where you don't own any game you stream or even temporarily download.

That's why there are so many pirates. I know of people (who want to remain anonymous) that are currently hoarding titles of WiiWare, 3DS and Wii U eShop content, and other digital download type content for fear that it never sees the light of day again. We need a resolution for better preservation. The nearly 87% of games are still out there in the wild somewhere, but people are either afraid to share them or are doing it in secret because of all the litigation.

In short, the DMCA's rules should be amended to allow better preservation of games.