![]() ![]() Not providing commercial access is understandable, but preventing institutional work to preserve these titles on top of that is actively destructive to video game history. As a paying member of the Entertainment Software Association, Nintendo actively funds lobbying that prevents even libraries from being able to provide legal access to these games. What we don’t understand is what path Nintendo expects its fans to take, should they wish to play these games in the future. While it is unfortunate that people won’t be able to purchase digital 3DS or Wii U games anymore, we understand the business reality that went into this decision. Well, the Video Game History Foundation released a statement on that action and, well, hoo-boy… We just discussed Nintendo’s forthcoming shutdown of the 3DS and Wii U stores, and what that meant for digital games that Nintendo indicates it is not planning on selling anywhere else. We’ve talked in the past about how copyright law is far too often used in a way that results in a loss of our own cultural history, and digital-only video games are particularly vulnerable to that. But for gaming, even organizations like the Video Game History Foundation have to rely on publishers and platforms to let them do their work, or risk art being lost entirely to the digital ether or lawsuits over copyright. Books have libraries, films have the academies and museums, and music is decently preserved all over the place. ![]() It’s not entirely clear to me how much buy in there is out there in general on this concept, but it’s a challenge in this specific industry because much of the control over what can be preserved or not sits in the hands of game publishers and platforms compared with other forms of art. I’ve been banging on a bit lately about the importance of video game preservation as a matter of art preservation. Tue, Feb 22nd 2022 08:37pm - Timothy Geigner ![]()
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