
The ESA says preserving old online games isn't 'necessary' - ingve
https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/20/esa-dmca-online-gaming-petition/
======
vidarh
They should be careful. Copyright is a trade-off of rights. We grant copyright
as an artificial carve-out of public rights in order to promote creation. But
if those creations increasingly get walled off and locked away from a public
that still wants access to them, by combinations of legal and technical means,
we need to assess if the balance is right or if we need to reduce the
copyright protections.

As it currently stands, support for copyright is overall quite strong - the
mainstream belief is still that a fairly substantial degree of protection is
justified. But the more peoples ability to continue to access things that are
important parts of their memories gets locked down, the greater the chance
that more people will come to see copyright as more of a hindrance than
benefit.

My son, at 8, still regularly gets upset when he thinks of a fairly inane role
playing game he didn't spend all that much time on, whose online servers were
shut down about two years ago, and has more than once expressed anger towards
the developers for doing so.

He still has not experienced a "serious" loss in this area in the sense of a
game he's invested countless hours in and made friendships in. With a culture
where more and more time gets spent in these virtual worlds that people invest
a lot of time, energy and even money in, if it gets taken away there will be
increasing levels of anger as well (if, say, Roblox was to shut down I'll
never hear the end of it)

They're going to find themselves threading a fine line here, with new
generations likely to be increasingly negative to actions that will be seen
not in terms of just shutting down unprofitable games, but as hostile and
destructive unjustified attacks on real communities.

~~~
philipodonnell
Great comment. I would add that part of the tradeoff is that in exchange for
the exclusive right to sell a certain product there is the expectation that
the product will enter the public domain after a period of time.

But the copyright law in the US grants that protection for 70 years. 70 years
seems like plenty of time for an art piece, a book or a piece of music to be
useful to its creators and still remains useful for the public after that
time. I don't think the same time frames are relevant for online multiplayer:
imagine sitting down 50 years from now and trying to reverse-engineer a WOW
server.

What if copyright only applied to the supported life of a game? For instance,
copyright can apply to a game for up to 70 years, or whenever one of the
game's core components ceases being supported plus 5 years, whichever is
sooner.

~~~
snvzz
70 years is insane to begin with. Keeping art out of the public domain for
that long does seem hardly in the interest of the general public.

They'd need to justify these 70 years really well. Which they have not.

~~~
philipodonnell
I think its just from a long time ago. The idea back then was to give a
specific author the ability to profit from their own work while they were
alive and for another generation or so and then free that work to benefit the
general public; 95/70 years was just like 'that's way longer than anybody
lives'.

As usual, though, once companies could have copyrights they used some of the
money to bribe politicians to extend that original idea to add time and cover
all sorts of things to prevent the public from benefiting at the expense of
the copyright holder, while claiming the opposite.

Its not unreasonable they would do that (longer and more expansive copyright
means more value for shareholders), I just wish it wasn't the only thing
anyone with the power to change it was thinking about.

~~~
justinpombrio
> The idea back then was to give a specific author the ability to profit from
> their own work while they were alive and for another generation or so and
> then free that work to benefit the general public; 95/70 years was just like
> 'that's way longer than anybody lives'.

Copyright was originally 28 years, and has been increasing linearlyish ever
since: long copyrights are a recent phenomenon. Also, it's 70 years plus the
author's lifetime. There are nice charts in Wikipedia.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States)

------
CivBase
> Giving access to the proprietary server code could hypothetically lead to
> preservation societies building their own infrastructure and charging for
> access. Thus, they'd be a direct competitor to the original developers and
> publishers, which is something the ESA isn't exactly keen on.

This is ridiculous. Since when did "businesses not wanting to compete" justify
anything? Of course they don't, but that's what our economy is supposed to be
built on!

Are they actually admitting that their modern games cannot compete with older
titles _they_ shut down because _they_ decided they were no longer profitable?
Besides, nothing is stopping _them_ from also hosting those old titles again.
They've just admitted there's a market for it!

I suspect the real problem here is that older titles don't support the "live
services", GaaS, and modern monetization strategies they've been pushing for
the last few years. Sure, an old MMO like Everquest might be profitable to
host, but it can't rake in the kind of money a lootbox scheme can.

Copyright is not inherently a bad idea, but articles like this indicate to me
that our current implementation is very broken.

------
tyfon
Maybe ESA isn't worth preserving..

There should be no issues making an emulator for a server for defunct games
just as there is no issues making emulators for dead consoles.

Microsoft tried really hard to push for single player online DRM too with the
launch of the xbox 1. Luckily the gamers wouldn't have any of it and it became
the worst PR blunder they made in gaming yet. They are trying again with the
games on windows store. They are encrypted, unmoddable and with online checks.

I hope the gaming community will stand fast on this subject in the future as
well as.

~~~
NutriSugar
>Microsoft tried really hard to push for single player online DRM too with the
launch of the xbox 1.

Another issue with this push is that online DRM really hurts people who live
in areas where internet connections are non-existent or extremely limited.
Forced updates on dial-up or satellite internet with 2GB a month caps are not
compatible. This move discriminates against those who live in these areas, and
while for adults it is their choice to live where they do, for children it is
not.

I see this in areas of life more important than gaming as well. These days
kids get sent home with homework that requires an internet connection to
complete, despite these rural areas being so far from any public access that
there is no way for the child to do their work. This creates a situation of
helplessness for the child, which has the potential to lead them into a
situation of learned helplessness with school work because the school system
assumes infrastructure that doesn't exist for all.

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titzer
It's a shame. I still play Ninja Gaiden for the original NES--on the original
NES, with the original cartridge, with the original controller.

I'm cynical I know, but in 30 years no one will remember these short-sighted
fools, whereas I'd bet $100 the original Ninja Gaiden will still be around
(and I hope so!).

~~~
khedoros1
My 3 year old plays Galaga on my Atari 7800, Super Mario on my NES, Donkey
Kong Country on my SNES, and so on. They've all lasted 25 or 30 years so far,
and they're sure to have good years left in them.

ESA has been around for 23 though, and produces the E3 expo. I think they'll
be around for at least a chunk of that 30 years.

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kbart
I know it's from fantasy's series, but what I'd like to see is that as soon as
a company (or rights holder) shut down official servers or make game
unplayable in other ways, such act counts as the rights abandon and game goes
to public domain. I'm not against companies making money from old games, but I
still want to play HoMM3 released in 1999 and probably will want to play it 30
years in future (it's like chess for me), so just make it possible.

------
dragonwriter
Preservation is central to the purpose of copyright, hence the (inadequately
enforced) deposit requirement. If preservation of games isn't essential, they
should not be subject to copyright at all.

------
snvzz
Who's involved at the other side of the issue?

I hope the EFF gets involved if it isn't already. Particularly, it'd be rude
not to, as they're getting quite a lot of donations through Humble Bundle.

~~~
Pica_soO
The whole industry is. The problem is- games do not age out as we are all made
to believe. Well made games are fun, even twenty or thirty years after
release. And while graphics are important for selling them- they are actually
irrelevant for playing them once they fulfill there purpose.

Thus Southkorea still plays StarCraft, and if it weren't for backwards
incompatibility slowly grinding old software to dust- a lot of people instead
of buying new, dlc infested - constructions sites that might contain fun in
the future- would play the old titles.

The industrys idea of revenue here is to churn the wheel of decay as fast as
possible, with as much as additional sales while the customer does not buy the
actual product.

The old idea of a game was to provide as much entertainment, often as long as
possible (bind the customer to you)- and this means there are still shards
with Ultima Online, still people playing RedAlert2 and CC:Generals. From a
business point of view- this is the secret oil of the industry- there is a
finite amount of people, with a finite amount of time. There are different
grades of people (aka income) but that can change.

Something like MineCraft is a world destroying catastrophe in these eyes.

If you carefully look, you can see the ripples of "Long Value Release" and
Studios closing due to people not buying games for years after.

So, what does the industry fear? A summer where all play some old forgotten
modded title, while not even the flys circle over the loot boxes in the
stores.

Thus, loosing control over the online service- has nothing to do with piracy,
but everything to do with loosing control over the end-of-life of your
product.

You cant patch some games balance into oblivion to sell the successor- if you
do no longer control the servers.

~~~
di4na
There is some nuance here.

Company like Bethesda or CDProjekt are showing that having one long running
game can work too. (Bethesda is a bit strange due to their military contracts
but still).

CDProjekt are even more interesting because they are behind GOG.com . Which
spend time making old game playable on recent PC, but sell them for a price
when they were abandonware before. Most of the time without DRM. The
interesting part is they do make money through it. Which shows that you can
keep a small but longterm income from your backcatalogue.

At the same time, they are making abandonware harder to support through
copyright exception since copyright holders now make money again ...

~~~
baud147258
> Bethesda is a bit strange due to their military contracts

I am curious to know what you are talking about. I've never heard Bethesda
getting money from the DoD. And I've found nothing, since all search results
are mixed with info about the military base in the city called Bethesda.

~~~
di4na
My mistake. Was meant to be Bohemia Interactive.

~~~
baud147258
Thank you for your answer.

Bohemia Interactive created a division, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, to
handle the military training software, which has worked with other NATO
countries.

But from the Wikipedia page, the division has been bought by an equity firm,
The Riverside Company, in 2013. So Bohemia Interactive doesn't deal anymore
with the military, even if they might still have contact in the military,
since they have developed military simulations.

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xg15
I love this part:

> _" The prevalence of reissues of older games belies any claim that game
> companies lack incentive to preserve older titles," the ESA writes._

Yeah. It shouldn't matter if Lord of The Rings ever goes out of print because,
after all, we have _several_ movie adaptions of it. What more could we ever
want?

------
dest
Note that ESA is the "Entertainment Software Association". It has nothing to
do with the "European Space Agency".

~~~
scandinavegan
Also nothing to do with the European Speedrunner Assembly, which
coincidentally is streaming a week of video game speedrunning right now.

Link for the interested: [https://esamarathon.com/](https://esamarathon.com/)

