This sucks.
gee thanks, glad I get fair representation on the laws in the ‘land of the free’
U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation
Submitted 4 weeks ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Comments
TriflingToad@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
RangerJosie@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Only if you match whoever the actual electors pick as president. Then yes.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Book = story Movie = video story Game = interactive story
The fuck, fellas?!
MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) which claimed preservation supporters like the VGHF “[did] not propose a clear requirement to know who the users are or why they want to access a game.” Likewise, it suggested those lack of requirements meant supporters aimed to “reserve almost complete discretion in how they would provide access to preserve[d] games.”
Stingy. You fucks don’t make money with it anymore.
_bcron_@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can see why the ESA would want to defend IP but it should sadden everyone that they’re basically taking thousands upon thousands of titles of abandonware hostage in order to protect a couple hundred that might possibly have some value on the Playstation or Nintendo store or as a bundle on PC at some point in the future.
I used to download abandonware from the mid 80s, monochrome CRPG type stuff, back in the late 90s. Kinda bummed that most of them are probably just gone at this point.
Shame on the Entertainment Software Association, not giving a damn about software.
Ashtear@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
A lot of those games are still around, just not in legal distribution channels.
The more at-risk stuff is newer games going forward, such as live-service games or games locked down with DRM that requires authentication to play.
_bcron_@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There’s a lot that just vanish into the ether when someone doesn’t renew their little abandonware site they built and forgot about a decade ago. Maybe not the big names like Might & Magic, but the smaller titles most people have never heard of. Shit’s a bummer if the Internet Archive doesn’t get to it because then it’s probably on a dozen 3.5" floppys in desks that haven’t been cleaned out
grue@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I can see why the ESA would want to defend IP
You shouldn’t, because the entire concept is a lie.
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
Fuck isn’t this what the Internet archive relied on???
ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
When preserving culture is criminal, or punishable, ya might want to reevaluate your laws
In the meantime, people are gonna do it anyway 'cause why ask permission to back up and preserve your own stuff? And when the law finally catches up, some will be grateful to those that did so despite the earlier wrongful laws that tried to discourage them.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
Copy that floppy!
Wogi@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This is great and advisable.
But what about online only games that can be nuked whenever the publisher feels like it?
www.stopkillinggames.com
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 weeks ago
I mean, many of us are trying. It’s fuckin’ hard tho when your opposition has billions of dollars and politicians in their back-pocket and our side’s greatest asset is Ross from Ross’s Game Dungeon.
misk@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
Or, don’t treat it like culture but slop to be consumed and discarded. If law is not there, put pressure on publishers to release games under licensing that allows preservation after predetermined amount of time. Maybe make slop ineligible for game awards and remove it from review aggregators. There are ways I’m sure.
Who am I kidding, nobody is going to do this because it makes too much sense.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
Video games are probably thought of more as “tech” rather than “culture.” And obsolescence is a part of tech.
I don’t agree with it, but that is what I think their view on it is.
skulbuny@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
we also should be supporting open source games—if it’s open source, it’s preservable!
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Arguing that game perservation is cultural preservation gets messy.
Let’s use a somewhat recent example: Overwatch. A lot of us LOVED Overwatch during the first few years. Then there were enough changes to balance out teams for competitive play that a lot of us feel it is no longer the same game and bounced off of it. Similarly, Darkest Dungeon 1 was kind of infamous for some major balance changes during early access that proved the true horror was gamers.
What is the answer there? Is it to back up every single version of every single game? Ha! You’ve fallen for my trap card! (also, remember when yu-gi-oh wasn’t a game where it is about building a deck so you can turn one wipe the other player?).
Because youtubers like Josh Strife Hayes who specialize in MMOs and multiplayer games have talked about this to varying degrees. Josh can play a really interesting MMO where he is literally the only person online for most of his recording session. But… that means he can only talk about the mechanics of the MMO and can’t really talk about progression or what it was like to play.
And that extends to “normal” games. There was a time when EVERYONE who was playing Tunic (and La-Mulana before it) was in chat rooms and message boards trying to understand the secrets. And countless video game essayists will acknowledge this. That coming back to a game in 2024 is very much about trying to understand what the game was in 2004. Hell, Illusory Wall has done some great videos where he actually researches this and points out how many misconceptions people have about what the players of Dark Souls 1 were doing which… is amazing.
Which gets back to preservation of culture. Shakespeare’s works are undeniably influential. But what is preservation? Is it the script? Is it the 1968 film where we all saw some boobies? Probably not, but that is what we see in high school. Is it the 199t movie with a Sword 9mm? I actually have a lot of arguments for why it should be but…
Because also? Most of what people learn about Shakespeare completely ignores the… for lack of a more humorous term, cultural aspects of it. Almost everything that man (allegedly?) wrote was a commentary on politics of the day. And you can read an annotated copy that will add in these references Pop Up Video style (remember that?) but that still lacks the meaning of the dimwitted young actor playing Juliet who doesn’t realize and the veteran playing Mercutio who is keeping an eye on the audience and is ready to bolt if people get angry or some cops show up and decide it is too on the nose and go to beat on Billy S.
But also? Who is to say that is any less culturally important than a 10th grade Brit Lit class putting on a performance where Tybalt both decided it would be funny to pretend he is Keanu in Bill and Ted AND spent all night playing Tribes and never memorized his lines so he is just over-emoting while trying to read off a bunch of cue cards in his sleeve? And the class is equal parts amused and pissed off while the teacher takes sips from a flask because this is the third class that day who did something stupid.
And, going back to games: Who is to say that playing Dark Souls by yourself is any less culturally relevant than watching the influencers of the day lose their shit and get mad at chat because they can’t beat Ornstein and Smough?
Because media is not in a vacuum. Media’s impact on culture is informed by the people who consume it.
Which is why I increasingly think that, from a game and cultural preservation standpoint, youtube and twitch and the blogs of the day are actually MUCH more important to preserve.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I mean, that all sounds to me like a really good argument for preserving copies of every single version of every game. To go back to your Shakespeare example, it would be a massive loss if any of those adaptations were not preserved to be found by those who went looking, so all we had to go on was records of people talking about them. In fact, there are at least a few examples of exactly that: Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey are only parts of a much larger series which we only know exist because we have other records discussing it.
Yeah, just taking snapshots of everything isn’t going to let you perfectly recreate the culture surrounding a game at any point in time, but having those snapshots around is important for giving context to other records you have.
swordgeek@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Interesting points, but you’re missing an important point: This isn’t necessarily about the definition of what SHOULD be or MUST be preserved, but whether studios should be allowed to PREVENT it from being preserved by those who want to.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Preserving a game isn’t about preserving the culture around it at the time of its release. It’s about a set of rules that the player can interact with that tend to lead to a certain type of experience. People playing Marvel vs. Capcom 2 will fall into basically the same meta that the game evolved into about 15 years ago, because those rules encourage using those characters.
Yes, we should have more distinct versions of updated games that we can choose to upgrade to, or not, by our own choice. It’s absolute garbage that you can have a version of Overwatch that you enjoy that can just be taken away from you on a whim.
slumberlust@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only reason we still have Shakespeare is preservation.