The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has today claimed that “87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered.”
Yeah but what can you do if a lot of the companies who made the original games aren’t around anymore and didn’t sell the rights to anyone else? Even some of the people who claim piracy is immoral understand that “pirating” abandonware is perfectly fine.
That wouldn’t really work, unfortunately. Most companies don’t just shut their doors, they’re bought by someone else. That new entity would own all the company’s property. Even when they do shut their doors, typically it’s done with debt, and debtors end up buying the assets.
Most of the IP rights for those old abandoned games are split up between a bunch of random legal firms.
Makes it a nightmare to legally remaster or remake old games. Since a game’s copyright will be owned by Law Firm A, and the trademark will be owned by Law Firm B, and the art and music will be owned by Law Firm C, but then Law Firm B says they actually own some of that art and music as part of their trademark ownership, etc etc
That makes the situation easier for piracy/unofficial ROMs though, since lawyers aren’t going to do shit when they can’t even figure out who legally owns a game.
I like to think of it as fishing old games out of a dumpster. They were carelessly thrown away, no attempt is made to preserve them or make profit from them.
For me it’s pretty black and white here. If you don’t sell me something, there is no guilt anymore and I can download it for free. Same issue with TV shows in foreign languages where you can’t subscribe or buy anything (I’m looking at you Poland, Japan, and any other weird country that seems to ignore the rest of the world).
*legally available, if those megacorps won’t spend/earn a penny on running antiques or legacy services. The players can do it. And they need support from the law to do it, which in this case, Nintendo of America.
Who cares about m’official. True skill issue if someone can’t comprehend the concept of how easy it is to literally download a rom and launch with a program.
RIP Pleasuredome. They were the best source for building a MAME cabinet or getting an entire collection of old computer games that are really hard to find nowadays.
Looks like they are still maintaining the MAME ROM sets, but nothing else. None of the torrents for C64/Amiga games, or ATARI XL/ST games, or all of the older weird computer systems (Amstrad), or old retro consoles (TurboGrafx, Neo Geo, ATARI Jaguar/Lynx), or Daphne games like Dragon’s Lair.
I feel like a large part of gaming history was lost when that site closed down.
Crossposting is popular and there are a lot of overlapping communities that post the same sort of content so of course you will right now. The current lemmy users are overwhelmingly nerdy, so piracy and gaming communities are going to show up a lot and there are several of them over the different instances.
So you’ll see this on several gaming communities and again on several piracy communities.
I wonder if we need ‘aggregate communities’ where communities across instances can agree to share a set of rules and guidelines. You still have to pick which community to post in but the content itself can be browsed like one large community, similar to a ‘multireddit’.
Not sure if this would work in practice but it could be a way to merge communities across instances. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about to address fragmentation without solving it by centralizing around one big platform.
I have a couple really old games you can’t even pirate because they’re just not around anymore. They’re PC games and still run well on my version of Windows so I’ll hang on to them as long as that’s the case. Even so there’s always going to be a consideration for supporting hardware and software. It can get tricky as things forge ahead and old games fall into obsolescence.
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My HDD full of those games and an another one as a backup both say otherwise. We are legion of preservers.
Just because it’s not sold doesn’t mean they’re “critically endangered”. You can get most if not all ROMs on the internet.
this is referring to them being officially available for purchase
Yeah but what can you do if a lot of the companies who made the original games aren’t around anymore and didn’t sell the rights to anyone else? Even some of the people who claim piracy is immoral understand that “pirating” abandonware is perfectly fine.
Should be a given that once the company dissolves the rights become open
That wouldn’t really work, unfortunately. Most companies don’t just shut their doors, they’re bought by someone else. That new entity would own all the company’s property. Even when they do shut their doors, typically it’s done with debt, and debtors end up buying the assets.
Most of the IP rights for those old abandoned games are split up between a bunch of random legal firms.
Makes it a nightmare to legally remaster or remake old games. Since a game’s copyright will be owned by Law Firm A, and the trademark will be owned by Law Firm B, and the art and music will be owned by Law Firm C, but then Law Firm B says they actually own some of that art and music as part of their trademark ownership, etc etc
That makes the situation easier for piracy/unofficial ROMs though, since lawyers aren’t going to do shit when they can’t even figure out who legally owns a game.
Why we’ll never get a bfme 3 but gollum gets greenlighted
I would rather not call that piracy but latent preservation.
Just doing what archaeologists do. But with more recent history.
I do love latent preservating games I never owned
I am cool with that. Just pass the file forward once it is searched for as lost media.
i recommend avp2 https://avpunknown.com/avp2aio/
I like to think of it as fishing old games out of a dumpster. They were carelessly thrown away, no attempt is made to preserve them or make profit from them.
They are fair game.
I mean – the companies could have made an effort to make that money. If they don’t, profits aren’t automatic. I think this is clearly a grey area.
For me it’s pretty black and white here. If you don’t sell me something, there is no guilt anymore and I can download it for free. Same issue with TV shows in foreign languages where you can’t subscribe or buy anything (I’m looking at you Poland, Japan, and any other weird country that seems to ignore the rest of the world).
*legally available, if those megacorps won’t spend/earn a penny on running antiques or legacy services. The players can do it. And they need support from the law to do it, which in this case, Nintendo of America.
任天堂 are some real asshats when it comes to their fans.
Who cares about m’official. True skill issue if someone can’t comprehend the concept of how easy it is to literally download a rom and launch with a program.
That’s one thought process.
And then there’s mine: I will help anyone download old game roms, if I know them personally I’ll do it for them and send it. Fuck them companies.
Pirates" I am something of a game preservationist my self."
It’s alarming to think about losing our gaming history. How can we work together to preserve and safeguard beloved classics?
Literally all these games have been easily downloadable via roms for decades. And they’ll all enter public domain soon enough.
Just because they aren’t available on a “modern digital storefront” doesn’t mean they’re going extinct.
Piracy and hard drives are pretty much the only option right now.
If i had a homeserver (or just some bigger hard drives) I’d try do download every game available
I tried downloading just the ones I own on GOG. Well, my NAS was full very soon.
It’s chill bro I have a copy of everything.
RIP Pleasuredome. They were the best source for building a MAME cabinet or getting an entire collection of old computer games that are really hard to find nowadays.
Fuck. Pleasuredome is dead? Haven’t been on there in a long while.
EDIT: https://pleasuredome.github.io/pleasuredome/
Only tracker I’ve ever been banned from. Got the mame roms, left 24/7 seeding but banned before I had chance to even seed back.
Looks like they are still maintaining the MAME ROM sets, but nothing else. None of the torrents for C64/Amiga games, or ATARI XL/ST games, or all of the older weird computer systems (Amstrad), or old retro consoles (TurboGrafx, Neo Geo, ATARI Jaguar/Lynx), or Daphne games like Dragon’s Lair.
I feel like a large part of gaming history was lost when that site closed down.
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/ROM_%26_ISO_sites
shoutsout to rom sites
Think I’ve see. This article like 6 times on lemmy 🥴
Crossposting is popular and there are a lot of overlapping communities that post the same sort of content so of course you will right now. The current lemmy users are overwhelmingly nerdy, so piracy and gaming communities are going to show up a lot and there are several of them over the different instances.
So you’ll see this on several gaming communities and again on several piracy communities.
I wonder if we need ‘aggregate communities’ where communities across instances can agree to share a set of rules and guidelines. You still have to pick which community to post in but the content itself can be browsed like one large community, similar to a ‘multireddit’.
Not sure if this would work in practice but it could be a way to merge communities across instances. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about to address fragmentation without solving it by centralizing around one big platform.
Yea fair play, still getting used to it all :)
I have a couple really old games you can’t even pirate because they’re just not around anymore. They’re PC games and still run well on my version of Windows so I’ll hang on to them as long as that’s the case. Even so there’s always going to be a consideration for supporting hardware and software. It can get tricky as things forge ahead and old games fall into obsolescence.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Seed those games!
Fuck for that matter, put them on archive.org. If they’re that obscure they’ll probably be fine against takedown.
I’ll seed that torrent or reshare on slsk, I fucking live for obscure files, idgaf what the games even are (at the size of how small they must be.)
If you set up a torrent for them, I’ll be happy to perma-seed them from my gigabit dedicated server
Not around these parts!
Shit though that reminds me I need to go bookmark the r/roms megathread.
It’s all good guys, I got a NAS full of roms, and a few cartridges. If world goes to shit I’ll be here to save everyone!!
Wait until someone upload terabytes of “abandoned” games to torrent
I fear for the day that Something Happens to Vimm’s lair. Such a great resource