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.
What are the precautions these days? Is VPN enough?
That, and knowing how to use it, is mostly what I had in mind. But it’s also worth just being aware of bad torrents. If you are downloading a full PS1 collection and it’s 14MB and has a .exe in it… that kind of thing.