4 ms·

Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maint

Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maintaining activation servers, cloud storage and digital delivery costs money. If it doesn't disappear when the title reaches EOL, it certainly does when the company is gone or shifts business models. And draconian copyright laws create legal jeopardy around orphaned games from long-dead companies while the DMCA makes it illegal to remove DRM. We simply have no way to preserve games.

mywittyname 3mo ago
For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.
- cjk 3mo ago
  Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.
  - bitmasher9 3mo ago
    Except Sony is notoriously bad at actually securing their consoles.
    - junon 3mo ago
      It shouldn't be the case that this is relied upon. There needs to be a cultural shift in the industry back to physical - or at least, preservable - media.
    - mywittyname 3mo ago
      The PS5 has been pretty secure (though, not perfect). They learned their lesson from the PS4 and took some pages out of the Microsoft playbook - brought back the hypervisor and implemented e-fuses. Byepervisor did crack the hypervisor, but it requires an old version of the firmware and the console has to be kept offline to avoid being upgraded. There's no mechanism to downgrade the firmware like there was with the PS4, which limits the blast radius of potential jailbreaks. Of course, even offline consoles can be updated, since games can ship with firmware updates required need to play the game.
      - ftruzzi 3mo ago
        All true, but you don’t need to crack the hypervisor to play cracked games, and if you manage to jailbreak your console there are game backports for older firmware versions. Also, there are unreleased kernel exploits (i.e. jailbreaks) even for the most recent firmware versions, which will inevitably come out in the future. The scene is not as mature as PS4, but a lot of progress was made this year.
    - croes 3mo ago
      Maybe AI will change that. That’s the crux, safe software is like an unbreakable lock. It can keep safe what you value or it can lock you in|out.
      - kdidjwixjwjd 3mo ago
        You lot really ought to stop with “AI will solve that” statements. It’s like watching a child play with Siri thinking it is a real person. C’mon now.
        croes 3mo ago
        You read the "maybe"? And the rest of my statement isn’t about AI but about secure software.
  - chaosharmonic 3mo ago
    Then let them turn into SEGA.
  - prmoustache 3mo ago
    Just don't buy them. Are you a drone controlled by FOMO?
    - rbits 3mo ago
      They didn't say they were buying them. It is just undeniably a bad thing that you can't buy it without DRM. You can say "just don't buy it", but that doesn't make the existence of the DRM any better.
- logicchains 3mo ago
  >However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. If AI lives up to its promise then in 5-10 years it should be possible (and affordable) to just point an AI at the screen and let it clone all the graphics, then have it implement the engine.
  - ssl-3 3mo ago
    If the game doesn't run in 5-10 years because of some licensing, DRM, physical, or other SNAFU, then there will be no game for the bot to observe.
  - no_multitudes 3mo ago
    If just one of any number of millenarian cults live up to their promise then in 5-10 years we can play any game we want with Jesus up in heaven.
- sikim 3mo ago
  > encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. I highly doubt this. The platforms that didn't have any jailbreaking scenes weren't because the devices were so secure; it was because there was not enough demand for it. If given enough time, there will always be hacks and bypasses just like Denuvo or hypervisor bypass like the recent hack.
  - mywittyname 3mo ago
    You can doubt this. But the fact is, the Xbox One was secure for it's entire operational life without a crack. And the Series X/S has held up as well. It's completely possible that future consoles are secure enough that the components fail long before the security does.
    - k4rnaj1k 3mo ago
      iirc microsoft also allowed installing homebrew without cracking the console, which definitely was a conttibuting factor. Why hack the console if you can just install your own software already. And it isn't like any xbox console exclusives come to mind, all their stuff comes out on pc too.
    - jwrallie 3mo ago
      Arguably there was not much interest on those platforms. I believe you will be right eventually when physical access of the actual machines are kept away from us, so it’s a matter of solving the latency issue.
    - aizk 3mo ago
      There just isn't a demand for it. Have you seen just how dedicated nintendo hackers are? Check out decomp.dev https://decomp.dev/ https://decomp.dev/
      - rupx 3mo ago
        Decompliation is nothing compared to the effort and technical know-how required to jailbreak / exploit the Xbox One. The Xbox One might be single handledly the most complex and secure piece of human hardware. [1] (Highly recommend watching this talk). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U
i1856511 3mo ago
Yes, those things cost money, but the money that we want to make, we want to make it today. And this is how we make it. What economic incentive is there for preservation? (/takes off devil's advocate hat and puts on flame suit)
- wtetzner 3mo ago
  The economic incentives will only come when enough people stop buying these kinds of games. Whether or not that will ever happen remains to be seen.
  - j1elo 3mo ago
    Videogame preservation is on par with other media conservation, like literature; something that's an overall good for humanity as a whole, but not in the mind of the majority of consumers of such media. And that's perfectly OK. Most people just want to consume and forget. Conservation is a social interest amd must come from organized initiatives, it will never take shape magically from individual judgement.
- slg 3mo ago
  What economic incentive is there for art museums? Maybe society shouldn't be designed primarily around economic incentives.
- madrox 3mo ago
  Especially when you have a passionate community willing to work for free to preserve things, am I right?
- RajT88 3mo ago
  Nintendo has shown the way, for better or worse. Tightly managed first party IP with a lot of retro throwback games/compilations/crossovers/virtual console and an overly aggressive copyright approach to managing what people do with their IP (even if fair use). Nintendo plays the long game. They do not compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and the like.
downrightmike 3mo ago
Game companies should have to submit full copies of everything to run the game , servers and clients to the Library of Congress or Smithsonian for preservation
- tokai 3mo ago
  They should do legal deposit in the country the game is developed. Some places they have to. The Hitman series is in the collection of national library of Denmark.
- canthonytucci 3mo ago
  Why? Is there a lower form of “art” than always online AAA garbage? Im not going to lose any sleep over _COD 75: More of the Same Bullshit_ becoming lost media
  - Blackthorn 3mo ago
    Most art is garbage, doesn't mean it's okay to make it inaccessible by fiat.
    - canthonytucci 3mo ago
      Let’s take all these games as great artworks - why don’t their creators have the right to destroy them? All my own art is derivative schlock, so maybe I’m biased, but I don’t see how the viewer/consumer whoever has any say in the matter. The show is over when it’s over. Should be compel musicians to record every live performance and make those available to people who couldn’t make it to the show too? What if someone was in the bathroom during their favorite song, should we compel an encore? Maybe it’s ok for some things to be ephemeral.
      - Blackthorn 3mo ago
        > Let’s take all these games as great artworks - why don’t their creators have the right to destroy them? Because they sold them. They put it out in the world. If they just made it and then immediately destroyed it, wonderful! But they didn't. And, also, their creators are not a monolith. They were worked on by hundreds of hands. The production company shouldn't get to unilaterally make that decision. > Should be compel musicians to record every live performance and make those available to people who couldn’t make it to the show too? This is this and that is that.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
gchamonlive 3mo ago
Just these big titles. The indie scene is thriving really well. I'd say let AAA die, we don't really need massively expensive cultural production to enable us to tell stories to each other
fcsp 3mo ago
Absolute shame, but to be fair the games that ship on disc without any patches are often in no shape to actually be played, so without the corresponding digital patch infrastructure it's already kinda problematic. Obviously, preservation is in no way in the interest of the companies, they just want to keep selling you the same game over and over as remakes and remasters ad infinitum
BillFranklin 3mo ago
I reckon Sony get a few more years of even more profitable rent seeking before the EU regulates them like Apple’s App Store and forces a game purchase to be valid on all platforms it’s playable on.
- pcchristie 3mo ago
  What would that look like? Genuinely not sure what you're suggesting. Do you mean a PS4 purchase means you have it for life and they must support it (or at least not revoke it)? Or you also get it on PS3/4/5 (as applicable)? Or you get it on PC and Xbox too?
BloondAndDoom 3mo ago
I feel like dark age of gaming started with MTX and since then it’s only getting worse. The fact that we have capable hardware like iPad without a very limited gaming ecosystem system itself shows it. We have so many problems with the gaming unfortunately, in addition to what you already said, MTX, gambling disguised as loot boxes, console and store exclusives, AAA pricing, lack of creativity in the AAA market etc
m463 3mo ago
> We simply have no way to preserve games. You can spend your money on GOG.com.
account42 3mo ago
Don't forget that a lot of games these days are "live services" that significantly change over their lifetime. What's left to preserve after the developer/publisher gets bored with the game is not the same game that the initial players experienced.

mywittyname 3mo ago

For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.

cjk 3mo ago
Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.
- bitmasher9 3mo ago
  Except Sony is notoriously bad at actually securing their consoles.
  - junon 3mo ago
    It shouldn't be the case that this is relied upon. There needs to be a cultural shift in the industry back to physical - or at least, preservable - media.
  - mywittyname 3mo ago
    The PS5 has been pretty secure (though, not perfect). They learned their lesson from the PS4 and took some pages out of the Microsoft playbook - brought back the hypervisor and implemented e-fuses. Byepervisor did crack the hypervisor, but it requires an old version of the firmware and the console has to be kept offline to avoid being upgraded. There's no mechanism to downgrade the firmware like there was with the PS4, which limits the blast radius of potential jailbreaks. Of course, even offline consoles can be updated, since games can ship with firmware updates required need to play the game.
    - ftruzzi 3mo ago
      All true, but you don’t need to crack the hypervisor to play cracked games, and if you manage to jailbreak your console there are game backports for older firmware versions. Also, there are unreleased kernel exploits (i.e. jailbreaks) even for the most recent firmware versions, which will inevitably come out in the future. The scene is not as mature as PS4, but a lot of progress was made this year.
  - croes 3mo ago
    Maybe AI will change that. That’s the crux, safe software is like an unbreakable lock. It can keep safe what you value or it can lock you in|out.
    - kdidjwixjwjd 3mo ago
      You lot really ought to stop with “AI will solve that” statements. It’s like watching a child play with Siri thinking it is a real person. C’mon now.
      - croes 3mo ago
        You read the "maybe"? And the rest of my statement isn’t about AI but about secure software.
- chaosharmonic 3mo ago
  Then let them turn into SEGA.
- prmoustache 3mo ago
  Just don't buy them. Are you a drone controlled by FOMO?
  - rbits 3mo ago
    They didn't say they were buying them. It is just undeniably a bad thing that you can't buy it without DRM. You can say "just don't buy it", but that doesn't make the existence of the DRM any better.
logicchains 3mo ago
>However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. If AI lives up to its promise then in 5-10 years it should be possible (and affordable) to just point an AI at the screen and let it clone all the graphics, then have it implement the engine.
- ssl-3 3mo ago
  If the game doesn't run in 5-10 years because of some licensing, DRM, physical, or other SNAFU, then there will be no game for the bot to observe.
- no_multitudes 3mo ago
  If just one of any number of millenarian cults live up to their promise then in 5-10 years we can play any game we want with Jesus up in heaven.
sikim 3mo ago
> encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked. I highly doubt this. The platforms that didn't have any jailbreaking scenes weren't because the devices were so secure; it was because there was not enough demand for it. If given enough time, there will always be hacks and bypasses just like Denuvo or hypervisor bypass like the recent hack.
- mywittyname 3mo ago
  You can doubt this. But the fact is, the Xbox One was secure for it's entire operational life without a crack. And the Series X/S has held up as well. It's completely possible that future consoles are secure enough that the components fail long before the security does.
  - k4rnaj1k 3mo ago
    iirc microsoft also allowed installing homebrew without cracking the console, which definitely was a conttibuting factor. Why hack the console if you can just install your own software already. And it isn't like any xbox console exclusives come to mind, all their stuff comes out on pc too.
  - jwrallie 3mo ago
    Arguably there was not much interest on those platforms. I believe you will be right eventually when physical access of the actual machines are kept away from us, so it’s a matter of solving the latency issue.
  - aizk 3mo ago
    There just isn't a demand for it. Have you seen just how dedicated nintendo hackers are? Check out decomp.dev https://decomp.dev/ https://decomp.dev/
    - rupx 3mo ago
      Decompliation is nothing compared to the effort and technical know-how required to jailbreak / exploit the Xbox One. The Xbox One might be single handledly the most complex and secure piece of human hardware. [1] (Highly recommend watching this talk). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTFn4UZsA5U

i1856511 3mo ago

Yes, those things cost money, but the money that we want to make, we want to make it today. And this is how we make it. What economic incentive is there for preservation? (/takes off devil's advocate hat and puts on flame suit)

wtetzner 3mo ago
The economic incentives will only come when enough people stop buying these kinds of games. Whether or not that will ever happen remains to be seen.
- j1elo 3mo ago
  Videogame preservation is on par with other media conservation, like literature; something that's an overall good for humanity as a whole, but not in the mind of the majority of consumers of such media. And that's perfectly OK. Most people just want to consume and forget. Conservation is a social interest amd must come from organized initiatives, it will never take shape magically from individual judgement.
slg 3mo ago
What economic incentive is there for art museums? Maybe society shouldn't be designed primarily around economic incentives.
madrox 3mo ago
Especially when you have a passionate community willing to work for free to preserve things, am I right?
RajT88 3mo ago
Nintendo has shown the way, for better or worse. Tightly managed first party IP with a lot of retro throwback games/compilations/crossovers/virtual console and an overly aggressive copyright approach to managing what people do with their IP (even if fair use). Nintendo plays the long game. They do not compete directly with Sony, Microsoft and the like.

downrightmike 3mo ago

Game companies should have to submit full copies of everything to run the game , servers and clients to the Library of Congress or Smithsonian for preservation

tokai 3mo ago
They should do legal deposit in the country the game is developed. Some places they have to. The Hitman series is in the collection of national library of Denmark.
canthonytucci 3mo ago
Why? Is there a lower form of “art” than always online AAA garbage? Im not going to lose any sleep over _COD 75: More of the Same Bullshit_ becoming lost media
- Blackthorn 3mo ago
  Most art is garbage, doesn't mean it's okay to make it inaccessible by fiat.
  - canthonytucci 3mo ago
    Let’s take all these games as great artworks - why don’t their creators have the right to destroy them? All my own art is derivative schlock, so maybe I’m biased, but I don’t see how the viewer/consumer whoever has any say in the matter. The show is over when it’s over. Should be compel musicians to record every live performance and make those available to people who couldn’t make it to the show too? What if someone was in the bathroom during their favorite song, should we compel an encore? Maybe it’s ok for some things to be ephemeral.
    - Blackthorn 3mo ago
      > Let’s take all these games as great artworks - why don’t their creators have the right to destroy them? Because they sold them. They put it out in the world. If they just made it and then immediately destroyed it, wonderful! But they didn't. And, also, their creators are not a monolith. They were worked on by hundreds of hands. The production company shouldn't get to unilaterally make that decision. > Should be compel musicians to record every live performance and make those available to people who couldn’t make it to the show too? This is this and that is that.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

gchamonlive 3mo ago

Just these big titles. The indie scene is thriving really well. I'd say let AAA die, we don't really need massively expensive cultural production to enable us to tell stories to each other

fcsp 3mo ago

Absolute shame, but to be fair the games that ship on disc without any patches are often in no shape to actually be played, so without the corresponding digital patch infrastructure it's already kinda problematic. Obviously, preservation is in no way in the interest of the companies, they just want to keep selling you the same game over and over as remakes and remasters ad infinitum

BillFranklin 3mo ago

I reckon Sony get a few more years of even more profitable rent seeking before the EU regulates them like Apple’s App Store and forces a game purchase to be valid on all platforms it’s playable on.

pcchristie 3mo ago
What would that look like? Genuinely not sure what you're suggesting. Do you mean a PS4 purchase means you have it for life and they must support it (or at least not revoke it)? Or you also get it on PS3/4/5 (as applicable)? Or you get it on PC and Xbox too?

BloondAndDoom 3mo ago

I feel like dark age of gaming started with MTX and since then it’s only getting worse. The fact that we have capable hardware like iPad without a very limited gaming ecosystem system itself shows it. We have so many problems with the gaming unfortunately, in addition to what you already said, MTX, gambling disguised as loot boxes, console and store exclusives, AAA pricing, lack of creativity in the AAA market etc

m463 3mo ago

> We simply have no way to preserve games. You can spend your money on GOG.com.

account42 3mo ago

Don't forget that a lot of games these days are "live services" that significantly change over their lifetime. What's left to preserve after the developer/publisher gets bored with the game is not the same game that the initial players experienced.