cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1239840/video-game-history-foundation-founder-says-piracy-remains-the-only-viable-game-preservat

Statement from VGHF director Frank Cifaldi on the discontinuation of physical PlayStation media, and the closure of the PS3 and PSP digital storefronts.

This is unfortunate news for those who still prefer buying games on physical media, and is certainly a hit to consumer rights, the resale market, and game creators whose businesses rely on the physical market. But from the perspective of professional preservationists, this doesn't have as much of an impact as you might expect.

The reality is that the vast majority of video games produced over the last two decades were not made for dedicated home video game consoles, let alone pressed to physical media. And even when they were released on physical media, a day-one digital patch was all but guaranteed, meaning that even though a disc is preserving data in an accessible way, it may not represent the game that people actually played. Museums and archives have been preparing for this future for a while, with the expectation that putting discs on a shelf isn't going to be a long-term solution for preserving new games.

What continues to baffle us is what the industry expects institutions like ours to do about it. If platform owners are deciding to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, then we'd also like to see trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research. Everyone agrees this is a serious problem, but the ESA has repeatedly opposed the efforts of cultural heritage institutions to reform digital copy protection laws to make it easier to do this work. The industry needs to meaningfully come to the table on this issue, because asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto VI and hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution.

Source: Bluesky.

People pour their time, hearts and souls behind creating entertainment and art, just to be locked behind some companies' profits.

It's our boy Frank!

I'm glad whenever they bring up research. Books, newspapers, radio broadcasts, movies, TV shows... these get preserved over decades or centuries and are so significant in historical research, yet video games somehow can't be?

Although to be fair we've lost plenty of other media over the centuries. Find me the missing episodes of early Doctor Who that the BBC deleted, for instance. It'd be good if video games can get ahead of that with good preservation methods but it wouldn't be exceptional if a good chunk doesn't make it past 50 years.

There could even be some potential legislation protecting artists from this turnout.

Say an artist is commissioned for a work. I think by implication, even if they know the result is to be owned by another person, part of their livelihood relies on other people seeing it in some form.

It is damaging for art professions if people are in any frequency working on art projects that are never going to be seen by anyone. That can include canceled projects, disabled software, and more.