The cynic in me thinks that this is because they've realised that the options are either a loss of history, an industry-sponsored scheme, or a legally-mandated exception to breaking DRM for preservation grounds.
Microsoft's DRM on their latest xbox is insane – they actively consider the customer hostile at every available opportunity, have essentially always-online DRM, including for physical discs [1] and have had senior architects giving talks explaining how the "only" way to make a games console is to have a physically secure enclave in a chip with a truly unique root of trust, a very strict hardware watchdog, engineered resistance to under/overvoltage or clocking techniques and literally everything, including all buses and IO, encrypted to the nines. This is clearly incompatible with recording history (and also produces lots of errors like "this game isn't ready yet" – utter tosh. New Xbox consoles require an internet connection at least once to "activate" and play games – meaning any unsold will become e-waste once the servers shut down [2]).
I'm glad they're making the argument -- the preservation of our culture is hugely important, and emulation is a good way to do it, particularly if industry sponsored (I think it's a shame that, e.g. there isn't a good PS4 emulator yet) -- but there's a definite false narrative behind this.
> Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
> [..]
> 1. Computer Programs — Video Game Preservation
> SPN and LCA petitioned to renew the exemption for preservation of video games for which outside server support has been discontinued. No oppositions were filed against readoption of this exemption, and Consumer Reports submitted a comment in support of the renewal petition. The petition stated that libraries, archives, and museums continue to need the exemption to preserve and curate video games in playable form. For example, the petition highlighted Georgia Tech University Library’s Computing Lab, retroTECH, which has made a significant collection of recovered video game consoles accessible for research and teaching uses pursuant to the exemption. [..] This existing exemption, as well as the above exemption pertaining to software preservation, serve as the baseline in assessing whether to recommend any expansions in Class 14.
Also important to note, that currently Microsoft is doing backwards compatibility the best, by a very wide margin. It has been this way since the last generation, and from as far as I can tell, they don't lose any games generation to generation, whereas Sony and Nintendo always have to reinvent the wheel every single time, often resulting in less games getting ported.
Nintendo used to be better with backwards compatibility: the original Wii models (2006-2011) could natively play GameCube games and the Wii U could natively play Wii games by rebooting into the Wii Menu. The Switch, however, dropped native backwards compatibility.
as if it was better in flight simulator dvd edition deluxe premium whatever. that thing gave me windows 98 floppy vibes and than the windows store basically failed to play it, even on completly newly installed windows.
basically I helped a customers son to install and play his 130€ game..... support was clueless, you won't make this shit up, just google https://www.google.com/search?q=flight+simulator+windows+sto....
I mean you install the game with 10 DVD's !!!! 10 and that alone takes like over 1-2 hours. after that you NEED to keep dvd 1 inside the drive AND you of course need an internet connection and the store needs to work and and and, most often the store just fails to activate.
(good news you can download it from the store and if you are lucky it will start)
When Microsoft tried this in the last generation, they got totally steamrolled. Many Xbox gamers switched to Sony (myself included), heads rolled internally, and Microsoft renegged.
What changed this generation? Game Pass? Maybe consumers becoming accustomed to streaming services and being held hostage by monthly fees?
It's entirely feasible for lawyers from the companies to write out an exemptions to DRM circumventions past certain dates that outlines what you are allowed to do as it relates to the DRM with old titles.
There are difficulties in this with third party licensing, which can get quite complex, going beyond content licenses (such as a Star Wars game or licenses for music tracks) but including many third party technology licenses. Those kinds of issues don't come into play as much with things like movies and other media.
What Spencer is proposing makes a lot of sense but it's not really done from the perspective of rolling back DRM or sunsetting copyright protections. It's about encouraging publishers and developers to support old titles better for emulation, and making it into a business. They're not really thinking about archival considerations or opening up modding.
Particularly now, with the games industry entering into a mature phase, they're mostly tapped as it relates to new ideas and are looking for ways to make more money on the back catalog.
And yet Xbox Series is the first console in my memory to ever support homebrew applications without the need for pwning the console. Maybe I'm okay with locked down hardware as long as the manufacturer really is on my side and will forever continue to be.
Could it be that MS is even planning to go one step further? They're not at all interested in preserving their own games, but they might be very interested in adding games from other companies to the XBox through the preservation clause.
The DRM on the Xbox is super-comprehensive--but their own games are also all, AFAIK, coming out on Windows, and while I haven't investigated deeply it doesn't look too crazy with regards to archiving those if one is of a mind?
Anyone who plays or creates online games knows the value of DRM. While it may irk you for reasons, games are designed to be fun. Playing against exploiters is not fun, and that is reality for games that don’t incorporate serious cheat mitigations. Online games are inherently transient, so the playability of the game should be the first priority, with any efforts to conserve the game taking a back seat to keeping the game fun.
In the US at least, it's not the legislators – it's the library of congress, who in 2018 allowed (under some very limited circumstances) breaking DRM to fix hardware [1].
In the UK (and I think most of the EU) there are similar national bodies to which one can apply for permission to break DRM -- e.g. in the UK there's a long and complex review process by the civil servants at the department for culture, media and sport [2]. Of course, none of these things actually break DRM. They just say that you can break DRM without getting in trouble.
Who knows, in 2055 maybe my handy device at `/dev/quantum/simultaneous_annealer` will magically break five rounds of 256-bit AES or whatever Microsoft use...
I'm sorry but the DRM on consoles is to (almost) everyone's benefit.
That same DRM has kept consoles from becoming a wild west for exploits and hacks. MS has the right idea, conservation should be on the creators, not a community hacking away to do what the creators could have easily...
While preserving binary “playability” is important, the rapidly increasing longevity of titles and fighting bit-rot is an equally large challenge for both the game and software industry.
A game is rarely just the binary execution itself, but often depends on an interconnected mesh of services and downstream partners - most of which are rarely set-up/committed to multi-decade durability, especially as the surface area of problem domain, and actors/threats have grown. For example, who’d willingly port a service that only worked on Centos 5, with SHA1 hashed TLS, or the CDN service that your game update assets were delivered from in 2007.
The techniques to isolate a game from its gradually crumbling ecosystem are an after-thought when priorities are survive to shipping. I’m not inferring this is right or wrong, just indicating that it is not even in the calculus on the path to shipping.
> For example, who’d willingly port a service that only worked on Centos 5, with SHA1 hashed TLS, or the CDN service that your game update assets were delivered from in 2007.
Hardcore fans of the game. Instead of making the game abandonware, one solution is to open source the whole server-side shebang and let the community sort it out themselves. If it's too difficult, at least there will be some sample source code that is known to interface with the game, so alternative server-side implementations can be built.
I'm really confused by this whole article given how DRM is the real barrier to emulation, and Spencer is clearly not advocating less DRM. This comes down to whether there's a profit motive by rights owners in ongoing support of a game. The outcome will be...what we already have. Games that have enough nostalgia power get adapted, like old Nintendo or Square Enix titles.
And sometimes profit motive is not enough. I worked adjacent to the games division at Disney, and in spite of customer appetite for adapting their 16bit classics for new consoles, there was not a lot of internal support for years...simply because no one saw it as a project to build a career on. Until you solve THAT problem, no company will throw more support behind emulation than they already do.
You don't need DRM when your customers don't actually get a copy of the game. Like Microsoft's new Game Pass Ultimate feature where you can subscribe and play XBox console games from Windows, streamed from the Cloud. This is what they are up to. You no longer need to own a console or purchase the games. I imagine they will be pushing a future where games are written primarily for these virtual consoles, and using the correct APIs your games will automatically look better as the virtual consoles become more powerful. As for preserving games, this is purely a call for publishers to permanently license their games for this service (ie. if you license music, make sure the licenses don't expire and are compatible with streaming game distribution).
GOG shifted focus from that a long, long time ago. Now they're a normal storefront that mostly deals in indies and occassionally releases older games - and the quality of those older releases is rarely anything above slapping dosbox and/or dgvoodoo on it. Speaking from personal experience many older games are better preserved by a certain fitness named piracy site, let alone freaking steam. Gog distant third.
I'd really like a GOG for console games. Give me a website where I can buy ROMs DRM free for old consoles legitimately. Maybe bundle in an emulator and a scan of the manual but let me do what I want with the ROM, whether that's create my own repro, run it on a flashcart, play it on my phone etc.
Focusing on the game itself is foolish, in todays cloud-ified world.
Microsoft Games for Windows Live is gone (2007 - ~2015), for example, taking down the hosting infrastructure for hundreds of games. Games I loved like Section 8 can be started & have some skirmish modes available. But the serving infrastructure is all missing, the core multiplayer expperience is not possible. My all-time favorite game ever, PC or mobile, is Titanfall Assault, a cute fast mobile game: another game that, without the vast wide cloud hosting infrastructure, is dead. All I have are some random cell-phone videos I decided to take.
There's some wild wild works every now and then. Return of Reckoning, for example, is a reverse engineered server for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, a shuttered MMO. I haven't logged in to find out, but I'm quite curious if any or all of the quest lines &c still work. If the various PvP modes work. https://www.returnofreckoning.com/
As for keeping games running, emulation? He's probably almost certaining meaning consoles. And yes, the people traditionally seen as pirates have long been doing the good thing, have been doing the careful work. But I also think of works like Proton & WINE, who similarly are better at running many old games than Windows often is.
Where we're headed sucks. Endless remakes of games. Oh yet another Skyrim you can purchase. Yet another Grand Theft Auto 3 you can purchase. I feel like trash for eventually having given in to Steam & having collected a huge library of games I don't really own but paid for, games that are non-transferable. The future is only getting worse, is only making us less empowered.
It's worth noting that online services for games built into Windows XP, ME, and 7 (Internet Checkers, etc.) also haven't been preserved [0]. While the games were rather simple IIRC, I'm surprised that there haven't been any server reimplementations for these games given that they were included in several versions of Windows.
With death of GFWL, GTA 4 multiplayer was shut down because it depended on GFLW, supposedly. Fallout 3, whose GFLW was removed in a patch a few weeks ago, had to be recompiled with Visual Studio 2019, breaking a lot of compatibility with what modding experts believe to be the entire foundation of mods (script extender). There is a lot of things wrong with depending on a server for local software that could work perfectly on their own. Hopefully people in the future look back at the current era and realize how backwards we thought, but as you describe, it will probably only get worse.
I also worry for Steam one day, even though they committed to making a plan for releasing titles if they were to ever shut down. How could they possibly honor that commitment when millions of players log in to download their terabytes of content the day they decide to shut down? Maybe they would do it in waves, but it won't be pretty.
Wow these are some great additional concerns to tack on. Some related stuff today, from John Carmack:
> I strongly encourage all game developers to take steps to archive their development environment so you are confident you can rebuild things years in the future, which does not automatically happen!
It seems like free software concepts are the only possible option here. Who is going to host the multiplayer servers? Who will distribute old patches? Who will remove their drm when their licensing agreements require it? Who will distribute the old drivers and the microcode blobs?
The users need source code access and the ability to modify those systems so they can do this themselves. They need the right to distribute it. Copyright protection needs to be shortened dramatically to make this possible. Imagine books with drm that nobody can open with updates that change the entire meaning that nobody will share, and no ability to reproduce the book if the papers start to fall apart. Books that nobody is able to read without connecting to some drm server, and where if you try to, you are committing a crime - it would be a loss on the scale of the famous ancient book burning events
Ie, we need to be allowed to own things in some sense again, not just license them under unintelligible and constantly changing and one sided, non negotiable terms
Not only gaming hardware and software, but all sorts of computing artifacts.
I moved to Ireland five years ago and I find it's impossibly hard to find and preserve a lot of interesting European computers because people took recycling so very seriously. It's sad, really.
And DEC had a large manufacturing plant in Galway. I expected to be able to find more interesting objects.
Well… if the vintage computing thing continues for a couple decades, it may be worth to invest in warehouses to store the computers after they become obsolete and before they become classic.
I follow a bunch of people on Twitter who have tried to do this at one point or another.
Money never seems to be the sticking point, the problem is (a) figuring out who actually owns the rights, and then (b) actually tracking that person (or company) down. If we're talking about games from the 80s and 90s, many of those rights changed hands a number of times and the people/companies involved have since died/dissolved/retired/disappeared off the radar.
Another very good reason for a shorter copyright expiration period.
If no one claims it or enforces copyright, then nothing is stopping anyone from attempting to work on it, but without the source, it'd be all reverse engineering or something to that affect.
Readit News
Microsoft's DRM on their latest xbox is insane – they actively consider the customer hostile at every available opportunity, have essentially always-online DRM, including for physical discs [1] and have had senior architects giving talks explaining how the "only" way to make a games console is to have a physically secure enclave in a chip with a truly unique root of trust, a very strict hardware watchdog, engineered resistance to under/overvoltage or clocking techniques and literally everything, including all buses and IO, encrypted to the nines. This is clearly incompatible with recording history (and also produces lots of errors like "this game isn't ready yet" – utter tosh. New Xbox consoles require an internet connection at least once to "activate" and play games – meaning any unsold will become e-waste once the servers shut down [2]).
I'm glad they're making the argument -- the preservation of our culture is hugely important, and emulation is a good way to do it, particularly if industry sponsored (I think it's a shame that, e.g. there isn't a good PS4 emulator yet) -- but there's a definite false narrative behind this.
[1] https://nichegamer.com/xbox-series-x-reportedly-has-always-o...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E983349p7Q
Well, funny you should mention it because this came out less than a month ago:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-10-28/pdf/2021-2...
> Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
> [..]
> 1. Computer Programs — Video Game Preservation
> SPN and LCA petitioned to renew the exemption for preservation of video games for which outside server support has been discontinued. No oppositions were filed against readoption of this exemption, and Consumer Reports submitted a comment in support of the renewal petition. The petition stated that libraries, archives, and museums continue to need the exemption to preserve and curate video games in playable form. For example, the petition highlighted Georgia Tech University Library’s Computing Lab, retroTECH, which has made a significant collection of recovered video game consoles accessible for research and teaching uses pursuant to the exemption. [..] This existing exemption, as well as the above exemption pertaining to software preservation, serve as the baseline in assessing whether to recommend any expansions in Class 14.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Tech
as if it was better in flight simulator dvd edition deluxe premium whatever. that thing gave me windows 98 floppy vibes and than the windows store basically failed to play it, even on completly newly installed windows. basically I helped a customers son to install and play his 130€ game..... support was clueless, you won't make this shit up, just google https://www.google.com/search?q=flight+simulator+windows+sto....
I mean you install the game with 10 DVD's !!!! 10 and that alone takes like over 1-2 hours. after that you NEED to keep dvd 1 inside the drive AND you of course need an internet connection and the store needs to work and and and, most often the store just fails to activate. (good news you can download it from the store and if you are lucky it will start)
What changed this generation? Game Pass? Maybe consumers becoming accustomed to streaming services and being held hostage by monthly fees?
It's quite curious.
Sounds bleak but likely to me.
Stuff got normalized.
There are difficulties in this with third party licensing, which can get quite complex, going beyond content licenses (such as a Star Wars game or licenses for music tracks) but including many third party technology licenses. Those kinds of issues don't come into play as much with things like movies and other media.
What Spencer is proposing makes a lot of sense but it's not really done from the perspective of rolling back DRM or sunsetting copyright protections. It's about encouraging publishers and developers to support old titles better for emulation, and making it into a business. They're not really thinking about archival considerations or opening up modding.
Particularly now, with the games industry entering into a mature phase, they're mostly tapped as it relates to new ideas and are looking for ways to make more money on the back catalog.
Deleted Comment
Who needs freedom if the dictator is always benevolent?
Deleted Comment
lumping competitive multiplayer games in with single-player games, then saying DRM is required is all nonsense.
anti-cheat measures and DRM are different things.
Hmm... not sure I can imagine preservation of video games being high on legislature's priorities.
In the UK (and I think most of the EU) there are similar national bodies to which one can apply for permission to break DRM -- e.g. in the UK there's a long and complex review process by the civil servants at the department for culture, media and sport [2]. Of course, none of these things actually break DRM. They just say that you can break DRM without getting in trouble.
Who knows, in 2055 maybe my handy device at `/dev/quantum/simultaneous_annealer` will magically break five rounds of 256-bit AES or whatever Microsoft use...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/26/18027200/video-game-drm-c...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technological-pro...
That same DRM has kept consoles from becoming a wild west for exploits and hacks. MS has the right idea, conservation should be on the creators, not a community hacking away to do what the creators could have easily...
Reverse-engineered implementations of server software (eg, https://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiimmfi) can only go so far.
A game is rarely just the binary execution itself, but often depends on an interconnected mesh of services and downstream partners - most of which are rarely set-up/committed to multi-decade durability, especially as the surface area of problem domain, and actors/threats have grown. For example, who’d willingly port a service that only worked on Centos 5, with SHA1 hashed TLS, or the CDN service that your game update assets were delivered from in 2007.
The techniques to isolate a game from its gradually crumbling ecosystem are an after-thought when priorities are survive to shipping. I’m not inferring this is right or wrong, just indicating that it is not even in the calculus on the path to shipping.
Hardcore fans of the game. Instead of making the game abandonware, one solution is to open source the whole server-side shebang and let the community sort it out themselves. If it's too difficult, at least there will be some sample source code that is known to interface with the game, so alternative server-side implementations can be built.
And sometimes profit motive is not enough. I worked adjacent to the games division at Disney, and in spite of customer appetite for adapting their 16bit classics for new consoles, there was not a lot of internal support for years...simply because no one saw it as a project to build a career on. Until you solve THAT problem, no company will throw more support behind emulation than they already do.
[1] gog.com
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com
[3] GOG: Preserving Gaming's Past & Future Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffngZOB1U2A
Microsoft Games for Windows Live is gone (2007 - ~2015), for example, taking down the hosting infrastructure for hundreds of games. Games I loved like Section 8 can be started & have some skirmish modes available. But the serving infrastructure is all missing, the core multiplayer expperience is not possible. My all-time favorite game ever, PC or mobile, is Titanfall Assault, a cute fast mobile game: another game that, without the vast wide cloud hosting infrastructure, is dead. All I have are some random cell-phone videos I decided to take.
There's some wild wild works every now and then. Return of Reckoning, for example, is a reverse engineered server for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, a shuttered MMO. I haven't logged in to find out, but I'm quite curious if any or all of the quest lines &c still work. If the various PvP modes work. https://www.returnofreckoning.com/
As for keeping games running, emulation? He's probably almost certaining meaning consoles. And yes, the people traditionally seen as pirates have long been doing the good thing, have been doing the careful work. But I also think of works like Proton & WINE, who similarly are better at running many old games than Windows often is.
Where we're headed sucks. Endless remakes of games. Oh yet another Skyrim you can purchase. Yet another Grand Theft Auto 3 you can purchase. I feel like trash for eventually having given in to Steam & having collected a huge library of games I don't really own but paid for, games that are non-transferable. The future is only getting worse, is only making us less empowered.
[0]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/farewe...
I also worry for Steam one day, even though they committed to making a plan for releasing titles if they were to ever shut down. How could they possibly honor that commitment when millions of players log in to download their terabytes of content the day they decide to shut down? Maybe they would do it in waves, but it won't be pretty.
> I strongly encourage all game developers to take steps to archive their development environment so you are confident you can rebuild things years in the future, which does not automatically happen!
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1461024415274176517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29256240 (0 comments)
The users need source code access and the ability to modify those systems so they can do this themselves. They need the right to distribute it. Copyright protection needs to be shortened dramatically to make this possible. Imagine books with drm that nobody can open with updates that change the entire meaning that nobody will share, and no ability to reproduce the book if the papers start to fall apart. Books that nobody is able to read without connecting to some drm server, and where if you try to, you are committing a crime - it would be a loss on the scale of the famous ancient book burning events
Ie, we need to be allowed to own things in some sense again, not just license them under unintelligible and constantly changing and one sided, non negotiable terms
I moved to Ireland five years ago and I find it's impossibly hard to find and preserve a lot of interesting European computers because people took recycling so very seriously. It's sad, really.
And DEC had a large manufacturing plant in Galway. I expected to be able to find more interesting objects.
source: experience in the E*Waste recycling business, and lost my shirt in it like many others
How much would it cost to buy the rights to an essentially now semi-zombie game, that may have been been popular a decade+ ago?
Say a wealthy benefactor wanted to do so strictly to open source and preserve a series, not create new titles.
Maybe for a series that stills sells copies here and there, but is well past it’s prime?
Say, the Empire Earth franchise?
Or something with relatively more recent releases, like Heroes of Might and Magic?
Would it be the millions? Would one be able to do so for individual titles within a series?
Money never seems to be the sticking point, the problem is (a) figuring out who actually owns the rights, and then (b) actually tracking that person (or company) down. If we're talking about games from the 80s and 90s, many of those rights changed hands a number of times and the people/companies involved have since died/dissolved/retired/disappeared off the radar.
Another very good reason for a shorter copyright expiration period.
If no one claims it or enforces copyright, then nothing is stopping anyone from attempting to work on it, but without the source, it'd be all reverse engineering or something to that affect.