The video game industry generates more revenue than the movie and music industries combined. For that reason alone, one would expect the industry to value its own history. We want that heritage to be as accessible and properly preserved as possible. But the reality is quite the opposite. This was demonstrated again in a recent talk on video game preservation.
Intellectual property lawyer Steve England was asked whether it would be possible for libraries to digitally preserve copies of video games. His response was that members of the ESA, the U.S. video game industry's trade association, would not allow such a thing.. Even if we allowed it, it would be insufficient progress. Properly preserving the history of video games requires more than just collecting the video games themselves. Even if it's done physically.
The reason for this strong refusal is, in fact, that the ESA has opposed the preservation of video games in any form in the past. When the Library of Congress wanted to create a working corpus for media preservation, the ESA said it was an unnecessary effort.Because the developers were already doing a great job on that front.
In reality, according to the Video Game History Foundation, 87% of American video games from before 2010 are currently impossible to obtain legally. Many of these games are at risk of being lost or have already been lost. Similarly, Many games could not be republished because their source code was lost or lost.. This shows that the ESA's statements are short-sighted, if not outright deceptive.
If the video game industry's largest trade association, the ESA, is completely blind when it comes to preservation, we are on the brink of losing decades of media history. This seems inevitable considering they have no interest in video gamesother than to remain the most profitable legal industry in the world.
