A new study from the Video Game History Foundations shows that current state of game preservation is dire, but a few publishers are trying to fix that.
Video game preservation continues to be one of the most strenuous topics in the game industry. While gamers would probably agree that companies should preserve the games they release, that’s not really the case in practice. In a new study organized by the Video Game Industry Foundation, we learned that only 13.27% of video games released before 2010 are in print in 2023.
“The availability of historical games is generally understood to be limited,” the VGHF’s study explains. “This is due to a variety of factors, including technical constraints, complicated rights issues, rightsholder disinterest, and the long-term volatility of digital distribution platforms. The scale of this problem is troubling for anyone hoping to access games.”
“Historical game availability issues are widespread across all platform ecosystems and time periods. No single company or platform owner is responsible for this reality. This is a crisis for the entire medium of video games,” VGHF’s study says. But that livestream also showed that the game industry is getting better at paying homage to and re-releasing games regardless of their quality. Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is a brand new game paying homage to two terrible Zelda games for the Philips CD-i.
Hopefully, as the tools and technology needed to preserve games improve, more and more companies will do what they can to re-release games, regardless of their original quality or financial viability.
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