10 ms·
Embracer Games Archive is preserving 75000 video games and needs contributions
- biglyburrito 1y agoSorry, but I don't trust Embracer with being a good steward of games in any capacity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group#History
- Y_Y 1y agoIs there something specific in that corporate saga you're referring to? I'm not inclined to trust corporate do-gooding either, but it would be nice to have some detail.
- stego-tech 1y agoThe long and short of it is Embracer has spent its entire existence as a consumption entity, buying every IP and studio it could get its hands on, with the intention of being a gaming publisher juggernaut. This was all done on ZIRP-era credit. They then proceeded to run it into the ground. Waves of layoffs and studio closures, mismanagement, and a credit crunch that ultimately debilitated the company. In other words, from the outside anyway, it looks like a classic Private Equity layup and cashout. Do not trust the Embracer Group.
- thenthenthen 1y agoSo their name is a hint at “ Embrace, (extend), and extinguish”?
- stego-tech 1y ago...damn, that's a good one!
- nomdep 1y agoWell, for starters, partially owned by the Saudi state. It might be common to take a lot of money from them, but I personally think it’s morally wrong
- DonHopkins 1y agoSo they embrace game developers, then cut them up into small pieces with a bone saw? Then they disposed of the Pieces Interactive by feeding them to Piranha Bytes!
- Aeolun 1y agoThe whole history of that company is just a big list of flags. It’s depressing how many good studios are owned by these people.
- integricho 1y agowhat does the public gain from them?
- pogue 1y agoThe contributions they're looking for are apparently games and not monetary donations. What exactly they're doing with the archive isn't stated. The FAQ doesn't explain, other than vague intentions to have the ability to do research and possibly some sort of museum (I think?) https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq
- mpeg 1y agoThe archive isn't even open to the public, why should the public donate games then?
- rubitxxx 1y agoIt’s like the seed bank, except all the seeds are effectively dead, because no one can use them. But, they have the seeds’ pretty shells and can imagine what plants they once were. Personally, I think there should be a non-profit that works with non-profits like this, computer and console equipment museums, Internet Archive, and a spacefaring company to ensure that history is protected in a logical way.
- ThrowawayR2 1y agoWhat other archives or museums are there for video games that are accepting donations of physical game media? There are probably a lot of HN readers with old games in the attic that are bound for the landfill once they get around to it.
- merbanan 1y agoDoesn't seem like they are digitising the media.
- dlundqvist 1y agoNo, only cataloguing. I asked them this when I was there January last year. They didn't do this then and if I remember correctly it was because of licensing concerns and also not wanting to open boxes. I know Royal Library in Stockholm digitally archive various media, not sure what Embracer would need to be allowed to do that.
- RetroTechie 1y agoalso not wanting to open boxes What?!? How can one preserve games without opening boxes? Physical media don't last forever. Unless they're interested in preserving the boxes themselves? (or other goodies inside) Reads like they're looking for donations to enlarge a private collection. Or perhaps obtain some physical copies for stuff in their IP portfolio?
- Jolter 1y agoI think you’re right, they would need some kind of copyright exemption in order to properly preserve the games by migrating them to new media regularly. I’m not sure it’s possible to get such an exemption for a private corporation under Swedish law?
- Jolter 1y agoAh, found it. Only some government and municipal archives have such an exemption. https://riksarkivet.se/utforska-och-bestall/vad-du-har-ratt-att-se-i-arkiven/upphovsratt https://riksarkivet.se/utforska-och-bestall/vad-du-har-ratt-...
- nrb 1y agoIs it too cynical to think they’re just building this to train AI against your donated games?
- blharr 1y agoIt looks more like they're just hoarding a massive personal collection of games... No mention of if this is open to public. Or if they're even digitizing the games for some use of preservation. I always feel like when you hoard things in one location like this, one fire or other natural disaster and the entire collection is gone!
- Jolter 1y agoThey would be violating Swedish copyright law if they did, so they better not! Much easier to get away with such things in the US (it seems).
- kmeisthax 1y agoYou don't need a physical archive to do that; a torrent of a bunch of SNES games would be good enough.
- astrange 1y agoPretty much every game ever published has been digitally preserved already. I don't think you're going to get much out of feeding a binary into a pretraining dataset though.
- forgotTheLast 1y agoIsn't that the company that bought the IP to a bunch of games franchises just to kill all ongoing development? Ironic.
- beloch 1y agoEmbracer group has been around for a while but, in recent years, they acquired far more companies than they could realistically do anything with because they thought they could flip them for a profit. They failed and had to take a hatchet to much of what they acquired, pissing off fans of companies that were either completely obliterated or hollowed out and outsourced. >* Our mission is to have an archive of physical games as extensive as possible. With the purpose of contributing to the joint preservation of video game culture and history. Now they're looking for donations to a private collection that will not be open to the public. They likely plan to sell the collection the highest bidder at some point. If they can't find a buyer, they'll bin the lot of it rather than continue to pay storage costs. The employees working for them may believe in what they're doing, but Embracer group now has a history of pulling the rug out from under such people. -------------- Edit: The archive is based in Sweden, which has a really hopping museum scene. They could make a for-profit museum with these materials and a few talented museologists and it would likely do well. They mention no such plans and that's very odd.
- moogly 1y ago> Sweden, which has a really hopping museum scene Citation needed. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/09/25/swedish-museums-are-struggling-to-make-ends-meet_6139584_4.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/09/25/s... https://swedenherald.com/article/tough-economic-situation-for-museums-and-stages https://swedenherald.com/article/tough-economic-situation-fo... For-profit museums aren't really a thing in Sweden either, because you won't be making a profit, unless you're the Vasa Museum, but even that is struggling.
- beloch 1y agoMuseums are sort of like farms in that you can lose money every year for entire lifetimes and still have a tremendously valuable farm. Like land, the past is an appreciating asset. That's big, traditional museums. I suppose it should be no surprise that the smaller museums are still struggling in the post-covid era. I based my opinion on visits prior to the pandemic, so I'm out of date. Hopefully the popularity of museums in Sweden will rebound.
- zabzonk 1y ago> Embracer Games Archive is a part of Embracer Group - the parent company of businesses led by entrepreneurs in PC, console and mobile games, as well as other related media. very unclear who these people actually are
- shakna 1y agoEmbracer started out as Nordic Games. They ran around buying and gutting every IP they could get their hands on. Nordic became THQ Nordic, whilst continuing to eat everyone around them, whilst also nearly going bankrupt multiple times, before eventually ditching the name because investors didn't like people noticing just who they were. They are the group that ate Dark Horse, CoffeeStain, Gearbox, Square Enix, Saber Interactive and so many more. Today, they are majority-owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
- bitwize 1y agoSquare Enix is still independent. They've got their fingers in so many pies, they're almost in the "too big to fail" category. The SE-Embracer connection is that SE spun off Crystal Dynamics and its properties like Tomb Raider, selling them to Embracer Group.
- biglyburrito 1y agolol they absolutely are NOT too big to fail
- mzajc 1y agoFrom their FAQ > Can I visit the archive? > The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../ The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes. I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive. This feels like a one-way transaction - society puts games in, society gets nothing back.
- rasz 1y ago>The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Its Lars Wingefors private collection.
- DonHopkins 1y agoEmbracer CEO Lars Wingefors: "I'm sure I deserve a lot of criticism": https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cb93xy/embracer_ceo_lars_wingefors_im_sure_i_deserve_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cb93xy/embracer_ceo... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/embracer-ceo-lars-wingefors-im-sure-i-deserve-a-lot-of-criticism https://www.gamesindustry.biz/embracer-ceo-lars-wingefors-im...
- arp242 1y agoThis is how most archives work. You can't just have a stroll around for the craic. And there's no point really, because it's not a museum – most people would be bored quite fast, unless you have a specific reason.
- mzajc 1y agoExactly, and you shouldn't have to visit the archive to play its games in the first place. That's why I mentioned IA and GOG.com in particular - both let you download games remotely.
- devwastaken 1y agothis will be demolished before 5 years time. physical archives dont work, theyre inefficient and costly. people get bored. the best archive is torrent seeding.
- Jolter 1y agoPhysical archives have literally worked for thousands of years. You do have a point in that commercial ventures like Embracer don’t tend to last for very long. Presumably the collection would not be auctioned off piecemeal if the company goes under, but rather sold as a unit to some other entity.
- kouteiheika 1y agoNo, the OP is right, although perhaps for the wrong reasons. In a 100 (or a few hundred) years none of the games from that physical archive will be playable, as both the physical media and the physical consoles needed to play those games will become unusable. Physical archives work only as long as the physical medium itself lasts. The only way to actually preserve games is to digitize them. Period. Collecting physical media and consoles is a fun hobby, but in the long term it's completely useless if the goal is preservation. If you want to preserve games you should be dumping whatever undumped games still exist, contribute to databases like no-intro.org, and download and seed/share what has already been dumped. This is what will help preserve those games, not a physical collection that will turn into an unusable paperweight sooner or later.
- Jolter 1y agoI know you’re right, but my intuition is that there are not a huge number of games in that collection which have never been dumped to digital. I see some value in preserving the physical artifacts. These games are not only the medium and its content. Most have boxes with artwork, many have manuals, even “feelies”. If all we had was archive.org then those would be lost to the sands of time.
- jll29 1y agoAt least part of the collection, preferedly a rotating part, should be a public exhibit. They can charge an entrance fee, and they will get way more support if there is public awareness compared to a 100% closed shop.
- Keyframe 1y agonow, I have a full SNES collection (without boxes since cardboard is hard to keep up), almost full N64 collection, and on my way to complete Mega Drive and Master System (with boxes) and probably more than halfway through NES games.. bunch of amigas, commodores, spectrums, SGIs, monitors, some exotics like Sam Coupe, Tatung Einstein, Schneider CPCs, etc. but this is on another level. Future collectors beware though, even though I collected a whole bunch as you can see, at the end of the day I still play either on Analogue's with Everdrive or original machines (RGB of course) with Everdrives. Sometimes even, yes, emulators. If anything, I'd honestly donate to a digital archive and emulator development. Only thing right now that really can't be emulated are CRTs - but I am honestly convinced we're soon close enough if not already 98% there with great 4k OLEDs (like sony A95L series) and some pre-processing. I can tell by the pixels when I'm looking at both A95L and BVM20 and/or B&O TV which I also have, to my wife's disapproval.
- Keyframe 1y agothis talk with acquisition manager there illuminates a lot of things, including how it started. Back of the envelope calc it looks like to be anywhere between 5-10m euro swing to get it where it is at right now (including space and people). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKXEUG_tKks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKXEUG_tKks
- MyPasswordSucks 1y ago> We aim to assist and grant access to people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions. While the archive is not open to the public, we hope our website and social media channels will offer insight into the work being done by our team. [1] Then maybe people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions can provide those needed contributions. Very poor form to be coming to the public, hat in hand, asking them to help finance your private vidya collection. 1: https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq
- gitroom 1y agoMan, keeping all those games locked away where most can't check them out just feels off. If you're asking for people to donate, at least make it so the public can benefit too.
- protocolture 1y agoI have a couple pieces that might be worth donating but after reading the history of the company thats absolutely not going to happen. Is there somewhere better, preferably outside the USA?