Pirates accidentally preserving gaming history?

[DigitalAtlas]

To explain the confusing thread title, let's look at some quick facts:

>Original Xbox Live is down.

>Original Xbox games' multiplayer aspect is forever lost to the generations.

>Presumably, this will eventually happen to the 360's servers

Now, grasp for a second that the XBL Marketplace will one day be closed down by choice. What happens to all those games you bought but deleted for Hard Drive space? What happens to all those games you never had a chance to buy? What happens to DLC that holds crucial parts of a game's story? All of it, goes away.

Twenty years from now, there will be game enthusiasts, similar to you and me, looking at games of the past. What happens when they reach the PS360 age? Games with full multi-player will be paper weights. The reason people love Halo and CoD will be untouchable. Arcade games won't be able to be touched. Little Davie will miss out of Braid and Splosion Man. That should be a crime.

Ironically, it is the pirates who are preserving a lot of this. DLC and arcade titles are uploaded somewhere on the internet every day. One day, modded consoles will be the only way to play Costume Quest. And then little Davie will be thankful that pirates existed all those years ago.

Maybe Sony and developers should let pirates be, eh?

 

[Actual]

Well it goes back a lot further than XBox, there's so many old games which you just can't buy anymore, but the torrents live on.

There's sadly no royal library of games to preserve the history and evolution of the medium, there's only a huge community of pirates, sharers, and fans.

 

[Nocta-Aeterna]

Wouldn't releasing hard copies of compilations of these downloadable games and DLC solve this problem?

 

[Chibini]

They will just be rereleased throughout the ages. Evil businessman and corporations will cynically take our money again and again. The worst part is that we'll probably never call BS on it.

 

[TheBlitz]

Maybe Sony and developers should let pirates be, eh?

I'm sure if any of the big 3 allowed this then they'd find a way to charge you for it (we're talking in the 20 years or so you're talking about.)

That said I agree that piracy should, hopefully, keep these all alive in the future, much akin to how you can still play games from the NES/PSX and so on via emulation. However, with backward compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised if the next generations of consoles (talking about those ones coming out in 2020/30) will support 360/PS3 games. Hell, they may even be called "classics" and be downloadable again via the in-system stores of the time.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

This is actually one aspect of piracy that is very interesting to say the least...

I think we do need a huge Vault for gaming, something straight out of Fallout that includes every game ever released ever.

Or y'know, more people could buy from GOG.com, that could work too.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Maybe Sony and developers should let pirates be, eh?

I'm sure if any of the big 3 allowed this then they'd find a way to charge you for it (we're talking in the 20 years or so you're talking about.)

That said I agree that piracy should, hopefully, keep these all alive in the future, much akin to how you can still play games from the NES/PSX and so on via emulation. However, with backward compatibility, I wouldn't be surprised if the next generations of consoles (talking about those ones coming out in 2020/30) will support 360/PS3 games. Hell, they may even be called "classics" and be downloadable again via the in-system stores of the time.

VC much?

Honestly, I only meant that firmware updates exist to fight pirates.

 

[Catchy Slogan]

Gog.com seem to be doing pretty well.

 

[McPulse]

many of the "lost" episodes of Dr Who were recovered and compiled by pirates.

Absolutely, we're already reaping the benefits of that investment. Now all we need is for the inventor of time Travel to nip back and grab a few episodes ere and there from the Fist and Second Doctors...

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Gog.com seem to be doing pretty well.

Except that they only do PC games, from what I've seen in their catalogue. I mean, that's fine and all. But whose to preserve PSWii60 games? Especially their digital counterparts?

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

There's a difference between posting an emulated version of some decades old adventure game hardly anyone remembers and leaking full versions of games that have barely been released for a week.

If when we have reached the point where the scenario you're describing has come to pass pirates start to release versions of the old games, like some do nowadays for Pokemon Blue, Monkey's Island, Ultima, Zorc etc, then that's okay. The old games continue to get circulation while the new games take up the limelight. That happens nowadays and no one bats an eyelid.

What most pirates do is release copies of games which have barely been out for any time, or are still protected and supported by the company that made them. Communities release versions of the Ultima series which have been adapted to run on modern computers and EA doesn't bother with them, they go after the pirates who are releasing Mass Effect illegally.

You can't preserve history until it's actually become part of gaming's past. Halo, while not the original incarnation, is still played online today, so it's not history, it's present. Only when it is no longer supported in any form will it become potentially okay for pirates to start 'preserving' it.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

There's a difference between posting an emulated version of some decades old adventure game hardly anyone remembers and leaking full versions of games that have barely been released for a week.

If when we have reached the point where the scenario you're describing has come to pass pirates start to release versions of the old games, like some do nowadays for Pokemon Blue, Monkey's Island, Ultima, Zorc etc, then that's okay. The old games continue to get circulation while the new games take up the limelight. That happens nowadays and no one bats an eyelid.

What most pirates do is release copies of games which have barely been out for any time, or are still protected and supported by the company that made them. Communities release versions of the Ultima series which have been adapted to run on modern computers and EA doesn't bother with them, they go after the pirates who are releasing Mass Effect illegally.

You can't preserve history until it's actually become part of gaming's past. Halo, while not the original incarnation, is still played online today, so it's not history, it's present. Only when it is no longer supported in any form will it become potentially okay for pirates to start 'preserving' it.

Except if they wait till the servers are closed, we lose the arcade titles. Yep, they'll be history then, and they'll be history in the Smithsonian exhibit as well as our memories, but to the next generation? They'll be non-existent.

Making back-ups now of DLC and Arcade titles now is the only way to do it.

While I do not support piracy of current games, getting backups up on the net as soon as possible is really the only counter to time for the digital world.

If someone pirates a game to demo it, I have no issue. Demo's should exist for every game. But if they legitimately pirate something they like and spend a lot of time on, then it turns into a crime against the industry they claim to love.

Then again, pirates who play their game still get their stats logged in. Meaning, even if we all pirated DNF and played it for almost a hundred hours, it would still have a likely chance at a sequel even though it hardly made any money.

I suppose the question here is: Do the ends justify the means? In which case, I say that they do. Developers and publishers do not suffer too greatly from the select few who do pirate while history is preserved for all eternity.

I say that's a fair trade for Stacking, Braid, and Cave Story Wii to be playable to all generations.

 

[CrashBang]

Wouldn't releasing hard copies of compilations of these downloadable games and DLC solve this problem?

And this is why I prefer hard copies of everything. You can lose data, run out of hard drive space, but you can always find more shelf space

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Wouldn't releasing hard copies of compilations of these downloadable games and DLC solve this problem?

And this is why I prefer hard copies of everything. You can lose data, run out of hard drive space, but you can always find more shelf space

A. Fucking. Men.

I almost hate that games can be released digitally due to how we can all lose our games at any second for ticking off the wrong people on the wrong day. But they can't take away the cases on my shelves!

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

They will just release hard copies of the games as compilations. There is also already emulators on the PC as well. In fact you can game all the way up to the last gen with emulators although they haven't worked out all the kinks yet with the last gen. This is what emulators and these compilations are for.

 

[Popido]

I wouldnt say that its all accidentally.

The pirates sharing spirit makes them preserve the seeds for the next generation of pirates, which will then preserve it to the next, and the next, and the....

 

[NerfedFalcon]

This is actually one aspect of piracy that is very interesting to say the least...

I think we do need a huge Vault for gaming, something straight out of Fallout that includes every game ever released ever.

Or y'know, more people could buy from GOG.com, that could work too.

Quoted for truth.

I don't think this will ever really be an issue. What with the constant remakes and upgrades the industry is obsessed with.

Also quoted, because there is one game that I can assure you will never be remade or rerelased until Nintendo of America decides to pull their heads out of their arses: Earthbound.

And we will never get an official port of Mother 3, either. In fact, the only (current) way for people who don't know any Japanese to experience Mother 3 is through downloading the game. I swear to whichever god, genuine or fictional, will take me at my word, Nintendo...
~~~
Edit:

There's a difference between posting an emulated version of some decades old adventure game hardly anyone remembers and leaking full versions of games that have barely been released for a week.

If when we have reached the point where the scenario you're describing has come to pass pirates start to release versions of the old games, like some do nowadays for Pokemon Blue, Monkey's Island, Ultima, Zorc etc, then that's okay. The old games continue to get circulation while the new games take up the limelight. That happens nowadays and no one bats an eyelid.

What most pirates do is release copies of games which have barely been out for any time, or are still protected and supported by the company that made them. Communities release versions of the Ultima series which have been adapted to run on modern computers and EA doesn't bother with them, they go after the pirates who are releasing Mass Effect illegally.

You can't preserve history until it's actually become part of gaming's past. Halo, while not the original incarnation, is still played online today, so it's not history, it's present. Only when it is no longer supported in any form will it become potentially okay for pirates to start 'preserving' it.

Doubly quoted for truth.