I always tell people concerned about this sort of thing to look at how cable TV still exists long after obsolescence. The content delivery system won't dry up before the content you want does (at least not in your lifetime).

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, but much of the cable content is lost to time. That's why we have stories like that of Marion Stokes, who collected tapes at her home and preserved hundreds of thousands of hours of news footage.

[–] vrek@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago

For when things go bad look at early episodes of doctor who... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Sure, and the amount of lost PBS footage alone due to draconian copyright restrictions borders on criminal.

The point isn't on the quality of the distribution method. Even if it was, preservation efforts for games that qualify for the concept of game ownership are far more advanced. The point is that when an entertainment industry gets this big, it takes the deaths of multiple generations for the market to dry up.