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

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

I'd say it's preservation. What GOG does isn't what Nightdive Studio
does. They're fixing bugs and adding code to do things like emulate
CD audio. (Which I believe works by intercepting Windows CD audio API
calls and playing MP3s instead.) Most of of what they do are the same
things publishers do in the period after the game's release when they
still think it's a viable product.

Perserving physical works often means adding things that weren't
originally there. An old painting might have new paint added where the
old paint flaked off. An old building might have broken bricks replaced
and remortered.

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.

Sure, but whole point of "The GOG Preservation Program" is that they're promising to continue to update these games to be compatible with new
systems. Otherwise it's nothing new, just explicitly labeling what
games GOG has already patched so they work on modern PCs.

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.

Well, the idea here is that you'd just be able to buy it on GOG.com
like you do now. Obviously, there's no guarantee that GOG will still
be around in 2045, but GOG's work in making these games playable today
doesn't in make it any harder for these games to be playable in 2045.
Worst case for anyone trying to make these games playable in 2045 is that
have to start with the game as originally released, with it's original copyrights, as if GOG never existed.

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'.

GOG is bolstering its bottom line by perserving old games. Which is
great, because its sustainable. Well, hopefully at least, as GOG isn't
raking in the cash like Steam. They're hovering somewhere around the
break even point, so it may not turn out to be sustainable in the long
or even medium term . Still it's more sustainable than spending their
limited resources on open source emulators and keeping Archive.org afloat.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

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On Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:52:15 -0500, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

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'.

I think we're overthinking this. There are also forensic preservation
projects such as eXo and MESS. It's true that neither has gotten Win95+
games to work properly (eXo won't for his own reasons and MESS is too
slow and only goes as far as running Win95), but many of the files are
there. If GOG provides the gameplay on modern hardware, we have complete preservation.

GOG is definitely a part of the preservation effort. We're making perfect
the enemy of the good here.

In addition, there are enough archivists out there preserving forensic CD images (I do this myself but not exhaustively) that the only real problem
is long-term storage rot, not the ability to preserve the cultural data.

Getting it to run on period hardware often needs no-cd cracks, though.
Copy protection schemes have thrown the most serious wrench into
preservation, as publishers were warned. Publishers also didn't care.

Preservationists do their best with this. I believe there is Library of Congress copyright advice that it is legal to crack obsolete protections
for preservation purposes as "Fair Use." There is no advice on what
constitutes a lawful preservation project though.

--
Zag

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had
spent more time alone with my computer.' ~Dan(i) Bunten

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