Study: The Overwhelming Majority Of Historical Video Games Are Endangered
Video games are a form of art and a form of expression. While that used to be somewhat controversial to state decades ago, nobody of any value really argues that point any longer. And the moment you accept that simple fact, it throws into light how absolutely absurd it is that the preservation efforts of libraries and museums are so severely hampered for this one type of art compared with others, such as music and film. Industry lobbying groups have been able to successfully block getting these institutions exemptions from copyright law to better share this cultural history with the world by stating two rebuttals: such cultural sharing would hurt the industry's sales, and it's all unnecessary anyway because the industry is already preserving games and making them available to people.
The first point is a silly one. Why should libraries preserving and making available historical video games be any more of a threat to the industry than their handling of books, film, and television? It shouldn't. All libraries are asking for is for the same rules to apply, but currently these institutions can only share this art on-premise, versus being able to make it available digitally. It's an uneven playing field.
As to the claim that the industry is doing this all just fine already, well, the always great Video Game History Foundation has put out a study demonstrating that the industry has done an absolute shit job of this, actually.
The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conductedthe first ever studyon the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak.87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered.
Imagine if the only way to watchTitanicwas to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it. And what if no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better - they could keep and digitize that VHS ofTitanic, but you'd have to go all the way there to watch it. It sounds crazy, but that's the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear.
Nearly 90% of the cultural output of an entire industry is at risk of simply disappearing, save for the efforts of the online piracy community, which are, of course, regularly vilified. That's a crazy number. It's also a number that is purely anathema to the very point of copyright: the granting of a temporary monopoly on artistic output to eventually reach the public domain in exchange for more cultural output. If the industry isn't going to bother preserving the cultural output, and if preservation institutions are prohibited from being able to properly preserve that output and make it available to the public, then the deal becomes entirely one-sided. The industry gets its monopoly and makes its money, while the public loses out on the output once the dollars stop rolling in.
This is where libraries and archivesshouldcome in. Anyoneshouldbe able to easily explore, research and play classic video games, in the same way that they can read classic novels, listen to classic albums, and watch classic movies. But outdated copyright laws are preventing institutions like ours from doing our jobs.
The nextrulemaking proceedingunder the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA"), Title 17, section 1201, of theUnited States Codeis scheduled for 2024. We're hopeful that this study will incite change, and that video game preservation will become stronger - before we lose more.
This is one of those situations where if nothing is done and art is lost, there's little chance of ever getting it back. Again, the only ask here is for video games to be treated like other forms of art. It's not much of an ask, frankly, and the fear-mongering that groups like the ESA have engaged in should be treated like so much pablum.