And to be able to preserve released Video Games, please go support the Stop Killing Games [1] movement and sign the European Citizen's initiative [2] if you're an EU citizen. There is 1 month left to bring the subject to a discussion, and 500k signatures are missing.
I think all art and media should be preserved. It's been clear for decades current copyright laws aren't fit for purpose. Fair use within books is for collection so it should be for digital.
Chabsff · 2h ago
What do copyright laws (which, don't get me wrong, have a whole kettle of issues for sure) have to do with this?
DRM is just a thing that authors choose to put into their media. The fact that they do it because enforcing copyright via legal channels is unrealistic is effectively incidental.
If anything, what is necessary to achieve the objective is putting limits on what authors are allowed to put inside of the media they are producing, which is a heck of a can of worms in of itself that I think zealous preservation advocates are a bit too eager to brush off.
ktallett · 2h ago
They allow companies a legal right to attack those who host for archival purposes. This makes it hard for people such as the internet archive to carry on. Archiving and collecting digital works of art and therefore the code behind it, should have the same as physical works.
DRM is a whole different kettle of fish that I agree also needs to be solved with all media forms.
xorcist · 2h ago
> What do copyright laws [...] have to do with [...] DRM
Ask the people who signed off on DMCA/EUCD.
thrance · 2h ago
Maybe I don't grasp the full picture, but the amount of patent trolls and media companies constantly attacking the Internet Archive should be enough to empirically prove that our current laws do a terrible job at ensuring media is preserved.
teroshan · 2h ago
While the legality of data preservation/sharing is a whole can of worms in itself, Stop Killing Games would at least address the technical hurdles of even being able to run the game after its end of life.
With always-on-DRMs, server-based multiplayer service games, and even things like exclusive streaming-only video games, even having access to the data required to run what you purchased can be literally impossible.
thrance · 51m ago
Yup, signed the initiative.
teroshan · 2h ago
> I think all art and media should be preserved
Completely agree with you, and so does Ross Scott, the principal proponent of the Stop Killing Games movement.
Unfortunately "Video Games are art" is still too controversial of a take so the focus is currently on the customer protection angle, as the road for this argument is already paved by existing EU legislature.
CaptainFever · 2h ago
That's true, but IIRC Stop Killing Games goes a bit further and aims for things like the release of server code when the servers get shut down.
teroshan · 2h ago
Not necessarily source code, but anything that would keep the game in a playable state after end of life. So any one of:
- a) patch to game the game playable in single-player mode locally
- b) binaries to self-host a server
would satisfy that requirement.
Note that the details of implementations of any law that would advance the cause are still to be discussed, which is the whole point of the petition.
More on what would be expected and some example use-cases are available in the FAQ of the Stop Killing Games official web-page: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
louthy · 2h ago
I have one that I worked on: Lunatik for Playstation 1 - This was a game I worked on in 1996/7 that ended up being cancelled by EIDOS after two years+ of effort. We had major problems trying to make this into a 3D Defender and that is why it mostly was canned.
There's another due in the next few weeks with any luck :)
jcmeyrignac · 4h ago
I worked for Ocean Software France at this moment.
Ocean Software stopped all development on Amiga and Atari ST, so there were a few games that we working on that were never released.
They wanted to focus on licenses, so all the other games were ditched
fgasking · 4h ago
Hi there, thankfully Snow Bros and Liquid Kids were recovered in recent years.
Do you by any chance know anything about these two titles which are still at large? Guerilla War and Adidas Golden Shoe?
Not sure if i'm allowed to keep posting links here.
jcmeyrignac · 4h ago
Yes, I programmed Snow Bros for the Atari ST. It was finished but never released. And no, I have no copy either.
When I worked for Cryo, I coded a game "Trashman" for the SNES. I still have a copy of the game but it's not finished.
fgasking · 4h ago
Sorry to hear that. I suspect that you've been asked that question a lot too about still having it by the Atari community! :) . Hopefully something will surface in the future via other means.
That sounds very interesting about Trashman and would love to learn more sometime if you were up for talking about the game? If so, please feel free to contact me via the contact form link on the website.
ludicrousdispla · 6h ago
>> Upon travelling to Ocean to explain the situation, Colin produced the 3 month demo again and stated that he’d be able to get the game back within short time. Sadly Ocean didn’t want to see it through any longer...
That's unfortunate as the second version likely would have been written much faster and have fewer lines of code.
JKCalhoun · 2h ago
Very cool. I wonder if these get picked up and completed eventually by some enthusiastic coders.
I collected a pair of disk images of games of my own "that weren't". I should (maybe this Fall) gather sources to create volume 3 ("The Color Games"). (I was posting them chronologically, starting with the B&W games, and kind of ran out of steam when I got to the color games. Fall seems to the the time of the year when I pursue these indoor projects that look backward.)
I also received permission to post sources for a pair of games that I co-worked-on with a friend in the U.K. — games that also were not. I should get that together this Fall too and push to The 'Hub.
[1] https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
[2] https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
DRM is just a thing that authors choose to put into their media. The fact that they do it because enforcing copyright via legal channels is unrealistic is effectively incidental.
If anything, what is necessary to achieve the objective is putting limits on what authors are allowed to put inside of the media they are producing, which is a heck of a can of worms in of itself that I think zealous preservation advocates are a bit too eager to brush off.
DRM is a whole different kettle of fish that I agree also needs to be solved with all media forms.
Ask the people who signed off on DMCA/EUCD.
With always-on-DRMs, server-based multiplayer service games, and even things like exclusive streaming-only video games, even having access to the data required to run what you purchased can be literally impossible.
Completely agree with you, and so does Ross Scott, the principal proponent of the Stop Killing Games movement.
Unfortunately "Video Games are art" is still too controversial of a take so the focus is currently on the customer protection angle, as the road for this argument is already paved by existing EU legislature.
- a) patch to game the game playable in single-player mode locally
- b) binaries to self-host a server
would satisfy that requirement.
Note that the details of implementations of any law that would advance the cause are still to be discussed, which is the whole point of the petition.
More on what would be expected and some example use-cases are available in the FAQ of the Stop Killing Games official web-page: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
[1] My github with a 'playable' early demo: https://github.com/louthy/lunatik-psx
[2] Video of the gameplay from the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4UcxKkC14o
[3] Write-up by unseen64.net: https://www.unseen64.net/2020/11/16/lunatik-pure-entertainme...
[4] My comment on unseen64.net about what happened: https://www.unseen64.net/2020/11/16/lunatik-pure-entertainme...
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/parasol-stars/
We were grateful though to recover our other holy grail: https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/daffy-duck/
There's another due in the next few weeks with any luck :)
Do you by any chance know anything about these two titles which are still at large? Guerilla War and Adidas Golden Shoe?
Not sure if i'm allowed to keep posting links here.
That sounds very interesting about Trashman and would love to learn more sometime if you were up for talking about the game? If so, please feel free to contact me via the contact form link on the website.
That's unfortunate as the second version likely would have been written much faster and have fewer lines of code.
I collected a pair of disk images of games of my own "that weren't". I should (maybe this Fall) gather sources to create volume 3 ("The Color Games"). (I was posting them chronologically, starting with the B&W games, and kind of ran out of steam when I got to the color games. Fall seems to the the time of the year when I pursue these indoor projects that look backward.)
I also received permission to post sources for a pair of games that I co-worked-on with a friend in the U.K. — games that also were not. I should get that together this Fall too and push to The 'Hub.
https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-UnfinishedTa...
https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-UnfinishedTa...
I love the B&W Mac artwork as well. Will try and reply sometime this afternoon.