"Video Game Preservation" is a Mere Pretext for Piracy... and a Poor One at That

[Deleted member 8752]

First, before anyone jumps down my throat, I want to say that emulators are fine. This is not a post about emulation development. Emulation is, frankly, incredible. This is also not about backing up your own collection, regardless of its legality of circumventing DRM. This is purely a post about illegal ROM distribution sites.

Lately I've been reading on Reset Era that video game ROM sites serve an important purpose of preserving games. The claim I've read here is that without such sites, video games would fade away and become unavailable and unplayable. But it's not a legitimate form of preservation. Other mediums are not preserved in this way.

Paintings, buildings, film, books, and other works of art are not preserved through illegal distribution. For example, we don't create forgeries of paintings and then distribute them in order to ensure that the original is preserved. That would not make sense and would only dilute the value of the original work.

Rather, legitimate organizations are formed to preserve such works. Examples of such organizations include libraries, museums, architectural landmark preservation foundations, public domain databases, and film preservation foundations.

I don't understand how any person, with a straight face, could say that a video game library, video game museum, or video game preservation foundation would not be a more legitimate form of video game preservation than illegal distribution through ROM sites.

If you really cared about video game preservation, you'd get involved in one of the organizations dedicated to preserving the medium or start one yourself. See the following:

https://gamehistory.org

http://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg

https://www.gamepres.org/en/

I'm tired of reading about how ROM sites are the only way to ensure that future generations can learn about video games. It's simply untrue. If you really care, inquire as to how you can involved. Do something legitimate about it rather than visit a piracy site. Doing so clearly stealing. And using "video game preservation" as an excuse to download games you don't own is intellectually lazy and unconvincing.

 

[Redfox088]

Your right, but also wrong atthe same time.

 

[Deleted member 6730]

I don't look forward to the responses, but I agree.

 

[Sampson]

Video game preservation is a euphemism for "I want to be able to play the game 10, 20, 30 years from now without spending an insane amount of money".

As always, piracy is a distribution problem, not a legal one.

If Nintendo released their retro games on widely available platforms at reasonable prices, there wouldn't be ROM sites.

 

[alr1ght]

I bet every damn website you listed up there has no issue with ROM sites and piracy has saved more games than Nintendo has ever re-released.

 

[Mr. Poolman]

Well OP. You are right.

 

[Bhonar]

I completely agree with you.

But you'll probably get a lot of shit from ERA posters who defend "preservation". I think that whole preservation principle is silly as fuck

 

[JusDoIt]

Paintings, buildings, film, books, and other works of art are not preserved through illegal distribution.

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I like how you conveniently skipped over music.

 

[Nanashrew]

Marc Whipple tweeted some stuff recently on rom sites.



He's a lawyer, and he also recently held a Twitchcon panel this year on lootboxes discussing how law determines gambling, and how often times the weird definitions for what is considered gambling can prevent something, even if it's an actual casino in the virtual space and hits all 3 markers to be 100% gambling, from being called gambling.

 

[litebrite]

I agree, but I think there's a good argument that an unintended byproduct of piracy is preservation.

 

[Mechaplum]

I like how you conveniently skipped over music.

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And the medium of delivery. And books are being digitized to preserve them.

 

[SleepSmasher]

Completely agree OP. "Preservation" is bullshit and this forum normalises it when in fact it's an extremely debatable topic. Heck, people were talking about how Pokemon Let's Go was fully playable on a Switch emulator. An unreleased game.

Preservation my ass.

 

[Deleted member 4367]

Piracy is a wonderful thing for this industry you are right.

 

[Inuhanyou]

every emulator defender on this site should come in here and defend their stance. Cause lets be real, most emulator users are not buying the games and ripping them themselves

Of course, all the people trying to talk bad about the preservation angle now are just mad that Nintendo is being attacked for their stance.

Its all arguments for the sake of convenience

 

[kadotsu]

Really the argument should be that pre-SNES stuff should be in the public domain. But copyright is bad.

On preservation. Games are one of the few mediums that allow perfect copies and distributed preservation and given that classical preservation has issues like this:

I would like all avenues to be explored.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

ROM sites are not preservation.

That said, preservation of video games is made much more difficult than preservation of books, audio works, or even films due to some of the copyright laws related specifically to computer software. It is also far more difficult for libraries or archives or museums to provide meaningful access to video games due to these and other related copyright laws.

Also, the industry is relatively young and volatile, so orphaned works and works stuck in rights limbo are pretty common problems.

The point of all this is to say that if you want to access the classics of literature or film or music, it is often much easier to do that than it is to access some of the classics for this medium. And that's a significant problem.

 

[Professor Beef]

I just hate how actual preservation efforts now have to share the term with people who want to pirate but not admit it.

 

[DigitalOp]

If publishers don't offer a means to play older games in a modern way, I don't see the fuss.

Emulation is a beautiful thing. Its essentially software magic and people should be able to check out older games that may not be available through modern means. This is something wholly unique to gaming in general.

The amount of people who throw a fuss about emulation seems like misappropriated at best, as if the common every day consumer is going to load up software rather than buying their content.

The average person barely googles the answer to questions they have.

 

[Deleted member 4093]

You're not wrong.

This place can be too literal at times. As long as its not said directly, "its fine". Emulation threads bring in an entire different audience from people that are normally interested in a game.

 

[Zhukov]

Sure, but being used as a pretext doesn't automatically make something incorrect or wrong.

The simple fact is that many of the people and corporate entities that own games are not interested in preservation. Pretext or not, ROM sites and the like are often how preservation occurs.

And to be clear, I say this as someone who personally doesn't care one bit about either ROM sites or preservation of games.

 

[Deleted member 2620]

I bet every damn website you listed up there has no issue with ROM sites and piracy has saved more games than Nintendo has ever re-released.

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Both unquestionably true. A small amount of searching will show you that the founder of the Video Game History Foundation has outright suggested using rom sites in the past.

I do think there were bad arguments in response to the emuparadise threats, but they were mostly wrong about the impact of Nintendo's actions. Rom sites are simply the accessible tip of the iceberg among unofficial video game archival.

 

[Deleted member 8752]

I like how you conveniently skipped over music.

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That was unintentional. But it still stands. Many libraries have music available too.

 

[TheFireman]

Piracy hurts no one and people that complain about it are generally bootlickers.

 

[Popetita]

It would be but it is not there yet and for those reasons "piracy" is a form of preservation.

I would also disgree that other forms of art have notnbeen preserved because of "piracy" or similar ways because I think both films and books have been preserved and later rediscovered because someone had a copy.

 

[Deleted member 9306]

I've been waiting for someone else to say this for so long. Thanks OP. Most gamers are faaaar too entitled to just admit that this 'games preservation' bs doesn't really preserve games, but just makes it easier for people to pirate games.

And these same gamers who are obsessive about how 'piracy actually SAVES games' are the SAME ONES who want to fight developers for steadily increasing game prices, DLC, etc. And if you actually think about the livelihoods that piracy ruins then you're apparently a bootlicker/shill.

EDIT: Woah, it already happened in this thread lol.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Can't it be both?

 

[affeinvasion]

Paintings, buildings, film, books, and other works of art are not preserved through illegal distribution. For example, we don't create forgeries of paintings and then distribute them in order to ensure that the original is preserved. That would not make sense and would only dilute the value of the original work.

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This actually isn't true. The idea of public museums to preserve things is relatively new and there are many instances where illegal copies of things have been used by historians when originals were destroyed by their creators or by the indifference of later generations. This happens all the time in music history. Also reproductions of paintings are huge business in the form of high quality prints, those just aren't illegal.

The biggest issue is that the video game industry as a whole seems generally uninterested in game preservation unlike the music and film industries. If you strongly believe in the value of pieces of art in any medium being preserved for future generations, there aren't a whole lot of options when it comes to digital creations.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

That was unintentional. But it still stands. Many libraries have music available too.

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This just suggests to me that you don't fully understand what you are talking about. Do you work in the field?

 

[SleepSmasher]

Piracy hurts no one and people that complain about it are generally bootlickers.

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Piracy might not be a big issue to big publishers, but small indie devs for sure are not happy with it.

 

[Outrun]

Video game preservation is a euphemism for "I want to be able to play the game 10, 20, 30 years from now without spending an insane amount of money".

As always, piracy is a distribution problem, not a legal one.

If Nintendo released their retro games on widely available platforms at reasonable prices, there wouldn't be ROM sites.

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And we are done.

 

[Arthoneceron]

Why preserve games at the first place? Games are a product and not some kind of art.

 

[Thorn]

So what's the solution to playing old SNES or Sega or PS1 games that friendly giant coorporations don't want to (poorly) port over?

 

[WestEgg]

It is. Of course it is. We all know it is. But people will hide behind a hypothetical "noble" reasoning, to justify greed and for petty console warring.

 

[Regulus Tera]

I for one find it awesome how I can't ever play Scott Pilgrim vs the World, ever.

 

[Bhonar]

every emulator defender on this site should come in here and defend their stance. Cause lets be real, most emulator users are not buying the games and ripping them themselves

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exactly lol

I like how every emulator fanatic claims they rip every game themselves. YEA RIGHT

 

[Zippo]

I just hate how actual preservation efforts now have to share the term with people who want to pirate but not admit it.

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This

 

[Jessie]

It's tough, because we don't have any clear public domain laws for video games, even though we probably should. Video games are important, influential cultural art forms, despite what some posters in this thread believe, and they should be preserved. Legally.

 

[Deleted member 11413]

Why preserve games at the first place? Games are a product and not some kind of art at the first place.

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People used to say this exact same thing about music recordings and films. That's why so many early works in both mediums were lost. I would prefer that doesn't happen to this medium, and frankly your personal thoughts as to what is and isn't art is irrelevant.

 

[daegan]

I just hate how actual preservation efforts now have to share the term with people who want to pirate but not admit it.

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You're not wrong.

This place can be too literal at times. As long as its not said directly, "its fine". Emulation threads bring in an entire different audience from people that are normally interested in a game.

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Exactly. The ability to dump ROMs is important. But having them freely distributed (and for profit, no less) by randos that have no claim to them is not important or preservation.

 

[Deleted member 23212]

Well, there's not really much to discuss here considering the forum rules on discussion of piracy.

 

[weebro]

Wasn't there a huge fire in a Brazil museum which pretty much destroyed everything they had? At least that's not a problem for rom sites.

 

[Ichi]

You and I and everyone else know it.

 

[ckareset]

I feel like this forum is so disengenous when it comes to piracy in general.

 

[WestEgg]

So what's the solution to playing old SNES or Sega or PS1 games that friendly giant coorporations don't want to (poorly) port over?

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Why do you think you're automatically entitled to a copyrighted product just because you are unwilling or able to play it on original hardware? Video games are a luxury and there's literally millions of alternatives.

 

[Dusk Golem]

The ironic twist to this topic is various books, paintings, films and other forms of art were actually preserved by illegal copies and means, as the originals were destroyed or heavily damaged or lost to time.

I think this whole issue is very gray with great and interesting points that can be made by various viewpoints on the topic, though.

 

[alr1ght]

Oh, and here's the founder of gamehistory.org (a site you listed in the OP) dismantling your entire post. :)

 

[Musubi]

Video game preservation is a euphemism for "I want to be able to play the game 10, 20, 30 years from now without spending an insane amount of money".

As always, piracy is a distribution problem, not a legal one.

If Nintendo released their retro games on widely available platforms at reasonable prices, there wouldn't be ROM sites.

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This really. You have to compete with free and the only way to do that is to make the legal route so much more convenient.

Spotify/Pandora are good examples of this in the music industry. I feel like Music Piracy isn't what is once was simply because its just easier to stream music from legal sites now. If companies gave easier access to their back catalogs people would have no reason to pirate games.

 

[JusDoIt]

That was unintentional. But it still stands. Many libraries have music available too.

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Do you not agree that rampant music, TV, and film piracy in the aughts directly influenced the legitimate streaming revolution of all that media in the teens?

 

[Professor Beef]

Piracy hurts no one and people that complain about it are generally bootlickers.

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Let's not.

Why preserve games at the first place? Games are a product and not some kind of art.

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This echoes my feelings, and I think that's where a lot of debate comes from. If you don't see games as art then it's a pretty simple answer.

So what's the solution to playing old SNES or Sega or PS1 games that friendly giant coorporations don't want to (poorly) port over?

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Buy used or pre-owned.

 

[Bhonar]

So what's the solution to playing old SNES or Sega or PS1 games that friendly giant coorporations don't want to (poorly) port over?

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simple -- you don't play them

there's no human guaranteed right to play every video game, lol