Video Game Preservation
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Video game preservation is a form of
preservation Preservation may refer to: Heritage and conservation * Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible * ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
applied to the
video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...
that includes, but is not limited to,
digital preservation In library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal endeavor to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable. It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods an ...
. Such preservation efforts include archiving development
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
and art assets, digital copies of video games, emulation of video game hardware, maintenance and preservation of specialized video game hardware such as
arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
s and
video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally placed i ...
s, and digitization of print video game magazines and books prior to the Digital Revolution.


Importance of preservation

Besides retaining the ability to play games from the past, preservation of video games enables research on the history of video games as well as ways for developers to look at older games to build ideas from. There is also interest in the preservation of cancelled video games that were known to be in development, as coupled with the reasons for cancellation, they can provide an understanding of the technical and creative aspects, or lack thereof, at the time of the game's development. Unlike some examples of other forms of media like books, art and photography, and film, which antedate the mid-20th century and which can be preserved in a variety of formats that are not prohibited by more-recent
intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
(IP) laws, video games typically require specialized and/or proprietary computer hardware and software to read and execute game software. However, as technology advances, these older game systems become
obsolete Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
, no longer produced nor maintained to use for executing games. The media formats of the early days of computer gaming, relying on floppy discs and
CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...
s, suffer from
disc rot Disc rot is the tendency of compact disc, CD, DVD, or other optical discs to become unreadable because of physical or chemical deterioration. The causes include oxidation of the reflective layer, physical scuffing and abrasion of disc, reactions wi ...
and degrade over time, making it difficult to recover information. Further, video games tend to rely on other resources like
operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...
, network connectivity, and external servers outside control of users, and making sure these boundary aspects to a video game are preserved along with the game are also essential. One period of the video game industry that has received a great deal of attention is up through the 1980s. As a result of the
video game crash of 1983 The video game crash of 1983 (known as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including ma ...
, many companies involved in developing games folded or were acquired by other companies. In this process, the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
for many games prior to the crash were lost or destroyed, leaving only previously sold copies of games on their original format as evidence of their existence. Even of companies that survived the crash, long-term planning towards preservation was not always a consideration. Both
Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...
and
Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
are considered part of the few companies from this period known to have actively worked to backup and retain their games, even those that were cancelled or unreleased, over time. Code and assets can be lost during consolidation of companies or similar business activities; for example the assets for the 1997 ''
Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...
'' game were lost when
Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
had physically moved
Westwood Studios Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westw ...
following their acquisition, making it difficult for
Night Dive Studios Night Dive Studios, Inc. (doing business as Nightdive Studios) is an American video game developer based in Vancouver, Washington. The company was founded in November 2012 by Stephen and Alix Kick, former video game artists for Sony Online Ente ...
to attempt a remaster of the game around 2020. Another example includes the original code and art asset files for '' Starcraft (1998)'', which were lost during the development for '' StarCraft: Remastered''. As a result, the sprites had to be redone from scratch. Preservation also has become an issue with the prevalence of
digital distribution Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content (media), content such as Sound recording and reproductio ...
on console platforms; as manufacturers drop support for older hardware, games that exist only in digital form may be lost. This issue came to light when
Sony Interactive Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game industry, video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is ma ...
announced plans to shut down storefronts for the
PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...
,
PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 2005, ...
and
PlayStation Vita The PlayStation Vita (PS Vita, or Vita) is a handheld video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, and in North America, Europe, and other international territo ...
by mid-2021, though which Sony later reversed, leaving the PlayStation 3 and Vita stores open indefinitely, while limiting PlayStation Portable purchases to the Vita and PlayStation 3 storefronts. An estimated 2,200 games across these platforms were only available digitally, and while most have versions on other platforms, about 120 were exclusive to the Sony platform and would become completely unavailable after the stores' closure. Prior to reversing their decision, Sony did not provide any immediate plans to offer these titles by other means. Nintendo faced similar concerns when they announced plans to shutter the
Nintendo eShop The Nintendo eShop is a digital distribution service powered by the Nintendo Network for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, and by a dedicated online infrastructure for the Nintendo Switch. Launched in June 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS, the eShop was en ...
for the
Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. The W ...
and
Nintendo 3DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo. It was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generatio ...
by March 2023, which would remove around 1,000 digital-only games from availability. While some games available digitally are also offered in a physical retail product, the contents of the physical product may only be a portion of the game or a redemption key for a digital storefront. Additionally, digital games may be reliant on middleware solutions from third parties that may have gone out of business, making it near impossible to recover the full game even if the game developer has full source code available. An additional challenge are games that receive frequent updates that can change the nature of the game over time, such as those offered as
games as a service In the video game industry, games as a service (GaaS) represents providing video games or game content on a continuing revenue model, similar to software as a service. Games as a service are ways to monetize video games either after their initi ...
such as MMOs and
mobile game A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA to ...
s. These games also face issues when the supporting servers are shut down by the publisher or developer; unless the game is updated to split off the server dependencies, such as the case for '' Kingdom Hearts X'', these games become unplayable and lost to preservationusts. While preservationists can attempt to get copies of all intermediate states of a game, the use of video from gamers playing over streaming services has become more valuable to showcase the intermediate state of those games. Preservation of server-based games can still leave legal issues around copyright as a concern to the original game owner; for example,
Atlus is a Japanese video game developer, publisher, arcade manufacturer and distribution company based in Tokyo. A subsidiary of Sega, the company is known for video game series such as ''Megami Tensei'', ''Persona'', ''Etrian Odyssey'' and ''Trau ...
filed a lawsuit in late 2021 against players that had recreated the servers and client software for the defunct '' Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine'', claiming the fan-run project "caused and will continue to cause irreparable damage to Atlus". Preservation has become a greater priority for game companies since the 2000s with the ease of redundant digital storage solutions, and thus tends not to be an issue for games issued since that point.
Frank Cifaldi Frank Cifaldi (born May 22, 1982) is a video game preservationist, historian, and developer. Cifaldi founded ''Lost Levels'', a website that collected information about unreleased video games, in 2003. This began his career in the video game i ...
, director of the
Video Game History Foundation The Video Game History Foundation is a non-profit foundation founded by Frank Cifaldi. The primary aim of the foundation is the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games. History In a talk given at th ...
, said that
Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
had developed an extensive means of preserving their games at the end of the development cycle, and had contacted former employees to collect data and assets from past games to help preserve their titles. However, full game preservation for larger publishers and developers can be expensive for all but their best-selling titles.


Legal issues

Most issues related to video game preservation are based on the United States, one of the largest markets for video games, and as such, issues related to preservation are limited by laws of the country. In general, the copying and distribution of video games that are under copyright without authorization is considered a copyright violation (often called as software piracy). However, it has generally been tolerated that users may make archival copies of software (including video games) as long as they own the original software; if the user sells or loses the original software in any way, they must destroy the archival copies. This is also justification for a person being able to make
ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequentl ...
s from game cartridges that they own. In 1998, the United States Congress passed the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...
(DMCA), designed to bring copyright within the United States to align with two doctrines published by the
World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, 15 specialized agencies of the United Nation ...
in 1996. The DMCA make it a criminal offense to develop, sell, or use technologies that are designed to bypass
anti-circumvention Anti-circumvention refers to laws which prohibit the circumvention of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways which the rightsholders do not wish to allow. The requirement for anti-circumvention laws was globalized in 1996 ...
devices, including software
digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
(DRM) used in various forms of media. This subsequently made it illegal to backup up one's software for many games distributed via either game cartridge or optical disc, if some form of DRM was used to limit access to the software on the media. The
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
is responsible to open submissions for specific and narrow exemptions from interested parties every three years, and determine which of those, if any, to grant. Through the Library of Congress, some key exceptions to the DMCA have been granted to allow for video game preservation. * In the 2003 set of exemptions, the Library disallowed enforcement of the DMCA for "computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete" and for "computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access". * In the 2015 exemptions, the Library granted permission for preservationists to work around copy-protection in games which required an authentication step with an external server that was no longer online prior to playing the game which otherwise did not require online connectivity; this specifically did not cover games that were based on a server-client mode like most massively-multiplayer online games (MMOs). The exemption included the use of emulators and other computer programs that would be required to play the game on available systems. * In the 2018 exemptions, the Library allowed for preservation and fair use of server-based games like MMOs, permitting preservationists to offer such games where they have legally obtained the game's code within museums and libraries. The DMCA exemptions do not mean all ROM images are legal, and concern about continuing video game preservation was raised in mid-2018, after Nintendo initiated a lawsuit against two websites that distributed ROMs for games from their older platforms. Normal copyright laws and contractual agreements may also hamper legitimate preservation efforts. The 2000 game '' The Operative: No One Lives Forever'' and its sequel are considered to be in copyright limbo due to subsequent business moves that dispersed where the IP may have gone: the games were developed by
Monolith Productions Monolith Productions, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Kirkland, Washington. The company has been a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment since August 2004. History Monolith Productions was founded on October ...
which after publication became a subsidiary of
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE; also known as Warner Bros. Games or WB Games) is an American video game publisher based in Burbank, California, and part of the newly-formed Global Streaming and Interactive Entertainment unit of ...
. The games' publisher was
Sierra Entertainment Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, ...
, which had been owned by
Fox Interactive Fox Interactive was an American video game publisher based in Los Angeles, California. The company published games based on 20th Century Fox properties, yet also published several original titles, such as '' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos''. History ...
, a subsidiary of
20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...
, but later sold to
Vivendi Games Vivendi Games was an American video game publisher and holding company based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 1996 as CUC Software, the publishing subsidiary of CUC International, after the latter acquired video game companies Davidson & Associ ...
; Vivendi Games itself eventually was merged into
Activision Blizzard Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. (the publicly traded parent company of Activision Publishing) and Vivendi ...
. Around 2014,
Nightdive Studios Night Dive Studios, Inc. (doing business as Nightdive Studios) is an American video game developer based in Vancouver, Washington. The company was founded in November 2012 by Stephen and Alix Kick, former video game artists for Sony Online Ent ...
, a company with interest in reviving old games, had spent significant time working between Warner Bros., Fox, and Activision to try to track down the ownership of the game's IP but none of the three companies had immediate knowledge of the IP's state, and did not see the value in searching their paper archives to find the required documents, particularly in the case of jointly-owned IP. Further hampering preservation issues is the fact that most video game development are made as
work for hire A work made for hire (work for hire or WFH), in copyright law in the United States, is a work that is subject to copyright and is created by employees as part of their job or some limited types of works for which all parties agree in writing to the ...
products, with the ownership kept by the company that hires the video game developers rather than with the developer themselves. Many developers have kept some or all of the game's code they have worked on, but typically cannot release this due to their employment contracts and because their employer owns that copyright. However, some developers, after enough time has passed, have released their code to preservation efforts despite not owning the copyright directly, on the basis that the value of preservation would outweigh the impact on copyright.


Preservation of video game software


Emulation

Video game console emulator A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass ...
s use software that replicates the hardware environment of a video-game console, arcade machine, or specific PC architecture. Generally these create a
virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...
on newer computer systems that simulate the key processing units of the original hardware. The emulators then can read in software, such as a
ROM image A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequentl ...
for arcade games or cartridge-based systems, or the game's optical media disc or an
ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...
of that disc, to play the game in full. Emulation has been used in some official capacity on newer consoles. Nintendo's
Virtual Console A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Unix ...
allows games from its earlier consoles and other third-parties to be played on its newer ones. Sony had originally released the
PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...
with
backwards compatibility Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially i ...
with
PlayStation 1 The (abbreviated as PS, commonly known as the PS1/PS one or its codename PSX) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, in North America on 9 September 1995 ...
and
PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 3 ...
games if players had the original media, but have transitioned to selling emulated games in its
PlayStation Store The PlayStation Store (PS Store) is a digital media store available to users of Sony's PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 game consoles via the PlayStation Network. The store offers a range of downloadable content ...
as well as offering the
PlayStation Now PlayStation Now (PS Now) was a standalone video game subscription service the first on consoles developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The service offered cloud gaming for PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable a ...
cloud gaming Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or gaming-as-a-service or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game rem ...
service that allows PlayStation 3 games to be played on other devices including the
PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...
and compatible personal computers. Microsoft has created a backwards compatibility program through emulation to allow selected
Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the na ...
titles to be played on the
Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...
, and similarly another program for certain Xbox and Xbox 360 titles to be played on the
Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
and
Xbox Series X and Series S The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 2020, t ...
if they own the original game, and have made some of these titles available for purchase via
digital distribution Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of digital media content (media), content such as Sound recording and reproductio ...
through
Xbox Live The Xbox network, formerly and still sometimes branded as Xbox Live, is an Internet, online multiplayer video game, multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox ...
. Former console hardware companies such as
Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
and
Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
have released emulation-based collections of their games for multiple systems. In the PC space, emulation of either a game engine or full operating system are available. In these cases, players are expected to own copies of the game to use the content files.
DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...
emulates a complete
IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
operating system allowing most games for older computers to be run on modern systems. Emulators also exist for older
arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
s, such as
MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve ...
. Head of
Xbox Game Studios Xbox Game Studios (previously known as Microsoft Studios, Microsoft Game Studios, and Microsoft Games) is an American video game publisher and part of the Microsoft Gaming division based in Redmond, Washington. It was established in March 2000, ...
Phil Spencer has also suggested that
cloud gaming Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or gaming-as-a-service or game streaming, is a type of online gaming that runs video games on remote servers and streams them directly to a user's device, or more colloquially, playing a game rem ...
can help with emulation and preservation, as on the server backend for cloud gaming, more technical resources can be offered to support emulation in a manner that appears transparent to the end user. Spencer said "My hope (and I think I have to present it that way as of now) is as an industry we'd work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game." There are legalities related to emulation that can make it difficult to preserve video games in this manner. First, the legality of creating an emulator itself is unclear. Several United States case laws, notably ''
Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp. ''Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corporation'', 203 F.3d 596 (2000), is a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled that the copying of a copyrighted BIOS software during the development of an emulator software does not ...
'' (2000), have shown that developing emulation is a legal activity as long as no proprietary information or copyrighted code is incorporated into the emulation. This generally requires that the emulator be developed through
reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
in a
clean room design Clean-room design (also known as the Chinese wall technique) is the method of copying a design by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design. Clean-room design is usefu ...
, using only publicly released information about the system. Once completed, emulators need access to a game's ROM image or even a console's
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
image. While acquiring a copy of a ROM or BIOS by dumping from a console one owns for one's own use falls within
fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
, obtaining and distributing ROM and BIOS images from other parties are recognized as copyright violations.


Migration

Migration refers to re-releasing software from one platform to a newer platform, otherwise keeping all the gameplay, narrative, and art assets the same. This can be done through a few routes: * Game engine recreation: A new universal game engine can be developed that uses the original game assets but otherwise runs on any future hardware platform. Such examples include the
Z-machine The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions (called story files or Z-code ...
for many of the
Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...
text adventure games, and the
ScummVM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies ...
allows players to run nearly every LucasArts adventure game. * Software re-compilation or porting: The original source code for the game is re-compiled for a newer platform, making necessary changes to work on the newer hardware. This requires that the source code for the original game is available for this purpose. Many of the games published by
Digital Eclipse Digital Eclipse is an American video game developer based in Emeryville, California. Founded by Andrew Ayre in 1992, the company found success developing commercial emulations of arcade games for Game Boy Color. In 2003, the company merged ...
are based on decompiling of the original game's code with approval of the copyright owner into their own Eclipse engine which allows for porting to any number of systems.


Abandonware

Abandonware Abandonware is a product, typically software, ignored by its owner and manufacturer, and for which no official support is available. Within an intellectual rights contextual background, abandonware is a software (or hardware) sub-case of the g ...
refers to software that may still be capable of running on modern computers or consoles, but the developer or publisher has either disappeared, no longer sell the product, or no longer operate servers necessary for running the software, among other cases. Examples include ''
Freelancer ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
'' (as its publisher went out of business) and '' Black & White'' (due to the closure of the development studio). The aforementioned ''No One Lives Forever'' is considered such a case due to the lack of interest of the known likely-rights holders to affirm their ownership and work out licensing arrangements for rerelease. Because of the lack of availability of any legal retail route to purchase the case, these games may be offered at no cost by some websites, such as ''
Home of the Underdogs Home of the Underdogs (often called HotU) is an abandonware archive founded by Sarinee Achavanuntakul, in October 1998. Before shutting down the original version in 2009, the site provided reviews for over 5,300 games and offered downloads of so ...
'', typically with necessary patches to remove copyright protection and updates to play on newer systems. Legally, such software still falls under normal copyright laws, making this practice illegal. Copyright only disappears over time depending on its
copyright term The copyright term is the length of time copyright subsists in a work before it passes into the public domain. In most of the world, this length of time is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years. Length of copyright Copyright subsists f ...
(from 75 to 90 years for most video games), and even with shuttered companies, the copyright is an asset that often becomes owned by the liquidator of the closed company. Normally it would be up to the copyright owner to seek legal action, and with shuttered developers and publishers, this often did not happen, but since around 1999, video game trade organizations like the
Entertainment Software Association The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the trade association of the video game industry in the United States. It was formed in April 1994 as the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) and renamed on July 21, 2003. It is based in ...
have stepped in to take direct action against sites as representatives for all of its members. Under the DMCA, the Copyright Office has made exceptions since 2015 for allowing museums and other archivists to bypass copyright issues to get such software into a playable state, a new exception seeks to allow this specifically for multiplayer games requiring servers, specifically
massively-multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players, often hundreds or thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although there are ...
s.


Fan-driven efforts

In some cases, fans of a video game have helped to preserve the game to the best of their abilities without access to source code, even though the copyright nature of these fan projects are highly contentious, and more so when monetary issues are involved. Games like '' Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II'' and '' Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines'', which had difficult production issues before release, may leave unused assets to be found by players, and in the case of both these games, players have developed unofficial patches that work to complete the content, in some cases, exceeding expectations of the original content creators. Remakes of games to modern platforms or game engines may also be led through fan efforts. '' Black Mesa'' is a fan-based remake of the first ''
Half-Life Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...
'' game from
Valve Corporation Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, video game publisher, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam (service), Steam an ...
, but enhancing the game's assets from the original
GoldSrc GoldSrc ( ) is a proprietary game engine developed by Valve. At its core, GoldSrc is a heavily modified version of id Software's ''Quake'' engine. It originally made its debut in 1998 with ''Half-Life'', and would power future games developed b ...
game engine to the newer
Source Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...
engine, with Valve's blessing for the effort.


Databases

Video game databases have been created to track historical video games, particularly those from the early days of the industry which have become forgotten. Sites like
MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...
and the Internet Games Database (IGDB). ''Home of the Underdogs'' remains a database of early computer games after the site eliminated its abandonware offerings. User-driven databases (often provided in the "dat" format) created by video game "datting" groups that store hashes and other important metadata provide a quality assurance aspect by comparing different contributors' dump results. Redump.org stores the hash and metadata information for over 90,000 video game disc dumps. No-Intro.org stores the metadata and hashes for over 300,000 items for cartridge and digital games and content. These systems act as a card catalog to track game releases across various regions, comparing software revisions and other data such as serial numbers and barcodes. Additional databases, both functional and defunct, include TOSEC and trurip.


Others

Source code for older games, before rights were strongly controlled by publishers, were often kept by the programmers themselves, and they may release those, or may be part of their estate after death. In one case, a lost Nintendo Entertainment System game, an earlier version of ''
Days of Thunder ''Days of Thunder'' is a 1990 American sports action drama film released by Paramount Pictures, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Tony Scott. The cast includes Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, C ...
'' by
Chris Oberth Christian H. "Chris" Oberth (died July 16, 2012) was a game programmer who created early titles for the Apple II family of personal computers, handheld electronic games for Milton Bradley, and games for coin-operated arcade machines published in ...
, who had died in 2012, was recovered from source code on floppy discs from his work materials in 2020 by the
Video Game History Foundation The Video Game History Foundation is a non-profit foundation founded by Frank Cifaldi. The primary aim of the foundation is the archival, preservation, and dissemination of historical media related to video games. History In a talk given at th ...
with permission of his family. Preservation of video game software has come through dubious routes. Notably, the source code for all of the
Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. ...
text adventure games had been obtained by
Jason Scott Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped ...
in 2008 via an anonymous user in the "Infocom drive", an archive file that represented the entirety of the Infocom's main server days prior to the company's relocation from Massachusetts to California in 1989. While Scott was aware this was akin to
industrial espionage Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governmen ...
, he still had published the source code for the games for purposes of preservation. John Hardie of the
National Videogame Museum National Videogame Museum may refer to: * National Videogame Museum (United States) The National Videogame Museum is a video game museum about the history of video games and the video game industry, located in Frisco, Texas. Opened in 2016, ...
had gone
dumpster diving Dumpster diving (also totting, skipping, skip diving or skip salvage) is salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unused items discarded by their owners but deemed useful to the picker. It is n ...
through the trash of shutdown companies to recover materials for his collection.


Preservation of video game hardware

While in most cases, digitizing the software for video games is sufficient for preservation, there have been enough unique consoles with limited production runs that can create further challenges for video game preservation as it is difficult to emulate its software. When hardware is in ready supply, white-hat hackers and programmers can freely tear-down these systems to analyze their internals for reverse engineering for preservation, but when systems are in limited supply, such tactics are not appropriate. These systems can also degrade as well. More often, broken or non-functional versions of older hardware can be acquired to demonstrate that such systems existed, but fail to work as a software preservation tool. For example, only one copy of the
Super NES CD-ROM The Super NES CD-ROM System (commonly shortened as the SNES-CD), known as Super Famicom CD-ROM Adapter in Japan, is an unreleased video game peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The add-on built upon the functionality ...
, a Sony-produced Super Nintendo Entertainment System with a CD-ROM drive, has been found out of an estimated 200 that were produced before Sony and Nintendo's deal changed. The unit was carefully repaired to be able to use the CD-ROM so that some functionality of its software could be verified and allow the few known software titles to be tested on it.


Print media preservation

Box art and game manuals accompanied most games published before 2000, and there had been an extensive number of magazines published on video games which have since declined. There is a strong interest in the digital preservation of these materials alongside software and hardware as reference material to help document the early history of video games, which did not receive the type of detailed coverage that the field sees as of the 2010s. In most cases, these works are preserved through digital scanning and storage from libraries and user collections. The Video Game History Foundation maintains a physical and digital collection of these magazines in their collection, while RetroMags has similarly worked to provide digital archives of retro gaming magazines under a
fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
approach given that most of these magazines and their publishers are now defunct.


Preservation efforts


Library of Congress

The
United States Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
(LoC) launched the
National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the United States was an archival program led by the Library of Congress to archive and provide access to digital resources. The program convened several working ...
(NDIIPP) in 2000 to preserve non-traditional media. Around 2007, the LoC started reaching out to partners in various industries to help explore how they archive such content. The LoC had funded the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...
(UIUC) from 2004 to 2010 to develop the ECHO DEPository ("Exploring Collaborations to Harvest Objects in a Digital Environment for Preservation") program.


Preserving Virtual Worlds

Preserving Virtual Worlds was one project funded by the LoC and conducted by the
Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...
,
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, the
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
, and the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...
, along with support from
Linden Lab Linden Research, Inc., doing business as Linden Lab, is an American technology company that is best known as the creator of ''Second Life''. The company's head office is in San Francisco, with additional offices in Boston, Seattle, Virginia an ...
, running from 2008 to 2010. The study explored a range of games, from ''
Spacewar! ''Spacewar!'' is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Mas ...
'' (1962) through ''
Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
'' (2003, which was developed by Linden Lab), to determine what methods could be used for preserving these titles. The project concluded that while there are technical solutions for preservation of game software, such as identifying common formats for digital storage and developing database architectures to track ownership, many issues related to preservation remain legal in nature relating to copyright laws.


National Film and Sound Archive

The
National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national co ...
of Australia announced in September 2019 that they will start to create an archive of Australian-developed video games for preservation and exhibition, with games to be added on an annual basis. The preservation effort will include not only the software but art, music, and other creative assets, as well as making considerations for playability in the long-term.


Internet Archive

The
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
started adding emulation of video games from older systems for play. The Archive developed Emularity, a web-browser based emulator to run a number of out-of-production arcade, console, and computer emulations, and offer numerous titles to be played through the Archive. The project's maintainer,
Jason Scott Jason Scott Sadofsky (born September 13, 1970), more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist, historian of technology, filmmaker, performer, and actor. Scott has been known by the online pseudonyms Sketch, SketchCow, The Slipped ...
, said that most companies do not take issue with their ROM images being offered in this manner, but did note that Nintendo has put pressure on them to not include any Nintendo consoles within the collection. They also began to archive
Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
animations and games in November 2020, ahead of the December 31, 2020, end-of-life for Adobe Flash, using a new emulator called Ruffle.


Video Game History Foundation

Frank Cifaldi Frank Cifaldi (born May 22, 1982) is a video game preservationist, historian, and developer. Cifaldi founded ''Lost Levels'', a website that collected information about unreleased video games, in 2003. This began his career in the video game i ...
is one of the leading historians in the video game industry trying to encourage more video game preservation and to help recover games once thought lost. By 2016, he had spent about twenty years trying to encourage preservation as to track video game history, and established the non-profit Video Game History Foundation in 2016. The Foundation not only seeks to preserve games, but box art, manuals, and promotional material from video games, believing that these combined can help future historians understand the culture of games in the past.


National Videogame Museum

The National Videogame Museum in the United States was born out of archival work performed by John Hardie who had run the Classic Gaming Expo. During this time Hardie had collected a number of video game materials from others and his own efforts. The collection of material collected drew interest from industry events including E3 and the
Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutori ...
, helping to promote the collection. Hardie exhibited the materials through traveling shows, and got interest from
Randy Pitchford Randy Pitchford is an American businessman. He co-founded the video game development studio Gearbox Software in 1999 and was president and CEO for the company until 2021, upon which he became CEO and president of Gearbox's parent company, The G ...
to establish a permanent home for the collection. The Museum was opened in Frisco, Texas, in 2016. While some companies have donated materials to the Museum, Hardie stated it has been difficult in convincing other developers and publishers to contribute to the preservation efforts.


The Centre for Computing History

The Centre for Computing History The Centre for Computing History is a museum in Cambridge, England, established to create a permanent public exhibition telling the story of the Information Age. Overview The museum acts as a repository for vintage computers and related artefa ...
's ongoing efforts have resulted in the physical preservation of over 13,000 video games since 2008. Information for every item in the collection is accessible via their online catalogue. The centre also digitally archives source code for games such as the '' Magic Knight'' series by David Jones, and preserves and hosts scans of original sketches and other development materials from game companies such as
Guerrilla Games Guerrilla B.V. (trade name: Guerrilla Games) is a Dutch First-party developer, first-party video game developer based in Amsterdam and part of PlayStation Studios. The company was founded as Lost Boys Games in January 2000 through the merger of ...
. Their work emphasises the importance of preserving all aspects of the experience of a game, from marketing materials to the copy protection experience, packaging, and hardware. The centre's collection also hosts uncommon hardware and operating systems with this in mind. The centre is also working with current video game developers and publishers, acting as a repository for their ongoing work so that it is actively preserved.


The Strong Institute

Among other educational aspects
The Strong The Strong is an interactive, collections-based educational institution in Rochester, New York, United States, devoted to the study and exploration of play. It carries out this mission through six programmatic arms called "Play Partners": * Nat ...
institute in
Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
, operates the
International Center for the History of Electronic Games The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) collects, studies, and interprets video games, other electronic games, and related materials and the ways in which electronic games are changing how people play, learn, and conn ...
.


Videogame Heritage Society

The Videogame Heritage Society is an effort started by the United Kingdom's
National Videogame Museum National Videogame Museum may refer to: * National Videogame Museum (United States) The National Videogame Museum is a video game museum about the history of video games and the video game industry, located in Frisco, Texas. Opened in 2016, ...
along with the
British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
, the
Museum of London The Museum of London is a museum in London, covering the history of the UK's capital city from prehistoric to modern times. It was formed in 1976 by amalgamating collections previously held by the City Corporation at the Guildhall, London, Gui ...
, the
Centre for Computing History The Centre for Computing History is a museum in Cambridge, England, established to create a permanent public exhibition telling the story of the Information Age. Overview The museum acts as a repository for vintage computers and related artefac ...
, the
National Science and Media Museum The National Science and Media Museum (formerly The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, 1983–2006 and then the National Media Museum, 2006–2017), located in Bradford, West Yorkshire, is part of the national Science Museum G ...
in Bradford,
Bath Spa University Bath Spa University is a public university in Bath, England, with its main campus at Newton Park, about west of the centre of the city. The university has other campuses in the city of Bath, and one at Corsham Court in Wiltshire. The instit ...
, and several independent collectors in 2020 to preserve
video games developed in the United Kingdom Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) system ...
.


Game Preservation Society

Founded in 2011 in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, the Game Preservation Society preserves the history of
Japanese video games Video games are a major industry in Japan. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games, including Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yamauchi, Sega during the same time period, Sony Computer Ent ...
. The organization's focus is the preservation of 1980s Japanese computer games for platforms like the
PC-88 The , commonly shortened to PC-88, are a brand of Zilog Z80-based 8-bit home computers released by Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in 1981 and primarily sold in Japan. The PC-8800 series sold extremely well and became one of the three major Japane ...
and
Sharp X1 The , sometimes called the Sharp X1 or CZ-800C, is a series of home computers released by Sharp Corporation from 1982 to 1988. It is based on a Zilog Z80 CPU. The RGB display monitor for the X1 had a television tuner, and a computer screen c ...
. The society's president, French national Joseph Redon, estimates that they will only be able to preserve about 80% of Japanese computer games.


National Software Reference Library

While strictly not set up for preservation, the
National Software Reference Library The National Software Reference Library (NSRL), is a project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) which maintains a repository of known software, file profiles and file signatures for use by law enforcement and other organiz ...
, created and maintained by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
(NIST) has included a number of popular game software among other software principally used for help in digital forensics, storing electronic copies of these games and other programs. The initial games collection was added in 2016 with numerous titles collected by Stephen Cabrinety, who had died in 1995; in 2018, Valve, Activision-Blizzard, and Electronic Arts all donated additional titles to be added to the collection, while NIST itself purchased other popular titles to include.


Hong Kong Game Association (RETRO.HK)

Founded in 2015 in
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
by Dixon Wu and other volunteers with decades of video game knowledge, the Hong Kong Game Association is a non-profit society dedicated to preserve, curate, and showcase video game history, especially focusing on locally developed PC & console games, and traditional Chinese video game literature. The Association organizes the annual RETRO.HK Gaming Expo and RetroCup – free annual retro game events that are dedicated to promoting video game and competitive gaming as a culture and art form to the public. The association has worked with multiple local universities or colleges to promote the cause, such as
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is a public research university located in Hung Hom, Hong Kong near Hung Hom station. The University is one of the eight government-funded degree-granting tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Founded ...
,
The City University of Hong Kong City University of Hong Kong (CityU) is a world-class public research university located in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1984 as City Polytechnic of Hong Kong and became a fully accredited university in 1994. Currently, CityU is ...
,
The Open University of Hong Kong ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
, and the
Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education The Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) is one of the member institutions of the Vocational Training Council (VTC) offering vocational education to post-secondary students in Hong Kong through its nine campi located across the terr ...
(IVE) group.


The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment

Founded in 2011 in
Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
, the
Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (stylized as The MADE) is an Oakland, California, museum dedicated to digital art and gaming, with fully playable gaming exhibits. Its mission is to collect and curate video games, digital media concep ...
, the MADE performed the first institutional preservation of an online game when it worked with F. Randall Farmer,
Chip Morningstar Chip Morningstar is an American software architect, mainly for online entertainment and communication. Morningstar held many jobs throughout his career in the research and development of technology and programs. Most notably was Morningstar's r ...
,
Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
, and a group of volunteers to relaunch
LucasFilm Games Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor that is part of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a large ...
' ''Habitat''. This work lead to collaboration with UC Berkeley to petition for a 1201 DMCA exemption for the preservation of MMO games. The source code to Habitat has since been release as open source software under the MIT license. The MADE continues to work on further digital preservation, focusing on source code and online games.


Embracer Group Archive

The
Embracer Group Embracer Group AB (formerly Nordic Games Licensing AB and THQ Nordic AB) is a Swedish video game and media holding company based in Karlstad. The company was established under the name Nordic Games Licensing in 2011 as part of Nordic Games Gro ...
had acquired a large number of video game developers and publishers over the years, and announced in May 2022 the Embracer Group Archive to help preserve games from these groups as well as other parties. While maintained as a physical collection with over 50,000 as of May 2022, the Archive plans to expand to allow online access to portions of its collection for research purposes.


The Syd Bolton Collection

Formally known as the
Personal Computer Museum The Personal Computer Museum was located in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in a building formerly owned by the municipal government. The building was built with bricks reclaimed from the Brantford Opera House. Over fifty interactive personal compute ...
, the collection of over 14,000 computer and console games and 5,000 game magazines was started by programmer Syd Bolton in 2005 and maintained by a staff of volunteers. Following Bolton's death in 2018, the collection was transferred to the
University of Toronto Mississauga The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), also known as U of T Mississauga, is one of the three campuses that make up the tri-campus system of the University of Toronto. Located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, the campus opened in 1967 as Er ...
and kept available to the public via the Syd Bolton Collection.


Flashpoint

The
Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...
standard, heavily used in browser-based video games in the 2000s, was fully removed from most web browsers at the end of 2020 due to long-running security issues with the Flash format, and made these games unplayable. An effort called
BlueMaxima's Flashpoint BlueMaxima's Flashpoint is a Flash game and animation preservation project that allows for the usage of more than 100,000 rich web applications that are no longer possible to play online after all major browsers removed native support for NPAPI ...
was established in 2018 to collect as many of the freely-available Flash games as possible for archival purposes, excluding those games that were offered commercially or that require a server to play, and allowing authors to request removal. As of January 2020, the Flashpoint project had more than 38,000 Flash games in its archive.


Project Deluge

Project Deluge, run by a group of video game fans called Hidden Palace, is a collection of various video game prototypes from the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, CD-i, and original Xbox console games available in various forms for users to view or play, typically through use of an emulator. These prototypes reportedly are based on a collection of such games maintained by one user who had worked to assure all the prototypes they collected from developers and publishers were digitally preserved so that Hidden Palace was then able to share them with the larger community. Such prototypes can help video game historians track how games had changed over their development period, as well as prototypes of cancelled games. Hidden Palace is also responsible for unearthing many prototypes from the ''
Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers mo ...
'' games, notably finding prototypes of ''
Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers mo ...
'' and ''
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is a 1994 platform game developed and published by Sega for the Genesis. Like previous '' Sonic'' games, players traverse side-scrolling levels while collecting rings and defeating enemies. They control Sonic and Tails, who attempt to retri ...
'', previously thought to be lost.


Rereleases

Companies like
GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...
and
Night Dive Studios Night Dive Studios, Inc. (doing business as Nightdive Studios) is an American video game developer based in Vancouver, Washington. The company was founded in November 2012 by Stephen and Alix Kick, former video game artists for Sony Online Ente ...
are recognized for helping to migrate older games to modern systems. Among their efforts include doing the research to track down all legal rights that are associated with a game, including those that have changed hands several times, as to get clearance or rights to republish the title, locate as much of the game's original source code and adapt that to work on modern systems, or when source code is not available, reverse engineer the game to either work natively or through emulation (like
DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source emulator which runs software for MS-DOS compatible disk operating systems—primarily video games. It was first released in 2002, when DOS technology was becoming obsolete. Its adoption for running DOS games i ...
) with modern hardware. GOG.com and Night Dive have successfully freed some games from IP limbo, such as ''
System Shock 2 ''System Shock 2'' is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during product ...
'', while identifying titles that remain difficult to republish and preserve legally due to conflicts on IP rights holders, such as '' No One Lives Forever''.


Game-specific archival projects

As some games receive continuous updates rather than only having a single definitive stable release, it is possible for older versions of a specific game to become lost. Communities exist which focus on preserving certain such games, such as Omniarchive, a team focusing specifically on
Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...
archival.


See also

*
Video game collecting Video game collecting is the hobby of collecting and preserving video games, video game consoles, and related memorabilia. Most video game consoles, and their games, are considered to be collectors' items years after their discontinuation due to t ...


References

{{reflist Video game industry Digital preservation