A three-year fight to help support game preservation has come to a sad end today. The US copyright office has denied a request for a DMCA exemption that would allow libraries to remotely share digital access to preserved video games.
The VGHF argues that around 87% of all video games released in the US before 2010 are now out of print, and the only legal way to access those games now is through the occasionally exorbitant prices and often failing hardware that defines the retro gaming market.
What about piracy? Is it/can it keep copies of all those games?
That will always be an option. But for the less tech savvy its a minefield of fakes & frauds which will keep media out of reach. This is the objective of these companies, to make the uncontrollable scary, so people will pay be in their manufactured safe space.
The goal is to find legal alternatives
Yeah, nut you know, in the mean time?
Lots of games are gone forever because it is “not legal”.
Pirate until the value plummets. Only way for change is through their pockets.
Welcome to a world designed by the rich, nothing enjoyable can be free, even if it was discarded.