- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- gaming@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- gaming@beehaw.org
A three-year fight to help support game preservation has come to a sad end today. The US copyright office has denied a request for a DMCA exemption that would allow libraries to remotely share digital access to preserved video games.
“For the past three years, the Video Game History Foundation has been supporting with the Software Preservation Network (SPN) on a petition to allow libraries and archives to remotely share digital access to out-of-print video games in their collections,” VGHF explains in its statement. “Under the current anti-circumvention rules in Section 1201 of the DMCA, libraries and archives are unable to break copy protection on games in order to make them remotely accessible to researchers.”
Essentially, this exemption would open up the possibility of a digital library where historians and researchers could ‘check out’ digital games that run through emulators. The VGHF argues that around 87% of all video games released in the US before 2010 are now out of print, and the only legal way to access those games now is through the occasionally exorbitant prices and often failing hardware that defines the retro gaming market.
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“No! They’ll enjoy preserving our history to muuuch!!”
They know the dark secret of book preservation. The people preserving the books… gulp READ THEM!
Libraries facilitate widespread piracy of books, by allowing people to read them without a distribution licence, or even take them home!
This is a clear violation of the DMCA, and thus must be stopped immediately!
I get the sarcasm even if others don’t.
Someone else on Lemmy said you couldn’t invent libraries today. It’s true.
Well, time to finally make my own collection to play
That’s what I’ve been doing. Been collecting various PS1-4 games on top of GameCube, Wii, and Switch games over the past year to rip and save digital copies for myself. Then I play them on emulators.
I have roughly a few hundred so far and plan to expand it further.
I have a NAS with two 8 TB drives in RAID to back them up and it’s already over 50% full. I want to start collecting OG Xbox and 360 games in the near future, but I need to get jailbroken consoles for them.two 8 TB drives in RAID to back them up
Obligatory “RAID is not a backup”
Sure, but it’s a start. It’s certainly better than trying to keep them on my laptop. And I do hope to add more forms of data backup/storage as time goes on. It’s taken several hours ripping all those games and I’d hate to lose them all.
I also have an external 4 TB SSD that I keep most of the games on (excluding the PS4 games because they simply take up too much space).I used to have a RAID6 (could lose two drives) without a backup, then some power surge killed 5 of the 12 disks. Trust me, you do want a backup.
Especially RAID 0.
That would be funny if someone thought RAID 0 was a backup solution, ahaha
Original Xbox modding is fun as hell. You need to track down a 300GB PATA/IDE hard drive, then load the sucker up with ROMS. The modded OS comes with a built in FTP server so its pretty effortless to load up it with ROMs. Last I tried (like 10 years ago) Xbox reliably played roms from SNES and older, and could less than reliably but still successfully play N64 and PS1 games. I was even able to change CDs on FF7.
Man I want to mod an Xbox now. If I remember right, you need a copy of mech assault…
They really want to force gamers to buy their new games which are pretty much like the old games but now with extra helpings of ads, gambling mechanics and micro transactions on top
The stories have also gone downhill to accomodate new bastard genres with fomo shit
Actually explains a lot of decisions by game publishers the last 5-10 years if their official position is that games are meant to collect dust on a shelf rather than being played.
You can’t have criticisms about the game if you put it on a shelf instead of playing it.
Sure you can, criticisms like “takes up too much shelf space” or “is too heavy for my shelf”, “doesn’t go with the color of my wallpaper behind the shelf”.
Love how the people don’t get represented or supported because of corporations and their insatiable greed.
The weird thing is, corporations can’t even make any money from these older games. I guess they think that means people who can’t play older games will just buy their newer garbage, and yet that’s not how it works at all lol people just end up buying indie games instead these days.
Depending on marketing & their dedication to bringing it to market…again… they can & they do. Digitally. Nintendo has sold old video games on the Wii, Wii U platform. Then, they packaged & released the NES & SNES Classic consoles, very smart move actually & it was a cute product that appealed to many consumers.
Since then, Nintendo’s greed has grown. They no longer sell because they don’t want you to own copies of old videogames…they want to rent them to you by the month or year. Via Nintendo Online subscriptions, you can browse the whole catalog & play all kinds of old games. It requires a Switch, an internet connection, and don’t forget that sweet, sweet Nintendo Online subscription. Once you’ve gotten your fix & you cancel your subscription, you own nothing & they’ve got your money. This is their goal, everything is going according to plan. Subscription models for endless reven on old games.
You will give them your money, you will own nothing, and you will be happy.
and hilariously, Nintendo uses emulation themselves.
https://gamerant.com/nintendo-emulating-own-games-museum-windows-pc/
Hypocritical fucks
Damn, that’s crazy. Here I am being happy that I have their older consoles that I’m still playing their best older games, even with modding them and using flashcarts too etc. I guess retro gamers are a bit of a dying breed, but there’s still some people out there like me.
They could and sometimes make a relatively small amount of money, but it’s more about trying to legally protect their trademarks/intellectual property as I understand it. These days I’d much rather support an indie dev over a shitty “AAA” company for sure, tired of them price gouging people for games that aren’t even that good.
Right, “if they can access the old games still, we can’t pay a understaffed 3rd party a pittance to slap a coat of paint on it and resell it at full price”
The AAA warning label is pretty much like the Enterprise warning label for other types of software.
They’re really in a bind though. Indie games are great because there are thousands of indie developers out there making games and we get to play any ones we want. All the indie games that fail don’t matter because we don’t need to pick the winner ahead of time.
AAA studios can’t operate this way because they can’t predict what will be a great game that everyone wants to play. The only leverage they have is that they can afford to hire a large team of artists to create all the graphics.
It’s really the same situation that Hollywood film studios are stuck in and the result is basically the same. Hollywood makes their MCU graphics extravaganzas and AAA studios makes their Call of Dutys.
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Capitalism
🐶 NO PLAY
🐶 ONLY BUY
Well that’s fucking stupid.
… but not surprising.
Corruption from potato supreme all the way down and back up to Orange Hitler
They can dick about as much as they want, piracy will make sure to preserve the things they want gone. The reason they don’t want older games to be preserved is that new generations, whilst playing them, may come to realize that you don’t need gacha mechanics, stupid fomo, micro transactions, 6 different currencies, 3 different shop menus, 2 battlepasses and so forth to have a good game.
Imagine Beethoven refusing to release his catalog of works because people might stop listening to newer music. Gg capitalism.
“Capitalism creates innovation” - one of the best jokes out there
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we should probably burn it
Agreed
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I specifically need to not have those things. Those are the things that I’m going to games in order to avoid.
You haven’t sold this game in 30 years - why do you fucking care you drooling troglodite?
If im reading it correctly only the sharing is prohibited not the preservation.
I can live with that and fight again another day. As long as they still exist in an archive they will see the legal light of day someday(im being optimistic)
The high seas will take care of retro gamers who want to play them im sure, as Gaben says piracy is a service issue.
Given the industry’s “you aren’t buying, you are renting” mentality… very, very optimistic.
I wonder if the EU can somehow prevent DMCA being applied to European internet users.
Well isn’t it just convenient that I don’t give a damn what the US copyright office thinks?
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I guess people rent movies and books because they hate them!
How dare people use games for recreation! Why would they not think about the shareholders!
When they kill the games, they no longer make money on them. So playing without paying is not a lost sale, even if the player is corrupt enough to enjoy playing. So there’s no problem yeah?
This reeks of selling games on a “pay per new game save” kind of move. If “replay” is a threat, how long until they move to eliminate that?
