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Almost 90% of classic video games are “critically endangered” and it’s only getting worse, preservation study warns
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Legally, it does. For it to be legal, you need to show proof of ownership for the game. At its base, you can say that companies like Nintendo are trying their best to remove access to games through the work of their legal department.
But i think most these games that have been lost to history or are in danger of it are games we don't care much for anymore. Like old Atari games and the many thousands that have filled the libraries of the different game consoles over the past 40 years.
And even with emulation, that ROM still has to be saved somehow. Any medium we store data on is volatile. So, even with emulation, there's still a risk of loss and then already we've lost the copy of a game and not the original. This also means, the original medium with its artwork would be gone.
Time to make a video game library, i suppose.
Emulation is kind of in a legal grey area, and relies on the free labour of volunteers. Who's to say that in 50-100 years' time there will still be people able and/or willing to maintain the emulators? You could also argue that emulation is an imperfect reproduction of the actual gaming experience - emulators can both cause bugs or make the game actually run better than it did when it was released.