Games Preservation Is Hard and Sometimes Involves Private Detectives | Hacker News Reader

Games Preservation Is Hard and Sometimes Involves Private Detectives

kotaku.com

95 pointsPaulHoule42 comments

The reality is Valve often does a better job at preservation than GoG. They know that a game released on Steam in 2009 that hasn't received any updates will never be updated to support things like modern controllers, which is why they wrote Steam Input.

Even then, there's so many other things that can go wrong with games. With DOS-era titles, DOSBox does a pretty fantastic job, as long as you use a fork with useful features like DOSBox-X. With Windows titles the possibilities to preserve games is almost endless thanks to hooking. I've spent the past few years compiling a personal archive of games to get them in a playable state. For me, this often involves support for modern controllers and _at least_ natively rendering at a higher resolution. Compatibility shims like dgVoodoo make it easy to bump up the rendering resolution of a game, while preserving aspect ratio for games that may only support 4:3.

Graphics are basically solved with projects like dgVoodoo, and there's numerous dinput -> xinput solutions out there, but that's rarely the whole picture. WinSock could really benefit from a wrapper that tunnels traffic over the internet (VPNs are really like using a steam roller to drive a nail). Registry API calls really could be redirected to read from config files instead of relying on the weird bastardization of WOW64 and the VirtualStore. Hell, even file access could be redirected so we can contain all of a game's files.

I'm actually working towards implementing the latter two as a way to preserve the functionality of installers and allow their reimplementation through something like PowerShell.

Not just Steam Input, they maintain SDL and strongly encourage everyone to dynamically link it in order to keep older games going.

> The reality is Valve often does a better job at preservation than GoG.

They're solving very different problems: executing old games well that they still have the right to distribute vs reinstating access to games that have left circulation entirely (except perhaps abandonware sites). Neither of these is better or worse than the other.

I think my point might have not come across well. Valve/Steam tends to take a hands-off approach, let devs publish how they want and allow users to bring non-Steam games into their fold. GoG tends to modify game files to reach compatibility and has in a few cases completely broken or removed functionality from a game.

>The reality is Valve often does a better job at preservation than GoG

My take on this is that GoG does exactly what I want, let me download offline installers and store them away myself.

Which makes it better at preservation than Steam.

I'm thankful for all the work steam does, including letting you continue to play games that were ripped off the storefront if you own them. I'm just not sure I trust steam in the long term.

On that same note its hard to trust GoG in the long term because they aren't profiting enough off their storefront, hence me keeping all of their offline installers on my own drives after buying a game. (and patch files!)

It gets depressing thinking about how bad we are at game preservation even with all the commercial and hobbyist efforts. I already have too many games piled up with a backlog of "maybe when I get a vacation/retire I can finally get around to these" that won't even be accessible in 30 years.

Installers are nice but they're not that much better than zipping up the game's folder from steam.

> It gets depressing thinking about how bad we are at game preservation

Preservation in general.

Unlike previous eras we just don't seem to care for the future.

Except for the DRM part where launching some games from their executable opens Steam whether you want it or not.

GOG has no such dickery

This only applies if the developer has implemented Steamworks. You can release a game on Steam without implementing it.

Ah. Some games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Caves of Qud run directly, but can they be copied to other computers that don’t have Steam?

You can check PCGamingWiki. They have a pretty good list of games that are DRM free on Steam.

I wonder how many games are impossible to preserve because of the copyright system and apathy on the part of rights-holders.

As an example: I look forward to the day when the license to the "No One Lives Forever"[0] franchise gets sorted out. Through acquisitions and divestitures the ownership to the rights for the game and its sequel have been "lost".

I suppose eventually it'll fall into the public domain, society will collapse, or the heat death of the universe will occur. At least one of those is an eventuality, I think.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Operative:_No_One_Lives_Fo...

Japan has a scheme for orphaned games where if you can prove you did due diligence in searching for a rightsholder and couldn't find one, you can go ahead with rereleasing the game and the royalty payments get held in escrow by the government in case the rightsholder comes forward. I wish the US had something similar for cases like these.

In meatspace you can take ownership of abandoned land if you maintain it for a time. It's called adverse possession.

Where is the SW equivalent? We should be able to gain ownership of abandoned software.

This is often misunderstood and varies by jurisdiction. Often called "squatter's rights", it is often thought to mean "if I use this land for a long time without anybody noticing it becomes mine", but e.g. in my jurisdiction, you also have to have prove that you didn't know it wasn't yours. For example, if your backyard fence has been 5 feet over the property line for 10 years and nobody noticed, but then suddenly your next door neighbor has the property surveyed and tells you to move your back fence, you can take them to court and potentially claim that extra 5 feet as your own. But you can't just scoot your back fence over a couple inches every year and then eventually lay claim to your neighbor's backyard because they didn't notice it was shrinking, nor can you "find" "abandoned" land, build a house on it, and then claim it as your own. I believe there are a few jurisdictions where this actually is the case, but it's fewer than many people believe. And then of course you have the reality of squatters invading people's homes while they are on vacation for a week and the police being completely unwilling to get involved, which I understand was a big problem in France for a while.

IANAL

You're getting bogged down in details and ignoring my main point.

Why would you need the ownership of that?

All I care is the right to create/distribute copies and derived works

Is this what happened with Vanguard Princess?

Ownership is known - Microsoft/Disney/Warner. For them, it's probably not worth the lawyer time to try to sort out what stake and/or transferring the IP.

Ironically Microsoft's consolidation of the video gaming market might have a weird positive effect here. In cases where the ownership is disputed or split between multiple entities if Microsoft acquires all of them it gets intrinsically resolved

This only helps if they acquire every possible rights-holder who could have a claim. And even then there could be revenue sharing issues that make publishing anew impractical.

Based on Microsoft's acquisition spree, that seems highly likely. Revenue sharing I think at this point is just a matter of the correct SEC disclosures for quarter-end statements

I think most video games from this era are actually in this state. There are a large number of companies that believe they own the rights to video games like this. No one is really challenging it. In the event that it is challenged they genuinely believe they have the documentation to back it up. But if that were to actually happen, it may come up they have insufficient documentation to support their claims.

> I wonder how many games are impossible to preserve because of the copyright system and apathy on the part of rights-holders.

Pretty much all of them.

Your Steam licenses are forfeit when you die and your games and account are non-transferable. So when a game stops being sold anymore, which can happen for lots of reasons, there is a finite pool of licenses that becomes zero over time.

As are your GOG, App Store, Play Store and everything else digital purchases.

By the end of this century anything that was sold on Steam will be long-gone. Much, much faster for the App Store since they charge $100/year and oblige updating apps periodically regardless of if they are necessary.

Although in GOG's defense they alone have mentioned a workaround for this status quo.

> “In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable,” GOG spokesperson Zuzanna Rybacka tells Ars. “However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it, taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we’d do our best to make it happen.”

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/06/gog-will-transfer-you...

> As are your GOG, App Store, Play Store and everything else digital purchases.

Except that GOG gives you a copyable artifact without DRM.

That makes all the difference.

It helps in preserving the access to the game but if you're not the original license-holder it becomes piracy which isn't really ideal for preserving it long-term.

Is anyone really going to sue you for giving someone a exe for even quake? (or any other old game). Proving damages for a game that's no longer sold must be hard?

I believe the Doctrine of First Sale does apply to software (including games), as long as they're not encumbered by DRM. (And the only reason it doesn't apply there is the DMCA, which makes circumventing that DRM illegal.)

(And if anyone's unfamiliar with First Sale, my understanding is that it basically gives you the right to resell or regift property that you own.)

Furthermore, as I had pointed out to me on here just a few weeks ago, Congress has updated the law to recognize that computer software does not need a separate license to be "copied" into memory to run it; therefore, if you have a DRM-free piece of software, and you die, your heirs are 100% entitled to use that software or give it to someone else, for as long as the hardware they have access to can run it.

Nightdive had a good write up on this, going into detail about how rightsholders would charge them just to check their own records to see if they owned a game, but also promised to check themselves in order to sue them if they did release a game without their permission.

> “We are talking about more subtle things,” Paczynski explains, “like the game not supporting modern controllers, the game not supporting ultra-wide screens or modern resolutions, or even a simple thing like being able to minimize the game.”

I dunno if it's really preservation when you have to completely rework the game to work on a screen three times wider and 4x denser than anything that existed when the game was designed, and hack in a completely new way of talking to the controllers. Just package up the whole thing in an emulator and call it a day. Even if they're still both running versions of Windows, a 2025 computer and a 1997 computer are completely alien systems that have about as much to do with each other as a 2025 computer and a Nintendo 64.

Not the GoG way.

I remember working at a library field where there was a tremendous amount of concern that digital assets like floppy disks and files would become 'unplayable' over time.

You might not be able to pay people to do it but the video game emulation community shows that it can be done as a labor of love.

GoG is packaging a large chunk of their library in an emulator already. DOSBox is what got them started, in fact.

Projects like eXoDOS and DOSBox (and its derivatives) have basically allowed most of DOS and win31 games to be in a very playable state. GoG is doing the detective work of finding out who owns it and trying to monetize parts of it as well as fixing some of their own stuff. When it comes to many of the late 90s win9x/winxp games those are in the territory of 'maybe runs'. Due to the way windows is subtly changing the API and what a standard windows install comes with. Also APIs that now return even more stuff than what they tested with. Such as a video caps function may now return 500 items when it was tested to run with 60 and the input buffer maxes at 256. Never mind many of them act totally bugged out if you hand it a 4k screen and you have scaling turned on.

Had one game from a few weeks ago that I could not get to run. Turns out it was an intel video driver bug. Really old intel driver worked. One from 2 years ago didnt. One from a few weeks ago did. Old nvidia worked, newer ones broken. One windows box worked the other didnt. Shims like dgVoodoo2 and dxwrapper help to a point But still have lots of issues. Then on top of that if there is a online component the game will at best hang/timeout at worse crash out. Have one game if I open the leaderboard on it will crash the game. The board was apparently turned off 15 years ago.

Yep, it's like one day we expect an old game to work in VR++ and my 950pi smellovision implant.

If it runs on a runnable emulator of the target platform then we're good.

But we do want that, right? We want people in the future with their unknowable future digital-experience-providing devices to be able to experience the video games of the past/today, right?

So in the interest of making older games future compatible we (those interested in preservation) do need to pursue those things.

How else can we guarantee they'll run on future devices? Emulators are one good way to make things run on newer devices, but emulators will in turn need the features to be able to run on 4K/8K screens, XR devices, etc.

It's probably closer to conservation and restoration. One day there won't be any more working 1997 computers, so getting the game to work on a 2025 computer extends the lifespan of the media by at least 28 years. It's not unlike digitizing VHS tapes.

> Just package up the whole thing in an emulator and call it a day.

This is indeed one of the ways GoG ships games, but it doesn't work in all cases.

QEMU does a pretty good job at pretending to be a 1997 computer, or a 2025 computer, and it seems to work well to run QEMU inside of QEMU already, so should be somewhat likely that old virtual machines can be kept alive by running inside of increasingly deep levels of virtual machines running inside of newer virtual machines.

Legal, non-free, operating systems to install in those virtual machines is trickier. No old freeware version of Windows (yet?). Installing a minimal Linux distribution with WINE, for games that can be made to run in WINE in QEMU, might be the most stable way to preserve a 1997-era game. Except for 1997 DOS games (there were surprisingly many still being published in 1997!) that run so well in DOSBox(-X).

We need someone to help us restore servers for Ghost Recon Future Soldier https://github.com/koteykaby/raven we have already built a backend on quazal protocol https://github.com/Phoenix-Network-Ltd/Ghost-Recon-Future-So...

Online games are nearly impossible to preserve.

Most games are online games now.

Multi-player games depend on servers, economies, and communities that exist only as long as someone's logging in and paying the bills. When those servers go dark, the logic, data, and social fabric disappear with them. Owning the client isn't owning the game. The real thing was the networked experience -- like trying to preserve a concert by saving the recording but not the crowd.

Legal and technical barriers seal the deal. Server code is proprietary and rarely released. Reverse-engineering it breaks copyright law in most countries, so preservation sits in a gray zone. Even when fans rebuild servers, the result is closer to a reenactment than a recovery. And they seldom scale to the heights of the actual game.

Future historians will have YouTube clips and half-working emulators -- fragments of worlds that were never meant to last.

Previous discussion on this a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45620394

And the longer text from the original source: https://www.thegamebusiness.com/p/when-we-launched-resident-...

This has also been true for board games.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150927182132/http://www.thegam...

edit: when people tell you the old internet still exists, they're lying. This is yet another site with hundreds of historically valuable articles that I didn't know had disappeared.

Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45865159

Reply on news.ycombinator.com