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Imagine if you weren’t allowed to watch your favorite movies from the 80’s or earlier unless you managed to have a still working VCR and VHS copy from your childhood. No Goonies, no Godfather, no Star Wars original trilogy. They decided to wipe these films from the face of the earth so that you could no longer enjoy them and had to go buy their new movies, exclusively, if you wanted entertainment from a film. That’s what games publishers are trying to do, so they don’t have to compete for you attention with older classics.
Did you just link tvtropes with no warning?
It’s been hours …help.
I have dozens of tabs open in Edge on my phone and I use Edge there mostly for TV Tropes since the Preview Link lets me look at other tropes without having to open another tab. I’m currently reading Discworld tropes.
yes Chief, yes I did… and I did it deliberately :)
It’s just bonkers to me because they do everything for profit anyway; what the fuck profit do they get from not selling shit anymore? I said this not long ago about Nintendo, but other companies are guilty of it too. Spending money attempting to stop piracy, instead of making money by just giving customers what they fucking want. What crazy company secrets are they hiding that not continuing to sell a product is better than selling it?
It’s like a toxic romantic partner: if I can’t make a lot of money doing this one thing, then no one can.
Come to think of it, a lot of late stage capitalism behavior is like a toxic partner.
You can still watch those old films, as long as you are paying a subscription to a streaming service so the studio can keep making money off of them.
That’s what video game publishers want too. Nintendo doesn’t want to wipe SMB3 off the face of the earth. They just want to make sure the only way you can access it is to pay for Nintendo Switch Online.
*if they feel like offering it
And this is the real cost. Sorry Mario Brothers will pretty much always be available as long as Nintendo is around, but obscure games or classics with disputed Copyright will disappear.
Who is out there even trying to stream the old Sierra games? At least they are on GoG, but I know even GoG has tried to track down current copyright holders for old classics and the are plenty of orphan games where after several mergers and divestments, there is some uncertainty, and it’s not worth it for any of the potential copyright holders to sort it out and license it, and unfortunately it’s not worth it for GoG to publish it to find out if they’ll sue GoG.
This is why Abandonware is such an important concept.
Except that that is largely not even true.
87% of games made before 2010 are completely commercially unavailable.
They do not even want to be in control of retro games to be able to sell them indefinitely.
With the exception of certain, wildly popular games they know they can still charge a high price for, they do not want the vast majority of retro games to be legally available at all.
Further, with books, film, other kinds of art… a legal carve out exception does exist for the purposes of academic study and research.
Basically, accredited academic institutions have the ability to rent those out to students, people writing studies on media and cultural history.
Video games? As of this ruling, nope, they are special, studying the history of video games functionally requires breaking the law.
They just get shoved into the vault, never to be seen again, by anyone, ever.
This is such an incredibly naive take that has already been proven wrong by multiple publishers going out of their way to do exactly what you just said. There’s also a ton of abandonware which is not being sold and never will be again.
No Goonies, no Godfather, no Star Wars original trilogy
i would be okay with this. we should still preserve games of course, but i wouldn’t mind losing out on those movies
Eat shit, troll.
Good for you?
More proof that if they were a new idea, libraries would be fought tooth and nail by book publishers
see: the internet archive
Could you imagine trying to get there to be libraries today if the concept was new? “We can’t possibly just let people read for free! What, do you think literacy is a right? It’s a privilege!”
Same for firefighters.
“PAY people to sit around in case a fire breaks out?? That almost never happens! Also, ignore everything else they do. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep fires out of their homes. We’ll sell them a new one if something happens, though. And their neighbors. And THEIR neighbors. Also, literally buy a fireplace from us, please.”
Ironically that was the case for a good long while, and has been the case on exceedingly rare occasion in the more modern era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_in_ancient_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#United_States
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of art to enrich society. Making money for copyright holders is a means to an end, not the end itself.
We need a new copyright law that shifts media to public domain if the copyright holder no longer makes it available.
Copyright and patent law is a social contract and a very fundamental one.
United States Constitution has some pretty cool ideas in it. Freedom of speech? That the government cannot punish you for expressing an idea? That was added as an afterthought. Freedom of religion? That congress shall make no law establishing a religion, making our society secular and preventing the government from punishing those who do not conform? Afterthought. The right to a trial by jury of peers, the right to not be compelled to testify against yourself, the right to be secure in your person and property? Afterthoughts. All of that, all of the things we call the Bill Of Rights, were added on the basis of “Wait we should probably have this.”
The basis of intellectual property law isn’t in an amendment, it’s too important. It’s in the main body of the constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 Intellectual property:
To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respecive Writings and Discoveries.
We The People grant creators for a time exclusive right of way over their creations to monetize and profit from them as incentive for doing the work of creation so that we may have the creations, after which the creation becomes the heritage of all mankind forever so that other creators in the future may build upon it. Americans tend to view our first amendment right to freedom of speech, broadly defined by our supreme court to include symbolic speech to include overt actions such as burning a flag, as near absolute. Even the allegedly liberal allegedly enlightened democracies in Europe will outlaw ideas; America will not. Copyright and patent law is one of the very few where we will limit speech or the press, for it is one of the few laws that came before the first amendment. You may not be free to print an idea if it currently belongs to someone else.
Without that incentive, the ability to personally profit form the works you create, you get the Soviet Union, which invented…Tetris. Whose inventor didn’t earn a single kopek from his invention until he became an American citizen. Without the expiration date for copyrights or patents you get…Disney. Who gobbles up creative works without the intention of letting go with the apparent goal of monopolizing the very idea of storytelling itself, hoarding wealth in perpetuity and simply buying any competition.
For a society to properly function it is important for patents and copyrights to be temporary in nature; they must exist and yet they must within a lifetime cease to exist. Lack of either condition is an intolerable rot. Copyright terms being the lifetime of the author plus seventy years is a rot the United States probably has not survived. I think we’re soon to find out.
In an ideal society sure, we don’t live in an ideal society
Then whats the purpose of existence if not to strive for a more ideal society?
Profit for a ever dwindling number of individuals. /$
I think your comment is the most succinct summary in and of itself. It exists like a perfect quote from Greek philosophy. I was purely pointing out the broken issue of copyright as it exists.
The point of existence is to struggle for better existence in some schools of thought as you’ve summarized.
In others, it’s to realize that by struggling through cycles of existence you are not aware of the trap of existence, like Zen Buddhism.
In traditional Abrahamic schools of thought it’s to honor God enough and follow your creed that you get rewarded after you die.
I think the way I feel about existence is more Nihilist. Something like https://youtu.be/E_qvy82U4RE
I was where you were, a nothing matters, what’s the point nihilist. But I learned that I had skills and talents that could help people. Ended up going to law school and now I helping folks.
I believe every person can put their pants on in the morning and go out and make their local community just a little bit better. People get caught up in macro morals but just giving your neighbor a plate of Thanksgiving goods goes such a long way.
Not The Onion version: “‘People might actually have fun’: Publishers squash video game preservation movement”
If folks today learned that games existed which could be played offline, had no dlc, no microtransactions, no skinner boxes. And those games were actually fun, clearly the whole industry would collapse lol.
And this is why I sail the seven seas and have zero reservations about doing so.
Do you seed, though?
Yep.
Toproms collection. If you can hold it, give us a hand.
Nah I hit and run like a bastard
Sailing bastard
Seed your mum
preserved games might be used for entertainment
Umm, yeah, that’s what a lot of preserved media is used for. You think publishers are losing their shit over people enjoying Shakespeare?
I subscribe to a lot of YouTube channels that have silent films and films from the 1930s and 40s. Also I have a lot of movies from the 70s to 90s on my drive (and some more recent, too). I don’t always watch the more recent stuff.
It is ironic, too. Because when VHS first came out, it didn’t take long for film studios to start to release tons upon tons of their old classics (that were often shown on TV anyway) on tape and frequently capitalized on people’s desire for owning and watching older media. Sure people got the new stuff (for both rental and ownership) like there was no tomorrow, but if you were in the 80s and wanted to watch 40s stuff (which was like the 80s for people living in the 80s… feeling old yet?) you wouldn’t have had that hard of a time finding the classics.
This is what really baffles me about the industry. They could be making some real decent cash off of this old IP if they just made it accessible and put a tiny bit of effort into it. Imagine all the old games the switch already runs. Imagine it running EVERYTHING! ugh. Dummies!
guess what publishers, your videogames are going to be preserved if you allow it or not.
I suppose you could have allowed it to happen to garner some goodwill from the community, but you have instead chosen to shit on that goodwill.
guess we’ll just do whatever we’ve been doing for the last 25 years and continue to “archive” your “property” that’s been abandoned.
Patent law is 20 years. Copyright should be no different.
US copyright was originally for 14 years, with the option to extend it for another 14 years. It kept getting extended over the years. I think it’s life of the author plus 70 years now.
Isn’t that Disney’s fault (and their government lapdogs) with their efforts to hang on to Mickey Mouse as long as they can?
Yes
It’s the fault of a political system that allows private companies to lobby for oppressive laws.
Copyright should belong to the lifetime of the person who is creator or 20 years from the original creation if transfered or created by a non-person entity.
Nah, even an artist should lose monopoly after 20 years. What is their incentive to make new stuff otherwise?
Their incentive is… making art is fun and a passion. Holding copyrignt allows artists to earn a living while freely pursuing their passion. Artists already struggle to get paid well for their work… and you want to strip away their rights to their work? Do you also pay your artists in impressions?
This is a mistaken take driven by corporations. Artists and creators generally don’t own their own copyrights. It’s the first thing they’re forced to sign away to get any kind of contract, publishing deal, or other form of access from the big players who hold the keys to the kingdom. Nobody is making even a million dollars let alone more without going through them, and they don’t agree unless they own those rights.
Small time creators can own their own work, but even then you have countless examples of creators who wouldn’t play ball so the bigger companies just plagiarized them and they don’t have the money to fight it. You need the backing of a big company to even enforce your claim against the other big companies that threaten it if it’s actually lucrative. And, again, they won’t unless they’re the ones that own it because you signed it away.
Copyright does not protect creators in the slightest. It’s a tool by and for large business used to legally steal from creators.
Exactly why i said copyright should be limited by non-person entities.
k I guess everyone will continue to dump roms and make emulators.
Steal everything that isn’t nailed down while you’ve still got a chance.
At least Jesus is safe from burglary then.
The library shouldn’t preserve books because people might read them.
The worst part is that it may really come to this
When the programmers of these old titles are saying they’d rather have people keep playing them even if they’re only available on archive site, I say screw the publishers.
