They do not even want to be in control of retro games to be able to sell them indefinitely.
With the exception of certain, wildly popular games they know they can still charge a high price for, they do not want the vast majority of retro games to be legally available at all.
Further, with books, film, other kinds of art… a legal carve out exception does exist for the purposes of academic study and research.
Basically, accredited academic institutions have the ability to rent those out to students, people writing studies on media and cultural history.
Video games? As of this ruling, nope, they are special, studying the history of video games functionally requires breaking the law.
They just get shoved into the vault, never to be seen again, by anyone, ever.
Except that that is largely not even true.
87% of games made before 2010 are completely commercially unavailable.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/14/23792586/classic-game-preservation-video-game-history-foundation-esa
They do not even want to be in control of retro games to be able to sell them indefinitely.
With the exception of certain, wildly popular games they know they can still charge a high price for, they do not want the vast majority of retro games to be legally available at all.
Further, with books, film, other kinds of art… a legal carve out exception does exist for the purposes of academic study and research.
Basically, accredited academic institutions have the ability to rent those out to students, people writing studies on media and cultural history.
Video games? As of this ruling, nope, they are special, studying the history of video games functionally requires breaking the law.
They just get shoved into the vault, never to be seen again, by anyone, ever.
This reminds me that 90% of silent movies are lost forever because there was no effort to preserve them at the time.
If it wasn’t for people going as far deliding chips and breaking encryption, a good chunk of gaming history would be lost by now.