Imagine if you weren’t allowed to watch your favorite movies from the 80’s or earlier unless you managed to have a still working VCR and VHS copy from your childhood. No Goonies, no Godfather, no Star Wars original trilogy. They decided to wipe these films from the face of the earth so that you could no longer enjoy them and had to go buy their new movies, exclusively, if you wanted entertainment from a film. That’s what games publishers are trying to do, so they don’t have to compete for you attention with older classics.
Did you just link tvtropes with no warning?
yes Chief, yes I did… and I did it deliberately :)
It’s been hours …help.
I have dozens of tabs open in Edge on my phone and I use Edge there mostly for TV Tropes since the Preview Link lets me look at other tropes without having to open another tab. I’m currently reading Discworld tropes.
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.
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.
87% of games made before 2010 are completely commercially unavailable.
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.
It’s just bonkers to me because they do everything for profit anyway; what the fuck profit do they get from not selling shit anymore? I said this not long ago about Nintendo, but other companies are guilty of it too. Spending money attempting to stop piracy, instead of making money by just giving customers what they fucking want. What crazy company secrets are they hiding that not continuing to sell a product is better than selling it?
It’s like a toxic romantic partner: if I can’t make a lot of money doing this one thing, then no one can.
Come to think of it, a lot of late stage capitalism behavior is like a toxic partner.
Not in any way defending Nintendo - seriously, fuck them, I will pirate their entire catalogue and not feel one iota of guilt.
But, what mix of those 87% of games no longer commercially available fall into one of these three categories:
- yearly releases of game franchises (e.g. FIFA/NFL/NHL/NBA ‘94, ‘95, ‘96 etc.)
- unofficial releases (e.g. bootleg Christian NES carts)
- impossible to re-release 1:1 due to music licensing issues (anything with EA TRAX, Vice City/San Andreas etc.)
So I guess what I’m asking is, what percentage of those games aren’t economically viable to resell, or are stuck in licence limbo?
Sort of like how they erased all the evidence of “Sinbad’s Shazaam” and then gaslit everyone that remembered it?
Oh c’mon don’t screw with my head like that. I specifically remember seeing the “Shaq Genie movie”… Wait that was Kazaam! Dang it!
Buystream their new movies.FTFY
No Goonies, no Godfather, no Star Wars original trilogy
i would be okay with this. we should still preserve games of course, but i wouldn’t mind losing out on those movies
Good for you?
Eat shit, troll.
Not The Onion version: “‘People might actually have fun’: Publishers squash video game preservation movement”
If folks today learned that games existed which could be played offline, had no dlc, no microtransactions, no skinner boxes. And those games were actually fun, clearly the whole industry would collapse lol.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of art to enrich society. Making money for copyright holders is a means to an end, not the end itself.
We need a new copyright law that shifts media to public domain if the copyright holder no longer makes it available.
Copyright and patent law is a social contract and a very fundamental one.
United States Constitution has some pretty cool ideas in it. Freedom of speech? That the government cannot punish you for expressing an idea? That was added as an afterthought. Freedom of religion? That congress shall make no law establishing a religion, making our society secular and preventing the government from punishing those who do not conform? Afterthought. The right to a trial by jury of peers, the right to not be compelled to testify against yourself, the right to be secure in your person and property? Afterthoughts. All of that, all of the things we call the Bill Of Rights, were added on the basis of “Wait we should probably have this.”
The basis of intellectual property law isn’t in an amendment, it’s too important. It’s in the main body of the constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 Intellectual property:
To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respecive Writings and Discoveries.
We The People grant creators for a time exclusive right of way over their creations to monetize and profit from them as incentive for doing the work of creation so that we may have the creations, after which the creation becomes the heritage of all mankind forever so that other creators in the future may build upon it. Americans tend to view our first amendment right to freedom of speech, broadly defined by our supreme court to include symbolic speech to include overt actions such as burning a flag, as near absolute. Even the allegedly liberal allegedly enlightened democracies in Europe will outlaw ideas; America will not. Copyright and patent law is one of the very few where we will limit speech or the press, for it is one of the few laws that came before the first amendment. You may not be free to print an idea if it currently belongs to someone else.
Without that incentive, the ability to personally profit form the works you create, you get the Soviet Union, which invented…Tetris. Whose inventor didn’t earn a single kopek from his invention until he became an American citizen. Without the expiration date for copyrights or patents you get…Disney. Who gobbles up creative works without the intention of letting go with the apparent goal of monopolizing the very idea of storytelling itself, hoarding wealth in perpetuity and simply buying any competition.
For a society to properly function it is important for patents and copyrights to be temporary in nature; they must exist and yet they must within a lifetime cease to exist. Lack of either condition is an intolerable rot. Copyright terms being the lifetime of the author plus seventy years is a rot the United States probably has not survived. I think we’re soon to find out.
That is an excellent write up! Well done OP!
My only critique is you seem to downplay Tetris like it isnt one of the greatest games ever developed. You are right in that Pajitnov had to straight up move to have any right to reward from it. Also the Soviet Union had to collapse
Tetris is a cool game, sure, but my point is the Soviet Union had a short list of hit video games. Name 5 other famous Soviet video games. Not a major exporter of cultural works.
While you’re right, its a really poor way to phrase that. Compare to something like, “In 69 years, the Soviets only managed to make Tetris, and even then the creator didnt see a cent until he emigrated to America”.
Could also mention how they failed to keep up with American computing
I don’t disagree, though another nuance is that…The Soviet Union wasn’t empty of people with creative capacity. A Soviet invented Tetris, and Tetris is an excellent game. But the way intellectual property worked (or not) meant not many had the opportunity and motive to try, and look at the result.
In an ideal society sure, we don’t live in an ideal society
Then whats the purpose of existence if not to strive for a more ideal society?
I think your comment is the most succinct summary in and of itself. It exists like a perfect quote from Greek philosophy. I was purely pointing out the broken issue of copyright as it exists.
The point of existence is to struggle for better existence in some schools of thought as you’ve summarized.
In others, it’s to realize that by struggling through cycles of existence you are not aware of the trap of existence, like Zen Buddhism.
In traditional Abrahamic schools of thought it’s to honor God enough and follow your creed that you get rewarded after you die.
I think the way I feel about existence is more Nihilist. Something like https://youtu.be/E_qvy82U4RE
I was where you were, a nothing matters, what’s the point nihilist. But I learned that I had skills and talents that could help people. Ended up going to law school and now I helping folks.
I believe every person can put their pants on in the morning and go out and make their local community just a little bit better. People get caught up in macro morals but just giving your neighbor a plate of Thanksgiving goods goes such a long way.
Oh hey don’t get me wrong. I switched my job from an ad agency to an emergency management SaaS company that was crucial during COVID to ensure vaccines went out to people when they should have and continues to have beneficial applications. I took a big pay cut, but the work is far more fulfilling.
I’m by no means saying we should treat our lives as if nothing matters, and I apologize that it came off that way. I think moreso my message was that there’s no great creed or so we can look to for guidance. Wake up every day, do your best to help others, then sign off of the toxicity that is most social media and do your best to treat yourself and those you care about with love. Go to sleep, and rinse and repeat.
But just don’t expect some magic eureka moment of where it gets easier. We’re all just struggling, and unfortunately I don’t think the forces we struggle against like greed will ever go away.
Cheers, thanks for the discourse, and I hope you find yourself with increasing happiness as the days flow by
You too!
Damn, I enjoyed reading this wholesome conversation.
Yea, I always liken nihilism to being an asshole, because you reap the rewards, however small or large, of peoples’ labour who didn’t think that way. The least you can do is pay it forward, so it’s more an obligation then anything else.
Profit for a ever dwindling number of individuals. /$
Sure you can buy this - for just $1000000 you can watch this movie on Amazon.
Technically it’s available.
This is why the word “reasonable” comes up in a lot of laws. “What counts as reasonable?” You ask? This is what judges are for; to examine the circumstances and make a judgement call.
Steal everything that isn’t nailed down while you’ve still got a chance.
At least Jesus is safe from burglary then.
Patent law is 20 years. Copyright should be no different.
US copyright was originally for 14 years, with the option to extend it for another 14 years. It kept getting extended over the years. I think it’s life of the author plus 70 years now.
Isn’t that Disney’s fault (and their government lapdogs) with their efforts to hang on to Mickey Mouse as long as they can?
Yes
It’s the fault of a political system that allows private companies to lobby for oppressive laws.
The current iteration is, yes, which was created in the 90s. Copyright lawyers sneeringly called it the ‘Mickey Mouse Act’ due to just how involved they were in writing it.
But before that in the 1970s there was another major rewrite that gave them the original extension. Without that law in the 70s Mickey and Minnie Mouse would have entered full public domain in… 1984!
Can you imagine a world where the most recognized cartoon characters have been in public domain for over 40 years? If that law didn’t it, the entire original Disney cast (Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald Duck, Goofy, et al) would have been public domain, and ditto for Warner Bros characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and others. They all would have entered public domain in the 80s to the first half of the 2000s.
Comic book superheroes like Spiderman would have entered public domain in 2016! Can you imagine what the cinematic and comic landscape would be if anyone can publish their take on the majority of superhero comics?
copyright should also expire when something goes out of print or, if its hardware locked, when the hardware is no longer available.
I’ve been collecting abandonware since 2000. I lost good chunk of my collection due to a harddrive crash some years ago, but I recovered it and expanded upon it. My logic has been the same. It isn’t about wanting to play it (I don’t play the majority of the games I download) it is entirely about perserving them. Maybe one day I’ll make my collection a torrent for all to share.
Copyright should belong to the lifetime of the person who is creator or 20 years from the original creation if transfered or created by a non-person entity.
Nah, even an artist should lose monopoly after 20 years. What is their incentive to make new stuff otherwise?
Their incentive is… making art is fun and a passion. Holding copyrignt allows artists to earn a living while freely pursuing their passion. Artists already struggle to get paid well for their work… and you want to strip away their rights to their work? Do you also pay your artists in impressions?
This is a mistaken take driven by corporations. Artists and creators generally don’t own their own copyrights. It’s the first thing they’re forced to sign away to get any kind of contract, publishing deal, or other form of access from the big players who hold the keys to the kingdom. Nobody is making even a million dollars let alone more without going through them, and they don’t agree unless they own those rights.
Small time creators can own their own work, but even then you have countless examples of creators who wouldn’t play ball so the bigger companies just plagiarized them and they don’t have the money to fight it. You need the backing of a big company to even enforce your claim against the other big companies that threaten it if it’s actually lucrative. And, again, they won’t unless they’re the ones that own it because you signed it away.
Copyright does not protect creators in the slightest. It’s a tool by and for large business used to legally steal from creators.
Exactly why i said copyright should be limited by non-person entities.
An artist isnt stripped of anything, they can still work on an old IP. Fans will likely follow if they’re actually good. They just would lose the ability to stop anyone else from profiting off it. I happen to be a content creator and aspiring writer myself, and have every intention on placing my works in the creative commons
Americans are so obsessed with money, they forgot about actually living.
My dudes. Money is just a means to an end. It is not the end goal. Wake the fuck up.
I mean, it’s not just Americans, it’s the whole world. EA, Nintendo, Sony, Riot, Nexon, Tencent, and basically every other major gaming corporation are part of the ESA, who lobbied to kill this exemption. If left to their own devices, corporations will never do anything that could hurt their bottom line.
I started you a slow clap. Neither one of my dogs joined in, but I just wanted you to know I tried.
Guess I better make a copy of the shit ton of emulated games on the thumbdrive that I have. How stupid.
This has been an issue since copyright came into being. Money is at odds with the preservation of art so shareholders are incentivized to limit access to older titles and keep control in case it turns out they can sell them for profit.
Keep circulating the tapes, as they say
The library shouldn’t preserve books because people might read them.
The worst part is that it may really come to this
Fuck this, fuck these guys, and fuck them to hell.
I said this many years ago and I will say it again on here to be brief: Emulation and amateur game preservation by moving them from their original media (such as floppy disks, tapes, CDs, and other physical media) onto newer stuff and be able to move it around better is an act of historical defiance.
You see, throughout history, especially in the past 150 years or so, almost all early iterations of recorded media are just gone. Whether it is cylinder recordings from the late 19th century that preserved human voices, to the first music records, to the first silent film, and even the early talkies. 90% of all silent movies from all over the world are lost. What we have available is only a small sample of what existed. Even 75% of all early sound film from the first half of the 1930s are gone. For non-Western countries the number can be higher. The first ever South Asian language sound film is lost, and practically all films made in Indonesia from 1945 and back are also gone. Have you ever noticed how in terms of music, almost all the Christmas jingles are from the late 40s to 50s? There were a lot made before then, and it isn’t just because the newer stuff is more relatable… a lot of the older stuff just doesn’t exist anymore.
For TV, the majority of the first broadcasts were never recorded. Even as late as the 1960s some TV stars from Canada will never have their work shown because they were broadcast live and never recorded.
The list goes on and on… except for video games.
For video games that rule was broken. We have early computer adventure games from the 1970s that we can still play, ditto for console games and arcade games. The original Pong and Computer Space are still playable by anyone. The Atari 2600’s original game library is almost 100% preserved, with even the destruction of E.T. the video game en masse anyone can play it (I have it on emulation, because every single Atari game ever made so small that they take no space).
All legal attacks on emulation have failed ever since the 90s. Look up the history of MAME to see how hard amateurs have fought to allow us to revisit the classics and allow people for generations to come to see what things were like before they were born.
More proof that if they were a new idea, libraries would be fought tooth and nail by book publishers
Could you imagine trying to get there to be libraries today if the concept was new? “We can’t possibly just let people read for free! What, do you think literacy is a right? It’s a privilege!”
Same for firefighters.
“PAY people to sit around in case a fire breaks out?? That almost never happens! Also, ignore everything else they do. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep fires out of their homes. We’ll sell them a new one if something happens, though. And their neighbors. And THEIR neighbors. Also, literally buy a fireplace from us, please.”
Ironically that was the case for a good long while, and has been the case on exceedingly rare occasion in the more modern era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_in_ancient_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#United_States
see: the internet archive
Video games always used to be an economic way of entertainment. With an amount equal to a restaurant dinner you could be entertained for hundreds of hours.
Nowadays, video games follow the trend of enshitification. Low quality, repeated material, bad gaming experience, data hoarding, the need to be always online even for a single player game and of course, the “you don’t own, we can take it away anytime we want” mentality.
According to the court rulling, if you essentially want to play retro games, you should find a way to access the original hardware and run the software in mostly proprietary mediums like cartridges that could be damaged or corrupted. And the reason you can’t do it is because you may actually have fun!
This ruling is so bongers it blows my mind.
So you should never, ever ever
- Use emulators like Retroarch
- Find the ROMs of various systems you like in various “archives” through the interwebs for research purposes ofcourse
- Use a frontend like ES-DE or launchbox to make things look beautiful.
- Scrape content through screenscraper or something similar to make your frontends even more beautiful. 5.Keep in mind that this combo ( Retroarch + frontend) works in mostly cross platform (windows, Linux, android etc.)
After all, as a researcher you have to be able to tinker a little bit.
Enjoy your research ;)
And this is why I sail the seven seas and have zero reservations about doing so.
Do you seed, though?
Yep.
Toproms collection. If you can hold it, give us a hand.
Nah I hit and run like a bastard
Sailing bastard
This makes you no different to a gold hoarding dragon.
⚔️ 🐉 ⚔️
Seed your mum
It feels like companies are worried about people not wanting to play new stuff if they have decades of old stuff available. Just like movies right guys?
Watching a movie from 1979
Uhh yea… right.
The hoops i had to go through, to backup my old end of-lifetime-DVD’s on linux. Not to mention the people who figured that stuff out.
TFW when your entire 1000+ game library of roms fits in a tiny corner of storage on my phone
True. Unless it’s MAME. I download everything AND the CHDs. I do this for games I don’t even WANT to play.
