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Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal? (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

There's going to be a free online arcade whether game companies allow an online library or not. Companies can spend billions of dollars taking down emulators and unauthorized game distributors and ways to make playing games in unauthorized ways harder, but it will always be a game of whack a mole. Game companies should focus their time and resources on making legacy titles accessible, whether that means creating a deal with online libraries or selling the files directly to the consumer for a reduced cost. At the end of the day, game companies spend more money trying to prevent people from playing legacy titles than they make on the legacy titles, so there is no benefit to the consumer or the company.

I think there's a fear by companies that a rerelease or remaster won't make money if the original is available for free, but the reality is that people will happily buy a remaster or remake if it's good despite already having the original game.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Why do they worry when they a) no longer sell them b) don't support them?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Because if good games from a decade ago are freely available, they can't shove a new overexploiting live service game down our throats when it pales in comparison to the entertainment that's available for free.

They can only sell less for more, by taking the previous option off the table.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

The same reason a movie theater owner can't show Pee Wee's Big Adventure every weekend. Value is derived from exclusivity. Exercising your "rights" to a work means preventing anyone from having access to the work unless you are paid when and how you want.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I would be all in favor of "Use it or lose it" rights to Digital Distribution.... Don't offer a reasonable way to access a product? Can't bitch when Abandonware sites give it away for nothing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

There is an expiration date for IP. But I have little idea what type it goes under.

I just assume the reason old, barely functional games get the odd 1.3kb update every once in a blue moon is to "refresh" that expiration date.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Copyright is not "use it or lose it", but as it is, it is unworkable for digital media. Computer hardware doesn't last a century and with no other measures being taken to preserve that content, it's effectively doomed by the law. It also doesn't reflect a world where average people make edits of copyrighted content as a means of expression without seeing any problem with that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism manufactures scarcity. Even when we have plenty, capitalism must create limits on the sharing of free resources

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This is what I keep telling people, we already live in a post-scarcity world... We just can't reap the benefits because Capitalism forces us to pretend we don't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It all comes down to "well, sure we might have plenty, but if not for capitalism how could we decide how to divide it?"

But any solution has to promote self-interest as a virtue and can't take things away from people who currently own them, and also must conform to a bunch of myths we have about "how the world works"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

"Yes, we already have more empty houses than homeless people, but I'm sure building more houses is the solution to homelessness. We can't disrupt the economy, after all."

We need to instill voters with the courage to vote for actual left wing parties so we can get some politicians in Parliament who'll just do what needs to be done, and seize the empty houses from the investors and landlords.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Trying to never disrupt the Economy when the Economy is based on materially impossibly extracting ever growing profits out of a finite world is itself a futile self-destructive endeavor.