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From: candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: GOG Preserves Old Games... but do they?
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:40:05 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: the-candyden-of-code
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 16:52 this Tuesday (GMT):
>
> 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


Code ownership in general is a nightmare..
-- 
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom