Bofferbrauer2 said:
You have no idea. An entire batch of historians is freaking out whenever a game is becoming unplayable for whatever reason and the code isn't properly preserved. They are fighting for years to force Video game companies to safeguard the code for future generations, with little avail so far. They are also behind the archive.org DOS games page where you can download and play old DOS games in your browser in an effort to preserve DOS games: |
While I’m a strong advocate for copyright laws and very much against game piracy, and the rights of creators and product owners to have the ultimate say on what happens with their product, how much people should pay, and how people should own it, etc. I’m also a strong advocate for formal abandonware legislation, processes, and platforms.
If I were to be an idealist, this would be the ideal situation: if a company has no more plans with a game, then it becomes public property. A publishing company has no right to destroy the code and assets of a game without the consent of the creators - including artists, designers, engineers, voice actors, composers, producers, and even developmental quality assurance - since they too have an impact on the creation. The publishers might still get to destroy the games, but creators will at least be able to negotiate a payoff. As well, if assets are “accidentally” lost, then they should have great reason (like a number of buildings randomly exploding) since it’s very difficult for the company version repositories and all the assets across all of the computers to be accidentally lost - since there are revisions, assets, and builds stored across multiple locations.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
