New Study Reveals 87% of All Classic Games are Not Available to Purchase

[oni-link]

Link to study

Link to article on the study

The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on 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 watch Titanic was 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 of Titanic, 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.

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For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or… piracy. None of those options are desirable, which means that most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans. That's pretty grim!

This is where libraries and archives should come in. Anyone should be 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 But outdated copyright laws are preventing institutions like ours from doing our jobs.

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Goal of this study: Get expanded exemptions for libraries and organizations preserving video games, which are currently far more limited than their ability to preserve books, movies, audio, etc.

How this study helps: The video game industry's main lobbying group has successfully argued to the US Copyright Office that the industry already does enough to preserve its own history commercially, and that additional protections for preservation institutions would hurt their bottom line. We proved them wrong: the industry has actually only managed to make 13% of its history available, and it's unlikely to get better.

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Pretty interesting and depressing reading. Hopefully this kind of thing goes someway to nudge the needle in a better direction. It does seem crazy that most of video game history is only available to collectors and pirates, which isn't ideal

What do you think, Era?

(Delist me from all digital storefronts if old)

 

[Polyh3dron]

That's why open source projects like MiSTer FPGA are so important.

 

[Yu Narukami]

[VG History Foundation] 87% of games released in the US before 2010 are no longer purchasable

This is an amazing Video Game History Foundation study on the increasing scarcity of classic games from modern retailers. One of the VGHF team members described this to me as their "half of films made before the 1950s are lost" moment when they forwarded an early copy last week. Study linked...

www.resetera.com

 

[oni-link]

[VG History Foundation] 87% of games released in the US before 2010 are no longer purchasable

This is an amazing Video Game History Foundation study on the increasing scarcity of classic games from modern retailers. One of the VGHF team members described this to me as their "half of films made before the 1950s are lost" moment when they forwarded an early copy last week. Study linked...

www.resetera.com

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Damnit, I did a search any everything. I'll ask for a lock

 

[CountCorvinus]

What do they define as a classic? Just old games in general, or retro games that received significant praise?

Because a lot of old games sucked. Lots of shovelware.

 

[Fallout-NL]

I know man, I can't even purchase PGR2, which is the best racing game of all time.

Because a lot of old games sucked. Lots of shovelware.

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That is completely besides the point. Also subjective, to a degree.