Many of us are concerned about video game preservation. Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common to be unable to play titles from past decades, even with companies that have lost the original source code of the game and cannot recover it. The situation is Dantesque, but now we have data thanks to a study conducted by The Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network: 87% of the classic video games released in the United States cannot be played legally at the moment.
The example given by the research team to help us understand this problem is simple. Imagine you want to watch Titanic and the only legal way was to find a VHS tape, as well as having a VHS-enabled computer. This is what is happening right now with 9 out of 10 video games, approximately.
From the study it is pointed out that the only way to access these video games is as simple as either you have a private collection with the appropriate hardware, or some library has it stored, or you can download a pirated copy from the Internet (and this if some user has uploaded it, which is another problem). That’s it, there are no more solutions.
As it turns out that none of these options are desirable (the ideal would be to be able to buy the game in a digital store quickly or even be in a public catalog), what results is that the vast majority of video games are inaccessible at this time.
Believe it or not, the video game companies themselves have been very hard on video game preservation policies and the foundations that promote them. These companies argue that everything is being done right, but the data makes it clear that not only is it far from “right”, but it is tremendously wrong.
