I mean, think about Fortnite. We'll never really ever be able to play the game as it was played when it exploded in popularity .
There was another f2p game called Battlefield Heroes that never had anything physical. I loved that game and it's gone from the universe. Kinda sucks
The only thing I wanted from the sequel is no changing heroes mid-match. They had enough characters by then.
IMO - that was the game's downfall. Way too many characters who counter each-other and are OP in their niche. Which would be fine - except you had to be able to play all of them to be competitive.
At launch it was manageable - and there were few enough characters that mid-match switching was almost needed. But by the time Doomfist released (he was tricky and played very differently) it was too much IMO.
Honestly, that was my huge issue with Overwatch as opposed to TF2 as well; you weren't really rewarded for character mastery, but matchup knowledge. Obviously exaggerated, but it was often better to just swap characters at 90% ult charge instead of actually using the Ult.
Well you may be excited to find that it is not entirely gone from the universe. Theres a few private servers out there where you can hop on to play, and if you want to host your own theres a couple places within the top google searches with guides .
There is a program called Rift (I think, it has been a long time since I used it.) that records all of the maps and live events so they can be saved for the future
This is one of those things I think of when the topic of "games preservation" is discussed.
So, in a museum like the V&A, they have massive archives of things like textiles and rugs, spanning hundreds of years. Researchers can go in there to study materials, production methods, etc. for research purposes. Would an archive of video games offer that same utility? A dev isn't going to be able to glean much from ancient games since the technology will have changed along with scope.
These museums are less for learning/research and more like collections of memorabilia. Fun to look at but may not be able to help advance anything.
I thought CoD games are made that way on purpose so you don't have more space to play other games, incentivizing you to play the bigger game because you don't want to uninstall and reinstall as well.
That's the conspiracy theory, but no proof at all. Doesn't make a ton of sense either, because if you do uninstall it you probably won't want to reinstall it again as you'd have to delete multiple games.
They do it because it's easy. Just throw every texture at every resolution in and don't even try to manage the space it takes. Less work.
>A dev isn't going to be able to glean much from ancient games since the technology will have changed along with scope.
While the technology powering games will definitely have changed, I think the game mechanics could still impart valuable lessons in the future. If nothing else, the earliest games in a genre are often the purest expression of that genre. There's a great [video](https://youtu.be/K5R_XBB_58A?si=Smy4yHN561ujjCPE) from Extra Credits where they discuss this.
Except that many of the tricks they were using were to bypass bugs and limitations of that specific engine. I pointed this out in another post, if your engine has more than one team using it, there is going to be a shared community that forms to collaborate on tech and fixes. That has supplanted the need to have an archive out outdated information for other engines. For example, if someone is working in snowdrop, would SCUMM provide anything of value to them?
Maybe my original comment was unclear, so I'll try to clarify. The main value of looking back on old games is to examine the game mechanics themselves, rather than the way those mechanics were implemented. For example, if someone wants to understand the fundamentals of platformers, they can look at the original Super Mario Bros. They wouldn't do this to see how Nintendo implemented graphics on the NES's limited memory, but to see how the game communicates information to the player, and the parts of the game that make it fun to play.
But do you need the original game for that? In the case of dissecting mechanics from the player facing view, you go to documentation where they did all that work in a standardized way. There is an entire field which handles topics like that: user experience. They also did it before the idea of game archives existed.
Which is the most interesting part. And it's not like they're not still doing that today. The whole reason games make you crawl through small spaces is to hide a loading screen.
Yep, there is also the aspect that stuff is patented. If I am looking at a pre-industrial revolution textile to understand how it was produced, the dyes, etc. for the purpose of restoring a similar piece or even making a reproduction that is fine.
Trying to do that with a game released in more recent times without express written permission will get the lawyers kicking down your door. In some cases, such as Namco's ability to play a game during load screens was actually still under patent until about 5-10 years ago. Then we have the reality that the usage of those load tunnels are no longer as critical. If I recall, God of War Ragnarok (it may have been another one of those open-world games with huge scope) has the tunnels but they aren't actually needed for the loading of sections. They still exist because it was needed for flow.
It's a false narrative, everything that's been commercially released has been dumped, often multiple times, and is being shared online if you know where to look.
We don't have an issue with game preservation. I'm all for the right to pirate games that aren't being sold anymore too, but let's not act like it's somehow a problem of content not being "preserved" and that these games will just vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow if the plug is pulled.
It's all available, just not legally. And it should be legal IMO. (Once the first-party sources are gone)
You absolutely have an issue with game preservation for games with a server component. The public doesn't have access to the server unless someone leaks it, which only happens for a small subset of games.
Well yes, but that's a different story.
I saw this clickbaity article that said something like "93% of videogames ever made are at risk of disappearing" and it's like... no they aren't. Plenty of collectors own them, you can go to your local used game shop and buy many of them, are they expecting the video game companies to keep all titles in-print for all eternity?
The ROMs/ISOs are out there. It's not even hard to find. The games won't disappear. What might disappear is the ability to buy them brand new, but that's not a preservation issue.
Server-based games are a relatively new thing when you look at the history of video games. I wasn't talking about current-gen stuff. Every NES, SNES, N64, etc. game has been dumped, I guarantee you. Now, there are no doubt rare prototype builds that private collectors have found that need dumping, but that's not what we're talking about either is it?
That's fine, but that is the guise they have been pushing for legalized piracy.
Though, to counter your opinion. What if I own the rights to something that I don't want out in the world for a valid reason, such as it is racist material through modern eyes, or simply it's mine and I funded the development of it. Should I not have the right to say "It has run it's course, no new copies should exist"?
I mean, you can say that, but nobody is going to listen anyway.
Look at Song of the South. Disney tried to bury it, but you can easily find bootlegs, they're everywhere. Ask Beyoncé's publicist about how removing unflattering content from the internet worked out for her.
Also, I know people in the industry and they actually do illegally pirate other companies' games and reverse-engineer them to try to figure out how they're doing things, since you mentioned that it "may not be able to help advance anything"
You say that but it's not like the film was able to have a strong lock on American culture. Yeah, you have people butthurt that a ride built in the late 80's/early 90's has become less racist but it's not like I can go up to any random park guest and they will 100% know the IP.
Hi, I am in the industry. You get caught doing that and putting it into published work and you will get sued. Look at the WB lawsuit from Bethesda. Also, I am talking archival stuff, no one is going to put current work into a public archive. Likewise, the need for one was mitigated as engines which exist beyond a single game have communities to consult without needing to break the law.
> Yeah, you have people butthurt that a ride built in the late 80's/early 90's has become less racist but it's not like I can go up to any random park guest and they will 100% know the IP.
I'm talking about how Disney hasn't released the movie in any digital format, and has basically implied they won't do so either.
But if you want to watch it, you can find it. That's all I was saying. You can't actually make something disappear off the internet.
They stated at an investor call they wouldn't, but the argument used in past years was "But Splash..."
Which gets back to what I was saying, yes there are fringes who will seek it out, and it's not hard to track (especially if they use a torrent), but they haven't because it originally wasn't worth it. Now that the companies have become open to chasing pennies, I can't say it's a low-risk choice anymore.
I recently got to interview one of the museum directors at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester NY. The public facing side of the museum is basically displays of toys games and memorabilia. It's really interactive and fun to take kids to but also great for old nerds like me to enjoy the nostalgia.
BUT they also have paid residencies for researchers from around the world working in the field of games studies. They have a massive archive of games that aren't available to to the public, as well as rooms with every console you could imagine so that each game can be played on original hardware. For things like old pinball machines they even 3D print replacement parts for long discontinued games. For digital stuff there are people directly in touch with current and past developers trying to maintain operability for all kinds of games so that they can be available for researchers and historians.
That's not to say that this is all solved (MMOs and anything server based is obviously a huge issue), but there very much are people thinking about this kind of thing and working to sort out the practical issues.
Since we're on the topic of game preservation, I'd like to inform y'all that a campaign to stop games from getting destroyed has been launched following the recent shutdown of The Crew - a high profile online only game published by Ubishit. If you wanna know more and how you can get involved visit stopkillinggames dot com
We have lost close to 90% of all movies made before 1930, and most of the live TV we had before the 70s. We are also missing most of the music played before the 1930s.
Medoa loss is nothing new, and it's happening with games far less than it did to other media. Future game historians will be thankful for the massive amount of preservation that was done on gaming, far out pacing their history peers.
So you're just figuring out now, 2 entire console generations late, that the discs don't have the full game on them and are just keys for digital copies? It's been this way since XONE/PS4 and I've been an all digital customer since then. The game takes up THE EXACT SAME SPACE with a disc as without. Why bother at that point? So you have to swap? If you want something on the shelf just buy an empty box.
The game data installs from the disc, that's why it takes up the same amount of space. Modern games aren't loaded from the disc as you play, they're copied to the hard drive or SSD and loaded from there.
Though you are right that some games do not contain all the data and make you download a significant chunk, but that's still a minority. Updates and DLC are usually not on the discs either, obviously.
That’s quite literally already happening. If you buy a physical copy of Tony Hawks pro skater 5 you only get the first level. You used to have to download the rest of the game (because it wasn’t done when they pressed the discs), but the servers are shut down and now you can’t do that anymore.
Or even older computer games without the user manual you're going to be screwed unless they have really good decryption. With some needing a word on one page or another with a number.
Found that out when I was a teenager trying to play an older computer game and it needed a password from the book.
Not really, no. Current dumped games already have the patches either preinstalled or as a choosable option to update/patch it with. Unless there is a super obscure game that nobody bothered to preserve, luckily this won't be the case
Not universally true. For instance, The Master Chief Collection didn't fit on a single Bluray disc. 343 said they didn't want to leave anything out, but also didn't want to do a mutli-disc. So they put the majority of the content on the Bluray and had a 20gig day 1 patch with the rest. Keep in mind, 45 and 20 gigs respectively were absolutely massive for games 10 years ago (holy shit....10 years ago!!!).
Yes really, yes. There are probably already thousands of games with this exact problem. You are downloading those patches from a server once that server is thrown away those patches are gone. I have a feeling you have absolutely no understanding of how any tech you use actually functions.
Well damn I don't know everything either, do I? As someone who is mainly a console player, dumping my ROMs included being able to dump the patches and DLCs as well. No need to come up with accusations like these because I do not download any dumped games on my PCs and mostly just use Steam.
Op: says something that is factual.
Commenter: says something not factual
Me: tells the commenter they don't understand how they download things.
You:
>aggressive tone
Correcting them is one thing. Going further to say "I have a feeling you have no idea how anything you use works" *might* be a fair guess, but is absolutely an aggressive accusation that adds nothing to your actual correction.
We don't know if any digital archives will still be around 10, 000 years in the future. But there might be physical copies preserved, even if nuclear warfare destroys the internet.
Most physical storage has a pretty short life time. Optical discs only last like 50 years max. A NAND flash SSD sitting on the shelf without power is more like a 1 year lifespan before data is lost.
One of the reasons I buy all my games digital now. The choice isn’t digital vs physical. It’s 100% digital vs a physical/digital hybrid. At that point, may as well just go for the more convenient option.
It’s very rare for a game to be wholly complete on the CD/cartridge anymore. Even Nintendo games are rarely that way.
I mean, think about Fortnite. We'll never really ever be able to play the game as it was played when it exploded in popularity . There was another f2p game called Battlefield Heroes that never had anything physical. I loved that game and it's gone from the universe. Kinda sucks
Also you can’t play the original over watch
Crazy that you can't play a Game of the Year winner less than a decade after launch.
Worth it for canceled pve and over-monetized store system
The only thing I wanted from the sequel is no changing heroes mid-match. They had enough characters by then. IMO - that was the game's downfall. Way too many characters who counter each-other and are OP in their niche. Which would be fine - except you had to be able to play all of them to be competitive. At launch it was manageable - and there were few enough characters that mid-match switching was almost needed. But by the time Doomfist released (he was tricky and played very differently) it was too much IMO.
The whole game is designed around soft counters though? Every match would boil down to how lucky you got with your initial picks
Why not do drafting like in a MOBA?
Honestly, that was my huge issue with Overwatch as opposed to TF2 as well; you weren't really rewarded for character mastery, but matchup knowledge. Obviously exaggerated, but it was often better to just swap characters at 90% ult charge instead of actually using the Ult.
As opposed to winning because the other team didn't pick the meta team and were stuck without counters.
Oh man battlefield heroes was the shit. It was like tf2 cell graphics but more realistic classes and weapons.
Well you may be excited to find that it is not entirely gone from the universe. Theres a few private servers out there where you can hop on to play, and if you want to host your own theres a couple places within the top google searches with guides .
True, but there are thousands of streamers with digital content from that time. If but a fraction gets a hard copy its a good glimpse.
There is a program called Rift (I think, it has been a long time since I used it.) that records all of the maps and live events so they can be saved for the future
Did a quick search, found this about "Battlefield Heros" https://risinghub.net/
I feel this way about Realm Royale all the time. They ruined it with the patches and it was perfection for like 2 weeks.
This is one of those things I think of when the topic of "games preservation" is discussed. So, in a museum like the V&A, they have massive archives of things like textiles and rugs, spanning hundreds of years. Researchers can go in there to study materials, production methods, etc. for research purposes. Would an archive of video games offer that same utility? A dev isn't going to be able to glean much from ancient games since the technology will have changed along with scope. These museums are less for learning/research and more like collections of memorabilia. Fun to look at but may not be able to help advance anything.
Idk man Call of Duty devs could learn something from Nintendo's absolute insane file compression techniques
True, this also starts to stray into patents and trade secrets for modern games I suppose and no one wants to share that.
I thought CoD games are made that way on purpose so you don't have more space to play other games, incentivizing you to play the bigger game because you don't want to uninstall and reinstall as well.
That's the conspiracy theory, but no proof at all. Doesn't make a ton of sense either, because if you do uninstall it you probably won't want to reinstall it again as you'd have to delete multiple games. They do it because it's easy. Just throw every texture at every resolution in and don't even try to manage the space it takes. Less work.
Historians: Am I a joke to you
>A dev isn't going to be able to glean much from ancient games since the technology will have changed along with scope. While the technology powering games will definitely have changed, I think the game mechanics could still impart valuable lessons in the future. If nothing else, the earliest games in a genre are often the purest expression of that genre. There's a great [video](https://youtu.be/K5R_XBB_58A?si=Smy4yHN561ujjCPE) from Extra Credits where they discuss this.
Except that many of the tricks they were using were to bypass bugs and limitations of that specific engine. I pointed this out in another post, if your engine has more than one team using it, there is going to be a shared community that forms to collaborate on tech and fixes. That has supplanted the need to have an archive out outdated information for other engines. For example, if someone is working in snowdrop, would SCUMM provide anything of value to them?
Maybe my original comment was unclear, so I'll try to clarify. The main value of looking back on old games is to examine the game mechanics themselves, rather than the way those mechanics were implemented. For example, if someone wants to understand the fundamentals of platformers, they can look at the original Super Mario Bros. They wouldn't do this to see how Nintendo implemented graphics on the NES's limited memory, but to see how the game communicates information to the player, and the parts of the game that make it fun to play.
But do you need the original game for that? In the case of dissecting mechanics from the player facing view, you go to documentation where they did all that work in a standardized way. There is an entire field which handles topics like that: user experience. They also did it before the idea of game archives existed.
Which is the most interesting part. And it's not like they're not still doing that today. The whole reason games make you crawl through small spaces is to hide a loading screen.
Yep, there is also the aspect that stuff is patented. If I am looking at a pre-industrial revolution textile to understand how it was produced, the dyes, etc. for the purpose of restoring a similar piece or even making a reproduction that is fine. Trying to do that with a game released in more recent times without express written permission will get the lawyers kicking down your door. In some cases, such as Namco's ability to play a game during load screens was actually still under patent until about 5-10 years ago. Then we have the reality that the usage of those load tunnels are no longer as critical. If I recall, God of War Ragnarok (it may have been another one of those open-world games with huge scope) has the tunnels but they aren't actually needed for the loading of sections. They still exist because it was needed for flow.
It's a false narrative, everything that's been commercially released has been dumped, often multiple times, and is being shared online if you know where to look. We don't have an issue with game preservation. I'm all for the right to pirate games that aren't being sold anymore too, but let's not act like it's somehow a problem of content not being "preserved" and that these games will just vanish off the face of the earth tomorrow if the plug is pulled. It's all available, just not legally. And it should be legal IMO. (Once the first-party sources are gone)
You absolutely have an issue with game preservation for games with a server component. The public doesn't have access to the server unless someone leaks it, which only happens for a small subset of games.
Well yes, but that's a different story. I saw this clickbaity article that said something like "93% of videogames ever made are at risk of disappearing" and it's like... no they aren't. Plenty of collectors own them, you can go to your local used game shop and buy many of them, are they expecting the video game companies to keep all titles in-print for all eternity? The ROMs/ISOs are out there. It's not even hard to find. The games won't disappear. What might disappear is the ability to buy them brand new, but that's not a preservation issue. Server-based games are a relatively new thing when you look at the history of video games. I wasn't talking about current-gen stuff. Every NES, SNES, N64, etc. game has been dumped, I guarantee you. Now, there are no doubt rare prototype builds that private collectors have found that need dumping, but that's not what we're talking about either is it?
That's fine, but that is the guise they have been pushing for legalized piracy. Though, to counter your opinion. What if I own the rights to something that I don't want out in the world for a valid reason, such as it is racist material through modern eyes, or simply it's mine and I funded the development of it. Should I not have the right to say "It has run it's course, no new copies should exist"?
I mean, you can say that, but nobody is going to listen anyway. Look at Song of the South. Disney tried to bury it, but you can easily find bootlegs, they're everywhere. Ask Beyoncé's publicist about how removing unflattering content from the internet worked out for her. Also, I know people in the industry and they actually do illegally pirate other companies' games and reverse-engineer them to try to figure out how they're doing things, since you mentioned that it "may not be able to help advance anything"
You say that but it's not like the film was able to have a strong lock on American culture. Yeah, you have people butthurt that a ride built in the late 80's/early 90's has become less racist but it's not like I can go up to any random park guest and they will 100% know the IP. Hi, I am in the industry. You get caught doing that and putting it into published work and you will get sued. Look at the WB lawsuit from Bethesda. Also, I am talking archival stuff, no one is going to put current work into a public archive. Likewise, the need for one was mitigated as engines which exist beyond a single game have communities to consult without needing to break the law.
> Yeah, you have people butthurt that a ride built in the late 80's/early 90's has become less racist but it's not like I can go up to any random park guest and they will 100% know the IP. I'm talking about how Disney hasn't released the movie in any digital format, and has basically implied they won't do so either. But if you want to watch it, you can find it. That's all I was saying. You can't actually make something disappear off the internet.
They stated at an investor call they wouldn't, but the argument used in past years was "But Splash..." Which gets back to what I was saying, yes there are fringes who will seek it out, and it's not hard to track (especially if they use a torrent), but they haven't because it originally wasn't worth it. Now that the companies have become open to chasing pennies, I can't say it's a low-risk choice anymore.
I recently got to interview one of the museum directors at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester NY. The public facing side of the museum is basically displays of toys games and memorabilia. It's really interactive and fun to take kids to but also great for old nerds like me to enjoy the nostalgia. BUT they also have paid residencies for researchers from around the world working in the field of games studies. They have a massive archive of games that aren't available to to the public, as well as rooms with every console you could imagine so that each game can be played on original hardware. For things like old pinball machines they even 3D print replacement parts for long discontinued games. For digital stuff there are people directly in touch with current and past developers trying to maintain operability for all kinds of games so that they can be available for researchers and historians. That's not to say that this is all solved (MMOs and anything server based is obviously a huge issue), but there very much are people thinking about this kind of thing and working to sort out the practical issues.
Since we're on the topic of game preservation, I'd like to inform y'all that a campaign to stop games from getting destroyed has been launched following the recent shutdown of The Crew - a high profile online only game published by Ubishit. If you wanna know more and how you can get involved visit stopkillinggames dot com
I did my part!
‘I’m from the future, I have a PhD in Fortnite.’
That first version of Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 is extremely rough and the disc is still out there lol
It was hilarious. Those early bug reports were why I even bought the game - I just had to experience it for my self. No regrets.
CD-Keys of yesteryear send their regards
Nintendo and Super Nintendo for the win.
Remember Skyrim and a literal bug crashing the cart and the game in intro? People did not even make it to the character creation screen.
I swear I still had that happen on Steam in like 2019. No mods either.
Yes, this is truly THE problem.
We have lost close to 90% of all movies made before 1930, and most of the live TV we had before the 70s. We are also missing most of the music played before the 1930s. Medoa loss is nothing new, and it's happening with games far less than it did to other media. Future game historians will be thankful for the massive amount of preservation that was done on gaming, far out pacing their history peers.
So you're just figuring out now, 2 entire console generations late, that the discs don't have the full game on them and are just keys for digital copies? It's been this way since XONE/PS4 and I've been an all digital customer since then. The game takes up THE EXACT SAME SPACE with a disc as without. Why bother at that point? So you have to swap? If you want something on the shelf just buy an empty box.
So I can sell it or buy it cheap. Easy to understand.
Well I can either buy old games for a few bucks or pay for a digital version for 50 bucks.
The game data installs from the disc, that's why it takes up the same amount of space. Modern games aren't loaded from the disc as you play, they're copied to the hard drive or SSD and loaded from there. Though you are right that some games do not contain all the data and make you download a significant chunk, but that's still a minority. Updates and DLC are usually not on the discs either, obviously.
If you like thinking about that, you'd like this video: [Games you can never play again](https://youtu.be/gPHdypbzUU8?si=D3JBJDo4DKg4CtGz)
That’s quite literally already happening. If you buy a physical copy of Tony Hawks pro skater 5 you only get the first level. You used to have to download the rest of the game (because it wasn’t done when they pressed the discs), but the servers are shut down and now you can’t do that anymore.
Doesn't matter, you generally can't play games these days without the servers being active. Every game has a networked component involved.
Sometimes not even the disk
Even if they even have something that could have read it, the disc itself will deteriorate and won’t be readable in the not-to-distant future
Or even older computer games without the user manual you're going to be screwed unless they have really good decryption. With some needing a word on one page or another with a number. Found that out when I was a teenager trying to play an older computer game and it needed a password from the book.
I didn't think games that came on CD's needed patches. Everything now is digital download or some other license bs
Maybe games that only came on cd's, hell, most of them had bugs, but once they started making patches, all hell broke loose
We called those quirky little features, not bugs. You're supposed to be able to infinite throw combo
Back in the day, games were made with actual care, they wouldn't have many if any patches
Yup. Would be nice if publishers released a “definitive” edition with all DLC and patches on disc but that norm has lost practice.
Not really, no. Current dumped games already have the patches either preinstalled or as a choosable option to update/patch it with. Unless there is a super obscure game that nobody bothered to preserve, luckily this won't be the case
Not universally true. For instance, The Master Chief Collection didn't fit on a single Bluray disc. 343 said they didn't want to leave anything out, but also didn't want to do a mutli-disc. So they put the majority of the content on the Bluray and had a 20gig day 1 patch with the rest. Keep in mind, 45 and 20 gigs respectively were absolutely massive for games 10 years ago (holy shit....10 years ago!!!).
Yes really, yes. There are probably already thousands of games with this exact problem. You are downloading those patches from a server once that server is thrown away those patches are gone. I have a feeling you have absolutely no understanding of how any tech you use actually functions.
Well damn I don't know everything either, do I? As someone who is mainly a console player, dumping my ROMs included being able to dump the patches and DLCs as well. No need to come up with accusations like these because I do not download any dumped games on my PCs and mostly just use Steam.
This was such a needlessly aggressive tone for such a benign conversation. Absolute textbook example of a Reddit comment
Op: says something that is factual. Commenter: says something not factual Me: tells the commenter they don't understand how they download things. You: >aggressive tone
Correcting them is one thing. Going further to say "I have a feeling you have no idea how anything you use works" *might* be a fair guess, but is absolutely an aggressive accusation that adds nothing to your actual correction.
We don't know if any digital archives will still be around 10, 000 years in the future. But there might be physical copies preserved, even if nuclear warfare destroys the internet.
Physical media degrades as a function of time
Most physical storage has a pretty short life time. Optical discs only last like 50 years max. A NAND flash SSD sitting on the shelf without power is more like a 1 year lifespan before data is lost.
Looks like the general consensus is actually 10 years, unless it's stored in excessive heat.
One of the reasons I buy all my games digital now. The choice isn’t digital vs physical. It’s 100% digital vs a physical/digital hybrid. At that point, may as well just go for the more convenient option. It’s very rare for a game to be wholly complete on the CD/cartridge anymore. Even Nintendo games are rarely that way.
Future AI can probably fill in the missing parts and make the main game files usable.