Video Games Preservation
While it is still young, the video game industry is rich with history. There are many efforts underway that seek to preserve the industry’s history. Efforts to preserve video games include a community project known as “BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint” that has been preserving web games, archival work performed by the Internet Archive, the Video Game History Foundation’s Video Game Source Project, and MAME, a hardware emulation framework. Despite the existence of these projects, difficulties persist in preserving video games.
BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint was started in January of 2018 after Adobe had announced that Adobe Flash would no longer be supported at the end of 2020 (Zweizen). Adobe worked on a roadmap collaborating with major technology partners to discontinue Flash. Adobe will stop providing security updates for and will no longer distribute Flash on December 31st, 2020 (Adobe.com). Mozilla, Microsoft, and Google will be removing support for Flash from their web browsers by the end of 2020 or in early 2021 (Gopinath; MDN Web Docs; The Chromium Projects). In early 2021, operating system updates will become available that will remove Flash from Windows (Gopinath). The initial goal of BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint had been to collect and preserve as many games running on Adobe Flash as possible. Despite this, BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint has since expanded its preservation efforts to include other web technologies such as Adobe Shockwave, Unity Web Player, and Microsoft Silverlight. As of version 8.1, BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint includes over 59,000 games (“Frequently Asked Questions”).
Jason Scott, curator of software at the Internet Archive, has made thousands of games for MS-DOS playable in a web browser (Axon). Scott has also made hundreds of console games made for the Colecovision, the Magnavox Odyssey2, and the Bally Astrocade available to play in a web browser through the Internet Archive (Orland, “Internet Archive Releases”). In addition to the console and MS-DOS games, hundreds of arcade games are currently playable from within a web browser on the Internet Archive (Orland, “Internet Archive Offers”). The games are played in emulators embedded into the Internet Archive. An emulator is software that emulates the functions of the hardware that the video games had originally run on.
In May 2020, librarian Phil Salvador had written an in-depth article on SimRefinery, a then-lost MS-DOS game created by video game developer Maxis that had been designed for employees at energy company Chevron’s Richmond, California plant. The game was a product of Maxis’s short-lived Maxis Business Simulations division. Technology news site Ars Technica had published a piece about Salvador’s article and in the following weeks, an Ars Technica commenter had posted a photograph of a floppy disk in their possession containing a prototype version of SimRefinery. The commentor had uploaded SimRefinery to the Internet Archive to soon request for it to be taken down. The Internet Archive had complied with the user’s request. When SimRefinery had been taken down from the Internet Archive, it had received over 20,000 downloads (Machkovech).
The Video Game History Foundation seeks to preserve video game source through the Video Game Source Project. The Video Game History Foundation describes source as “the raw materials used in its production, including but not limited to source code, art, documentation, and records of correspondence.” (Cifaldi). Video game source code is frequently closely guarded, no matter the age of the code. Similar to how tapes in the television industry were destroyed in the past, a great amount of video game source code no longer exists.
MAME, which originally stood for “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator,” is a preservation project which seeks to run software as accurately as possible by emulating the functions of the hardware that originally ran the software. The original focus of MAME was on arcade games; however, MAME has since drastically expanded in scope. MESS, which stood for “Multi Emulator Super System,” and which was another project by the MAME development team, has become a part of MAME. As a result of this, MAME now has a focus that includes computers, calculators, and game consoles (MAME). Recent developments in the MAME project have been efforts to get plug and play TV games from the 2000s as well as Nintendo’s Game and Watch LCD display games from the 1980s running properly in MAME.
In 2018, Nintendo sued various websites hosting digital copies of its video games. These digital copies are known as “ROMs,” or “ISOs,” when they originate from optical discs. Nintendo had won the lawsuit and several well-known websites hosting these ROMs and ISOs were brought down or as a result of the lawsuit, websites hosting these games had stopped distributing their ROMs and ISOs for Nintendo consoles. In October 2018, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was altered by the U.S. Copyright Office to “allow archivists and historians to use ROMs.” (Mozuch).
The changing landscape of the video game industry is making it more difficult to preserve video games. Digital distribution and online services are now commonplace. Preserving the contents of a video game cartridge from the 1980s or 1990s is much easier than preserving a video game that is distributed digitally and that receives frequent downloaded updates. Many video games are also currently reliant on online services. After those online services cease, parts of the games may no longer exist or the games may no longer be playable at all (Orland, “The Quest”). On March 1st, 2016, the servers for video game publisher EA’s single-player Darkspore had been shut down. Darkspore had required a constant broadband Internet connection as a form of digital rights management. Thus, when the servers were shut down, Darkspore was no longer playable. There are currently efforts to get Darkspore playable offline by using a local server, but this project, known as “Resurrection Capsule,” is not yet complete.
In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a docket before the United States Library of Congress requesting an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that would allow the right “for users who wish to modify lawfully acquired copies of computer programs for the purpose of continuing to play videogames that are no longer supported by the developer, and that require communication with a server.” (Library of Congress). The Electronic Frontier Foundation was granted this exemption, but only for games that are completely unplayable due to server operation ceasing (McSherry, et al.).
In September 2017, Atlus, a video game developer owned by Sega, had sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to Patreon in an attempt to have the successful patron campaign for the RPCS3 PlayStation 3 emulator removed from the Patreon platform. This takedown notice was sent close to the release date of Atlus’s Persona 5. In the wake of this DMCA takedown notice, the RPCS3 development team had removed all references to Persona 5 from its campaign page and its project’s website (Wowro).
Since the inception of the video game industry, video game preservation efforts have been varied. However, as seen with Darkspore, Nintendo’s lawsuit against sites hosting ROMs, and Sega’s DMCA takedown notice sent to Patreon, no consensus has been reached by the industry. Standardization norms and best practices do not yet exist. Video game companies want to safeguard their products against piracy and want to preserve their ability to republish games with enhancements and new features. Many efforts to preserve video games are undertaken by individuals or organized groups of individuals, often to the dislike of companies.
Works Cited
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Axon, Samuel. “Thousands of DOS Games Have Been Added to the Internet Archive.” Ars Technica. 14 Oct. 2019, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/thousands-of-dos-games-have-been-added-to-the-internet-archive/.
Booker, Logan. “Come March, You’ll Never Be Able to Play Darkspore Again.” Kotaku Australia. 27 Feb. 2016, https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/02/come-march-youll-never-be-able-to-play-darkspore-again/.
Cifaldi, Frank. Introducing the Video Game Source Project: The Ability to Study Video Game Source Material is Rare: We’re Changing That. Video Game History Foundation, 15 Oct. 2020, https://gamehistory.org/video-game-source-project/
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Gopinath, Sucithra. Update on Adobe Flash Player End of Support. Microsoft, 04 September 2020, https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2020/09/04/update-adobe-flash-end-support/
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McSherry, et al. “Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 27 October 2015, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-librarian-congress-renews-and-expands-protections-fair-uses.
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Orland, Kyle. “Internet Archive Offers 900 Classic Arcade Games for Browser-Based Play.” Ars Technica, 04 Nov. 2014, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/internet-archive-offers-900-classic-arcade-games-for-browser-based-play/.
Orland, Kyle. “Internet Archive Releases Hundreds of Classic Game Console ROMs.” Ars Technica, 27 Dec. 2013, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/internet-archive-releases-hundreds-of-classic-game-console-roms/.
Orland, Kyle. “The Quest to Save Today’s Gaming History from Being Lost Forever.” Ars Technica, 02 June 2015, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/the-quest-to-save-todays-gaming-history-from-being-lost-forever/.
“Resurrection-Capsule.” Resurrection-Capsule, 20 Sept. 2020, https://github.com/vitor251093/resurrection-capsule.
The Chromium Projects. Flash Roadmap. The Chromium Projects, https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap
Wawro, Alex. “Atlus Tries, Fails to Take Down Patreon for PS3 Emulator Via DMCA.” Gamasutra, 26 Sept. 2017, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/306566/Atlus_tries_fails_to_take_down_Patreon_for_PS3_emulator_via_DMCA.php.
Zwiezen, Zack. “Over 36,000 Flash Games Have Been Saved and Are Now Playable Offline.” Kotaku, 02 Feb. 2020, https://kotaku.com/over-36-000-flash-games-have-been-saved-and-are-now-pla-1841389493.
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