Good Idea: As Video Game Preservation Often Falls To Fan Groups, Release Every Game's Source Code

Tue, 6 Apr 2021 05:46:09 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210326/09345546495/good-idea-as-video-game-preservation-often-falls-to-fan-groups-release-every-games-source-code.shtml>

"When it comes to the video game industry, there has been some recent
recognition that copyright laws and the ways that publishers utilize them have
hampered the ability to preserve this sort of art. In the olden days of a
decade or so ago, the challenges around preserving video games centered around
both the publisher's unwillingness to allow a group access to source code to
preserve a game and the deterioration of physical game media. But in these
modern times, this has changed. Now, the challenges are the publisher copyright
question... and that same publisher's ability to simply stop supporting the
online resources modern games and platforms require to run. Given the ongoing
war on emulators by the likes of Nintendo and a rather insane industry stance
that preservation is trumped by copyright concerns, there is a very real risk
of losing the ability to preserve video game history at all."

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

Comment via email

Home E-Mail Sponsors Index Search About Us