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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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?

> 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.

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.

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.

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