Comment by belthesar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belthesar | Hacker News Reader

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Something key to this is that games released on Steam typically (though not always) include a Steam-provided library to handle things like achievements, networking, VoIP, and potentially also the overlay (definitely not 100% on this, especially in the context of a macOS target). If the methods this library uses fail due to a lack of 32-bit support for the libraries on their side, the game could fail to run properly.

In addition to this, when Steam detects that a game in your library is not supported on the target platform, the UI prevents you from downloading it. It's certainly possible to use steamcmd, Steam's CLI client to download an entitlement regardless of whether the platform supports it or not, but the game will certainly not be easily accessible even if it would run unmodified. This effectively relegates the access and hopeful functional use of these classic Mac OS X games to digital archivists, developers and/or publishers willing and capable of re-releasing the game for the new target, and/or a third party providing compatibility shims to allow the game to work, whether official or third party.

macOS's player base has always been in the basement. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Apple hasn't made a particular welcoming environment for games on their hardware save for mobile, and that has more to do with the proliferation of smartphones being the new hot place to release software than game developers working hard to make games available. So, the likelihood of there being a plethora of titles released on Steam for macOS that will become unplayable is low, since I have to imagine most of these releases are available for other platforms. However, because of the lack of attention, there's also a fair likelihood that many titles that were released for Mac on Steam probably will be forgotten. As it stands today, 87% of classic video games just aren't available at all any more[0], based on a study by the Video Games History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network.

[0] https://gamehistory.org/87percent/

> As it stands today, 87% of classic video games just aren't available at all any more[0], based on a study by the Video Games History Foundation

Isn't emulation a much better approach for that purpose? It's always been unrealistic keeping functional native systems around forever, whether that's game consoles or computer platforms including OSes and drivers etc.

> macOS's player base has always been in the basement.

Unfortunately I agree. There seems to be a recent initiative by Apple to promote macOS gaming (most notably through the game porting kit, but also via pretty good native gamepad support, and I've recently noticed a "game performance mode" – very unlike Apple!).

That said, I'm not counting on Apple's commitment regarding long-term binary compatibility – it's clearly not a priority for iOS either.

> Isn't emulation a much better approach for that purpose? It's always been unrealistic keeping functional native systems around forever, whether that's game consoles or computer platforms including OSes and drivers etc.

This is an opinion I used to hold, so I definitely understand where this comes from. As I've learned more however, I now understand why this is not always a reasonable ask. Depending on the state of the emulator, the level of accuracy to the underlying hardware is pretty broad. Accuracy's not an outright killer of playability - most popular emulators for every console do some trade of accuracy for efficiency. A lack of accuracy however leads to a lack of compatibility. This might mean some titles might run with graphical or audio glitches, some might run with game breaking bugs that make a title unplayable. For the casual game enjoyer though, the bar for "good enough" is pretty low that people thoroughly enjoyed the "Classic" reproduction consoles that were all the rage back in the late 2010's despite them being far from perfect. However, this doesn't solve the key problem that will come with this change, which is availability.

In order to have a title to emulate or otherwise shim into running, you need to be able to download it. While plenty of titles have drifted into abandonware collections or various other sites for you to access, it's certainly gray area territory. Digital archivists will need to get access to the software to preserve it. In the days of classic cartridge based consoles, this meant buying every game you could get your hands on and getting it in the hands of someone with the ability to dump the ROM. With storefronts like Steam though, there is no secondary market to do that on the cheap, and no physical media many games that released exclusively through this Steam, or even the App Store, to be archived outside of this fashion.

You do make a good point though regarding keeping old hardware running. While sometimes you can still find boxes of old components to replace, the amount of supply will dwindle to inexistence. The Super Nintendo speedrunning community is desperate to find replacement components for the ceramic oscillator used for audio timing on the console, as the cheaper component in the BOM is degrading over use and time, causing inaccurate RNG generation and instability.

All this to say, it's reasonably hard to maintain compatibility and playability of old software, and the quality of that compatible experience isn't consistent. I'd love it if game platform developers put more effort into preservation efforts, whether that be first-part production of compatibility shims for newer consoles to play older titles, or an openness to publish technical documentation for platforms to make preservation more feasible by communities. And most importantly, a willingness to offer access to titles from libraries and collections digitally after their money making days are done.

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