A Sad Day For Game Preservation... What's your take?

Copyright on game should...

  • stay as it is; I don't care.

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • stay as it is; I agree.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • be 25-30 years.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • more than 30 years, but within reason.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • be less than 25 years.

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • not exist. It's all free as in free beer!!!

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • be re-evaluated, but not any of the above suggestions.

    Votes: 3 42.9%

  • Total voters
    7

Fanboi

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So, I wake up to a link sent to me yesterday even by a mate of mine:
TL;DR: Court holds up copyright laws on old games being lent out / made available online by libraries/archiving sites.

Quick Disclaimer:
I'm not advocating piracy. Emulating new releases (only if you don't also buy them online) is a lousy thing to do for 3 reasons:
1. For indie devs, it really hurts. It takes a lot of time, even with this weird drag 'n drop "visual programming" (BS, my opinion) to make a good game. Aside from music, graphics, etc., you have to pay the platform you sell them on, sometimes both a license fee and royalties. On top of that, you probably are gonna need to coerce or hire someone for something. Very few people can do everything well. And AI-generated content is pure turd.
2. You're harming people like myself -- and possibly you -- who legitimately believe in preservation because you are literally giving corpo a justification to attack sites like Vimm's Lair.
3. While IDGAF as I don't care for new games as they're mostly garbage, rehashed IPs or near-clones of other titles, you're de-incentivizing innovation and feeding the "machine" of slapped-together, buggy, unoriginal content because it's easy to spit out and make a quick buck than pouring effort into regarding point #1.
All cleared up? Good. So I'm curious about how many people actually support this messed up idea that I can't legally download and play a 1980s Famicom(NES) game even if I'm staring at the cartridge on my shelf. Personally, I play old games because I don't want to play new ones, I don't not play new games because I have access to older ones.

I think copyrights should be media-specific in that games and software lose a lot of relevance/availability/compatibility fairly quickly. Each media has a shelf life (outside of classics / cult stuff) for new audiences: Motion pictures expire within 40-50 years, music generally doesn't easily expire (outside bubblegum shite), books are usually are forever, but games are lucky to get 15 years. I'd say a period of 60 years on motion pictures, music, and and 25-30 years for games is fair play (no pun intended), all regardless of author's lifespan, ie moment of publication.
*Important nuance here: I'm talking about the work itself, not the IPs/TMs/etc. because I think it's only right an author own their characters/worlds/titles/etc. within reason (ie, don't blast fanfics/parodies).

So, as a South African coming from a fairly liberal view of copyright (it's barely enforced here), I'm curious to see what the global community thinks, especially in an OSS/FOSS space. So, vote and comment (and if you feel comfortable, let's know where you live in the world and how it shapes your view).
 
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I'm more concerned about the whole "You buy a license, not the game" bit. As much as I love Steam, the way things seem to be going (with most Digital Retailers) we could invest our hard earned dollars into "buying" a game and if at any point a company deems it necessary they could revoke our "license" to play. Asinine.

Same reason I loath "multiplayer" games that refuse to release the binaries and tools required to self host servers making customers who paid retail for a product dependent on corporate servers that will inevitably be shut down after a product is deemed to expensive to maintain any further. Don't even get me started on "games as a service".

Wanna play Unreal Tournament anyone? Oh wait, you can't. Because they took it off the market and shut down all the servers (thankfully there are plenty of community based servers for this title). But it more or less makes my point.

Just like there are Black Hats, Grey Hats and White Hats, so too does the Jolly Rodger fly with similar colors. I won't support the Black flag, but kudos to the Grey and White flags that keep titles (media) in circulation once the corporate machine decides it's no longer "profitable" enough to keep something in circulation or provide the servers needed to play something paid in full.

Taboo as that may be; it's the gopher mound I stand on.
 
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I'm more concerned about the whole "You buy a license, not the game" bit. As much as I love Steam, the way things seem to be going (with most Digital Retailers) we could invest our hard earned dollars into "buying" a game and if at any point a company deems it necessary they could revoke our "license" to play. Asinine.

Same reason I loath "multiplayer" games that refuse to release the binaries and tools required to self host servers making customers who paid retail for a product dependent on corporate servers that will inevitably be shut down after a product is deemed to expensive to maintain any further. Don't even get me started on "games as a service".

Wanna play Unreal Tournament anyone? Oh wait, you can't. Because they took it off the market and shut down all the servers (thankfully there are plenty of community based servers for this title). But it more or less makes my point.

Just like there are Black Hats, Grey Hats and White Hats, so too does the Jolly Rodger fly with similar colors. I won't support the Black flag, but kudos to the Grey and White flags that keep titles (media) in circulation once the corporate machine decides it's no longer "profitable" enough to keep something in circulation.

Taboo as that may be; it's the gopher mound I stand on.
Yeah, apparently Steam was asked by a publisher to remove the words "buy" because you didn't own the game. Sony pulled that same stunt a while ago with its video streaming service: https://www.ign.com/articles/sony-p...-own-sparking-concern-over-our-digital-future
See with MMOs of any genre, I sometimes get the feeling they're deliberately shut down and corpo don't want players to self-host because by shutting down a game, they can force you into buying the successor. That's part of why I think there needs a rethink about copyright laws on games.
That said, either way everyone's screwed. Cloud-based SaaS (or GaaS?) gaming is going to become a reality because, and as I've said for the last decade, the days of desktops and laptops are numbered, the mobile phone is set to replace traditional home PCs... And then everything's in the cloud, everything you "own" -- but don't own. And they can patch it too. Whether you want an extra feature or not, whether you want something censored or not.
 
Everything's going the way of SAAS, guys. Everybody wants you to sign your life away and live on the never-never (a Brit expression; you're never finished paying through the nose for it......and it never actually belongs to you).

Sod's law, I agree, but it's the way the world's going, unfortunately. Next thing ya know, someone, somewhere, will be trying to figure out a way of charging you for every breath of air you take......


Mike. :rolleyes:
 
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James, my first thought when I read the title, and knowing of the nation you live in was that this was to do with game hunting in RSA, lol, but then I have Aspergers so go figure.

Moving this to the Linux Gaming subforum.

Cheers

Wiz
 
James, my first thought when I read the title, and knowing of the nation you live in was that this was to do with game hunting in RSA, lol, but then I have Aspergers so go figure.

Moving this to the Linux Gaming subforum.

Cheers

Wiz
Rereading it, lol, the title is very context-dependent. Wasn't sure if it belonged in gaming as it wasn't Linux-specific gaming.
 
I'm more concerned about the whole "You buy a license, not the game" bit. As much as I love Steam, the way things seem to be going (with most Digital Retailers) we could invest our hard earned dollars into "buying" a game and if at any point a company deems it necessary they could revoke our "license" to play. Asinine.
On top of that they say you don't own the game but you buy a license for a game. However when you want to play that same game on a another device(ie: Playstation, Xbox, PC/Steam, etc.) they do expect you to buy a new license for that other device. They want best of both worlds, they can't have both but currently they do so they whole argumentation doesn't make any sense ethically. As if you buy a license you for Steam and you decide you want to play that same game on your Playstation you shouldn't have pay for a license you already have.
 
On top of that they say you don't own the game but you buy a license for a game. However when you want to play that same game on a another device(ie: Playstation, Xbox, PC/Steam, etc.) they do expect you to buy a new license for that other device. They want best of both worlds, they can't have both but currently they do so they whole argumentation doesn't make any sense ethically. As if you buy a license you for Steam and you decide you want to play that same game on your Playstation you shouldn't have pay for a license you already have.

This is why Licensing is seemingly beyond my comprehension. I can't make sense of it all lol
 
So, I wake up to a link sent to me yesterday even by a mate of mine:
https://www.gamesradar.com/games/pu...uck-down-a-major-effort-for-game-preservation
lol intro of the article.
Publishers are absolutely terrified "preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes," so the US copyright office has struck down a major effort for game preservation
Aren't video games for recreational purposes anyways whether they are preserved or not. I can't take that introduction comment seriously.
 
If a game can't be purchased DVD format with a legit product key code then I refuse to purchase it.

Legit product key codes are available if you're willing to search and use them and ain't nothing unethical about doing so.

I learned how to find legit product key codes from game forums ya just have to find the right folks.

Having games on DVDs with a legit product key code gives you the advantage to use it on as many devices as you choose to.

I have many different versions of Flight Simulators from Microsoft and X-Plane.

Each require a legit product key code to install and use no internet connection required to activate and use.

I simply refuse to go with the normal flow as there is always other legal and legitimate solutions got to be willing to search and find them.
 
This has been the way of software, including games, since the earliest days of computing.

You own the hardware but you don't own the software - you licensed it, not purchased it.

That'd be what got folks like RMS's panties in a knot and was the motivation behind the GPL.

I've been behind the doors in both camps. I like open source software but would never insist that people had to use permissive licenses. I'd prefer open source, even if I'm unlikely to enjoy many of the ownership benefits. (I'm not likely to modify or distribute the software - though I used to seed distro torrents.) I have done quite a bit for open source communities, I suppose.

Then again, I've pirated stuff myself. At the time, I couldn't afford the software. Today, I'm more affluent and quite happy to pay for software/services that I need. Alas, I don't really need much software. I did pay for a browser back in the day. Opera was not free and was an exception because it was exceptional.

As for games, a long time ago I wrote a skiing game in BASIC and lots of people modified it and passed it around campus. I didn't mind. I was able to benefit from those changes as it made my game more interesting. This predates the GPL by a few years.

Those are some rambling thoughts on the matter. I don't expect everyone to agree with them but that's okay.
 
If the hardware is dead and the manufacturer won't offer a replacement then it's abandonware and since sales of the console depended on a palette of games (software) i'd find abusive of them to want to extend this type of intellectual property indefinitely, especially for those customers who do own a genuine game ready to play, even more if it's something going back to the '80s like Alley Cat... And considering there was no need to "connect" i wonder how they'll maintain their grip anyway, then there's the matter of, euh... Oh well, i can't find a word for it. Suggestions??

 
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This has been the way of software, including games, since the earliest days of computing.

I would disagree. I still have games on floppies, CD's, and DVDs. I even have MS office and Photoshop.
I don't have an OS that any of them will run on, but hey... I "own" them. I recently watched a youtube video
of someone running XP on modern hardware, I supposed if I really cared enough, I could see if any of that
stuff would still run.

There are some lower end games on Linux I can download and play, even when I'm disconnected from the internet.
At least two of them I can play in local LAN mode ( multi-player ) without being connected to the internet.

There is of course the online version of MS Office 365. But you can still download and use Office without internet.
I had to do this last night on a laptop ( battery power ) because my electricity was out for a few hours.

This is why I don't put personal stuff in the cloud. I own it. It's mine. When I want it, I want it.
I do use OneDrive and GoogleDrive for work to share stuff. But for my personal stuff. It's all backed up
multiple places. Yeah, viewing stuff cross platform is sometimes more of a pain. But I don't do that very often.
I really don't do email and Office on my phone anyway.
 
I "own" them.

If you owned them, you could legally copy them and give those copies away or even sell copies of the software (among other things).

You own the hardware - the disk. The software doesn't belong to you.

I'm not sure how you'd argue about that? Just because you have it on disk doesn't mean you own the software. You're still just licensing it. (You're free to wipe the disks, if possible, and reuse them for another purpose.)

For the record, my company sold hardware with our software customized and configured for the client. This was one of our main income sources. They never owned the software and never had permission to modify the software in any way. For reasons, we did sometimes allow the client to review the source where necessary.
 
You own the hardware - the disk. The software doesn't belong to you.

Agreed, but I don't have to keep paying, to keep using it.
I don't have pay to for internet, pay for a subscription to the software, pay for a cloud drive to keep documents on,
With office365, I have pay again next year if I want to keep using it ( I don't, my company does, but... )
 
With office365, I have pay again next year if I want to keep using it ( I don't, my company does, but... )

SaaS is another animal entirely. I can't justify it more often than not, but I do pay for quite a few online services. They save me time. Like, my site (which I need to resume posting to and will soon-ish) will automatically post my articles on other sites. That saves me time and is a service I'm content paying for.

At the same time, I swear I pay for all the video and music streaming stuff out there. I don't even use those services - but others do. So, I just never cancel them. I just looked and I don't even have the password to Netflix. I'm not even sure of the username. Yet, I pay for it. (I could figure it out and reset the password.)

But, yeah, my company was pretty early on with the SaaS and we even had monthly plans. We'd supply and support the hardware along with the software we put on it. Not every client needed a permanent solution, so we found ways to accommodate them. There wasn't anything malicious about it. While I like opensource stuff, and have helped a whole lot in that arena, I am okay with people protecting their intellectual property.

Though, and this is sort of tangential, I'd make some serious changes to copyright laws if I could. (I can't. Nobody ever asks me.) I'd make that a whole lot shorter, regardless of the lifespan of the author. I'd say somewhere around 15 years with a possible 10 year extension should be good. After that it enters the public domain.
 
So, I wake up to a link sent to me yesterday even by a mate of mine:
TL;DR: Court holds up copyright laws on old games being lent out / made available online by libraries/archiving sites.

Quick Disclaimer:
I'm not advocating piracy. Emulating new releases (only if you don't also buy them online) is a lousy thing to do for 3 reasons:
1. For indie devs, it really hurts. It takes a lot of time, even with this weird drag 'n drop "visual programming" (BS, my opinion) to make a good game. Aside from music, graphics, etc., you have to pay the platform you sell them on, sometimes both a license fee and royalties. On top of that, you probably are gonna need to coerce or hire someone for something. Very few people can do everything well. And AI-generated content is pure turd.
2. You're harming people like myself -- and possibly you -- who legitimately believe in preservation because you are literally giving corpo a justification to attack sites like Vimm's Lair.
3. While IDGAF as I don't care for new games as they're mostly garbage, rehashed IPs or near-clones of other titles, you're de-incentivizing innovation and feeding the "machine" of slapped-together, buggy, unoriginal content because it's easy to spit out and make a quick buck than pouring effort into regarding point #1.
All cleared up? Good. So I'm curious about how many people actually support this messed up idea that I can't legally download and play a 1980s Famicom(NES) game even if I'm staring at the cartridge on my shelf. Personally, I play old games because I don't want to play new ones, I don't not play new games because I have access to older ones.

I think copyrights should be media-specific in that games and software lose a lot of relevance/availability/compatibility fairly quickly. Each media has a shelf life (outside of classics / cult stuff) for new audiences: Motion pictures expire within 40-50 years, music generally doesn't easily expire (outside bubblegum shite), books are usually are forever, but games are lucky to get 15 years. I'd say a period of 60 years on motion pictures, music, and and 25-30 years for games is fair play (no pun intended), all regardless of author's lifespan, ie moment of publication.
*Important nuance here: I'm talking about the work itself, not the IPs/TMs/etc. because I think it's only right an author own their characters/worlds/titles/etc. within reason (ie, don't blast fanfics/parodies).

So, as a South African coming from a fairly liberal view of copyright (it's barely enforced here), I'm curious to see what the global community thinks, especially in an OSS/FOSS space. So, vote and comment (and if you feel comfortable, let's know where you live in the world and how it shapes your view). As a gamer, immersing myself in different worlds is thrilling. game-space.net enriches that passion by providing valuable guides, community insights, and updates on trends, making it easier to enhance my gameplay and connect with fellow enthusiasts. Highly recommend exploring it!
It's frustrating that the law prevents us from downloading and playing classic games, especially when we own the original cartridges. I agree that copyright durations should be shorter for games—perhaps 25-30 years is more reasonable. Unlike books or music, games quickly become obsolete or incompatible with modern systems. As a South African, I see how liberal copyright views can affect access and preservation. It would be great to hear how people from other countries feel about this issue and how their local laws shape their perspectives!
 
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