What with all the layoffs across the games industry to compensate for rampant budgetary overspending in publishing, the reality behind keeping retro games within a paid walled garden is about charging new money for old rope and controlling the market to force gamers to play new games.
The specific quote is that “there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes.”
This explains why people like Jim Ryan hate retro games. They think these older games would cannibalize sales from newer releases, which is uniquely stupid.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
Aside from obvious stuff like, fuck IP and you aren’t entitled to customers, there’s also this:
Nobody makes these games anymore.
When I was a kid I loved Mega Man Battle Network. You know when they last released one? 2008.
I also loved Mega Man Legacy, last entry was in 2000.
They don’t make these anymore.
The closest we’ve seen is One Step From Eden and it’s a fast paced combat only roguelike from an indie studio. I still bought and enjoyed it, idk maybe if a major legacy studio would make games like the ones they don’t want to let people access instead of timed dopamine release triggering addiction machines designed to sell loot boxes they wouldn’t have to worry so much about “piracy.”
I think if copyright is going to exist you should have a requirement to make the copyrighted works available, otherwise you lose the copyright.
Copyright is supposed to be a temporary exclusive right to sell a work in order to profit from the production of the work. If you’re no longer selling it, you lose that right.
The audacity for these motherfuckers in executive positions to claim ownership of inaccessible media created by teams of workers who slaved out of love to produce these works, who did that work well before these executives got shuffled into this or that company, who failed to preserve access to the productive output of those workers who have no doubt long since been laid off or died of stress.
THESE GAMES ARENT THEIRS TO DICTATE TERMS OF ACCESS OVER. I DON’T CARE WHAT IP LAW SAYS. ITS ALL SP**KS (I meant it in the Stirner sense damnit) ANYWAY.