Video game preservation

[2] Unlike some examples of other forms of media like books, art and photography, and film, which antedate the mid-20th century and which can be preserved in a variety of formats that are not prohibited by more-recent intellectual property (IP) laws, video games typically require specialized and/or proprietary computer hardware and software to read and execute game software.

Both Nintendo and Sega are considered part of the few companies from this period known to have actively worked to backup and retain their games, even those that were cancelled or unreleased, over time.

[2] Code and assets can be lost during consolidation of companies or similar business activities; for example the assets for the 1997 Blade Runner game were lost when Electronic Arts had physically moved Westwood Studios following their acquisition, making it difficult for Night Dive Studios to attempt a remaster of the game around 2020.

[14] Preservation of server-based games can still leave legal issues around copyright as a concern to the original game owner; for example, Atlus filed a lawsuit in late 2021 against players that had recreated the servers and client software for the defunct Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, claiming the fan-run project "caused and will continue to cause irreparable damage to Atlus".

The DMCA make it a criminal offense to develop, sell, or use technologies that are designed to bypass anti-circumvention devices, including software digital rights management (DRM) used in various forms of media.

The Library of Congress is responsible to open submissions for specific and narrow exemptions from interested parties every three years, and determine which of those, if any, to grant.

Generally these create a virtual machine on newer computer systems that simulate the key processing units of the original hardware.

Former console hardware companies such as Sega and Atari have released emulation-based collections of their games for multiple systems.

This generally requires that the emulator be developed through reverse engineering in a clean room design, using only publicly released information about the system.

The aforementioned No One Lives Forever is considered such a case due to the lack of interest of the known likely-rights holders to affirm their ownership and work out licensing arrangements for rerelease.

[35] Because of the lack of availability of any legal retail route to purchase the case, these games may be offered at no cost by some websites, such as Home of the Underdogs, typically with necessary patches to remove copyright protection and updates to play on newer systems.

[36] Under the DMCA, the Copyright Office has made exceptions since 2015 for allowing museums and other archivists to bypass copyright issues to get such software into a playable state, a new exception seeks to allow this specifically for multiplayer games requiring servers, specifically massively-multiplayer online games.

Games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, which had difficult production issues before release, may leave unused assets to be found by players, and in the case of both these games, players have developed unofficial patches that work to complete the content, in some cases, exceeding expectations of the original content creators.

[41][42] Home of the Underdogs remains a database of early computer games after the site eliminated its abandonware offerings.

These systems act as a card catalog to track game releases across various regions, comparing software revisions and other data such as serial numbers and barcodes.

Source code for older games, before rights were strongly controlled by publishers, were often kept by the programmers themselves, and they may release those, or may be part of their estate after death.

While Scott was aware this was akin to industrial espionage, he still had published the source code for the games for purposes of preservation.

[44] John Hardie of the National Videogame Museum had gone dumpster diving through the trash of shutdown companies to recover materials for his collection.

More often, broken or non-functional versions of older hardware can be acquired to demonstrate that such systems existed, but fail to work as a software preservation tool.

The LoC had funded the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) from 2004 to 2010 to develop the ECHO DEPository ("Exploring Collaborations to Harvest Objects in a Digital Environment for Preservation") program.

The preservation effort will include not only the software but art, music, and other creative assets, as well as making considerations for playability in the long-term.

[60][61] The National Videogame Museum in the United States was born out of archival work performed by John Hardie who had run the Classic Gaming Expo.

Hardie exhibited the materials through traveling shows, and got interest from Randy Pitchford to establish a permanent home for the collection.

While some companies have donated materials to the Museum, Hardie stated it has been difficult in convincing other developers and publishers to contribute to the preservation efforts.

[68] Among other educational aspects The Strong institute in Rochester, New York, operates the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.

The society's president, French national Joseph Redon, estimates that they will only be able to preserve about 80% of Japanese computer games.

[74] This work lead to collaboration with UC Berkeley to petition for a 1201 DMCA exemption for the preservation of MMO games.

[83][84] GOG.com launched its own preservation program in November 2024 to assure select titles will always remain playable on modern computing hardware.

The company will have internal developers work with these titles to assure compatibility against newer hardware and software technologies.

[85] Companies like GOG.com and Night Dive Studios are recognized for helping to migrate older games to modern systems.