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NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:52:38 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: GOG Preserves Old Games... but do they?
Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:52:15 -0500
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GOG recently announced* a launch of it's "Good Old Games Preservation
Program", saying that games that are part of the program they will
"commit our own resources to maintaining its compatibility with modern
and future systems." Yay! Who could argue against that? An
increasingly large number of games (they quote '87% of games created
before 2010' are inaccessible). But...

GOG's idea of preservation is focused on rejiggering the code to work
on modern PCs so they can sell it, and I have to wonder... if you
change the game, is it really preserving it? It's one thing if you
take the original game and containerize it in DOSBox or some sort of
virtualization, but GOG --and partners like Nightdive Studios-- more
often create new code entirely. 

Now, on the one hand... does it really matter? However they do it, it
gets it so we can play the old games again; that's all that matters.
right?. Except that NEW code has a expiration date too; stuff that
runs on Windows64 will one day be as obsolete and hard to run as C64
assembly code. 

Worse, this new code gets new copyright... and that only makes the IP
rights of these titles even more complicated. In 2045, people wanting
to update (and play) these 'preserved' titles will have yet another
hoop to leap through as they have to navigate the maze of ownership
for those old games.

Better, I think, were GOG to focus not on individual games so much as
pouring its resources into groups that create emulators; the DOSBox
team, or the guys who're building PCSX2, or WinEmu, or MAME. Or even
poor beleaguered Archive.org! It could help create a solid open-source
framework -with a rich patron to help fend off the litigious companies
opposed to emulation

             [cough cough Nintendo cough cough]

                             and give it a legitimacy it has long
needed. 

But that's not what GOG is doing. Right now all GOG is doing is
bolstering its own bottom line. Which is fine for a company, but
hardly deserves the praise that's getting heaped on it as a 'preserver
of old games'. 






* here's the announcement
https://www.gog.com/news/welcome_to_the_gog_preservation_program_making_games_live_forever