This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own.
Spotify did that too. Got to listen to THE definitive worst cover of Hotel California I’ve ever heard. I don’t trust cloud services with my music anymore. Mp3’s forever.
I read more, and I changed my mind. I think it’s fair to require games to state a minimum time frame of support. Like say, a year. And if they cancel the game before then, you get a full refund including microtransactions etc.
That’s the horrible thing about online services. You never really own it, it can be taken away from you at any time. If you want to preserve something, you need physical and/or offline access.
And in addition to that sentiment, compression from moving or sending a copy of a copy is known to very slowly degrade digital media, so physical is almost always preferred.
Sure, it’s possible, but it’s unlikely. A properly kept laserdisc compared to, for example, a YouTube Video isn’t even a competition. Physical media not exposed to radiation or impact can last decades if not centuries. Don’t even get me started on Vynil.
Literally every seeder is part of that archive. You can look at individual trackers in the microcosm as individual archives and indices, but it’s the culture of piracy that causes the wide scale collection and preservation of media.
We’re actually at this kind of interesting cross-generational point of guerilla archival where it’s become easier to find certain obscure pieces of media history. I suspect this is in large part due to things like bounties, where suddenly a forgotten VHS of a 35 year old HBO special that aired once or twice could be a step toward a higher rank and greater access to a wider range of media.
Modern piracy has a strong incentive toward finding lost material that’s no longer readily available. Zero day content is great, but have you seen the RADAR pilot or both seasons of AfterMASH?
They belong in a museum. Indie would be proud, even if Harrison wouldn’t. Not that I know his perspective on piracy.
If you use most digital formats for media and compress them with something like .7z or Winrar, then it might take years or decades to noticeable degrade, but it is still a matter of when not if.
Holy crap. File compression is not the same thing as lossy media compression.
File compression uses mathematical algorithms to create definable outcomes. Meaning it doesn’t matter how much you compress/uncompress a file, it will always be exactly the same.
5 X 2 will always give you 10 and 10 ÷ 2 will always give you 5.
Compression and transmission of data causes loss of parity. We lose or flip some 1s and 0s. Over time the effects become very noticeable. The best visual example I can think of are experiments where YouTubers downloaded and reuploaded their own video 100 times, it very quickly degrades. In a more reasonable scenario, near lossless file types and compressions would degrade much more slowly.
The best visual example I can think of are experiments where YouTubers downloaded and reuploaded their own video 100 times
This has nothing to do with copying a file. YouTube re-encodes videos whenever they are uploaded.
A file DOES NOT DEGRADE when it is copied. That is something that happened to VHS and cassette tapes. It does not happen to digital files. You can even verify this by generating a hash of a file, copy it 10,000 times, and generate a new hash and they would be 100% identical.
No I won’t be, because I’ve done this before for various reasons, but not a single but was changed.
Let me put it this way. A computer stores programs and instructions it needs to run in files on a drive. These files contain exact and precise instructions for various components to operate. If even a SINGLE bit is off in just a couple of the OS files, your computer will start throwing constant errors if not just crashing entirely.
And this isn’t just theory. It’s provable. Cosmic rays have been known to sometimes hit a drive and cause a bit-flip. Or another issue is a drive not being powered on for a long time causing bit-rot
At this point I’m starting to think you’re a troll. There’s no way someone believes what you’re saying.
experiments where YouTubers downloaded and reuploaded their own video 100 times, it very quickly degrades
That just means Youtube’s software uses lossy compression, that is a Youtube problem, not a digital media problem. Are you familiar with the concept of file hashing? A short string can be derived from a file, such that if any bit of the file is altered, it will produce a different hash. This can be used in combination with other methods to ensure perfect data consistency; for example a file torrent that remains well seeded won’t degrade, because the hash is checked by the software, so if anyone’s copy changes at all due to physical degradation of a harddrive or whatever other reason, the error will be recognized and routed around. If you don’t want to rely on other people to preserve something, there is always RAID, a 50 year old technology that also avoids data changing or being lost assuming that you maintain your hardware and replace disks as they break.
Here’s the fundamental reason you’re wrong about this: computers are capable of accounting for every bit, conclusively determining if even one of them has changed, and restoring from redundant backup. If someone wants to perfectly preserve a digital file and has the necessary resources and knowledge, they can easily do so. No offense but what you are saying is ignorant of a basic property of how computers work and what they are capable of.
It’s the most obvious example of a digital media problem. Computers might be able to account for every bit with the use of parity files and backups with frequent parity checks, but the fact is most people aren’t running a server with 4 separately powered and monitored drives as their home computer, and even the most complex system of data storage can fail or degrade eventually.
We live in a world of problems, like the YouTube problem, compression problems, encoding problems, etc. We do because we chose efficiency and ease of use over permanency.
Computers might be able to account for every bit with the use of parity files and backups with frequent parity checks
Yes, and this can be done through mostly automatic or distributed processes.
even the most complex system of data storage can fail or degrade eventually.
I wouldn’t describe it as complex, just the bare minimum of what is required to actually preserve data with no loss. All physical mediums may degrade through physical processes, but redundant systems can do better.
but the fact is most people aren’t running a server with 4 separately powered and monitored drives as their home computer
It isn’t hard to seed a torrent. If a group of people want to preserve a file, they can do it this way, perfectly, forever, so long as there remain people willing to devote space and bandwidth.
We live in a world of problems, like the YouTube problem, compression problems, encoding problems, etc. We do because we chose efficiency and ease of use over permanency.
All of these problems boil down to intent. Do people intend to preserve a file, do they not care, do they actively favor degradation? In the case of the OP game, it seems that the latter must be the case. Same with Youtube, same with all those media companies removing shows and movies entirely from all public availability, same with a lot of companies. If someone wants to preserve something, they choose the correct algorithms, simple as that. There isn’t necessarily much of a tradeoff for efficiency and ease of use in doing so, disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap, the technology is mature and not complicated to use. Long term physical storage can be a part of that, but it isn’t a replacement for intent or process.
You’re referring to a video codec degrading as it keeps rendering the video again, not just copying and pasting the bits. There is no degradation from copying and pasting a file as-is.
And then what? Corporations will just slap a disclaimer on their products informing you of said condition and that you need to agree, understand and accept these terms and conditions and call it a day.
I feel like lack of ownership of more and more things in our lives is a sign of problems. Sure, this is just a silly game. But this kind of shit is already hitting cars.
And then products without that label would gain at least a little a bit of market share. Most people still buy inefficient fridges because they are shinier, but at least a few read those yellow labels mandated by law and choose the more efficient ones.
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the problem is that we’ve allowed this to happen. all mobile games function this way, the “rug” can be pulled at any time. all that money you spent on gacha pulls, was it worth it?
the problem goes back innocuously to MMO subscriptions, i think. which had a valid reason for existing, but an MMO can be “rug pulled” at any time as well, thankfully most of the greats have stayed up (wow, ffxi, eq) but ONE DAY they will be gone forever, relegated to private servers only.
I appreciate the sentiment around preservation, but there’s an argument to be made that if you make something, you should get to decide if you want to destroy it. Banksy did something like this recently by destroying one of his pieces of art when it went up for auction.
@Kushan so you’re saying they should be able to take your money and then destroy what you bought with out any sort of warning or compensation right? I strongly disagree with you if that’s what you’re saying.
No no, not at all - I agree with you, if you sell something to someone you shouldn’t be able to just take it back arbitrarily.
However, OP is talking about forcing companies to open source something they created - and while I love open source and am a big supporter of it, I don’t think that’s necessarily right either.
I don’t believe in that at all, human lives and the feelings associated with them are finite, the appreciation of art lasts as long as the canvas does which can be hundreds to thousands of years depending on what it is. The feelings they feel as the artist aren’t significant on that time-frame and whatever respect I have for them is irrelevant in that context. I believe in preservation even against the will of creators because it benefits future generations, for the same reason historical knowledge does and their feelings today do not.
People have told me I’d feel different if it was my art but not really (I find that argument incredibly presumptuous and condescending which is why I’m acknowledging them here before anyone has the chance to make them as some kind of comeback), I recognize the value of art and the fact that just like these other artists I won’t be around forever either.
The Banksy example is also bad because they didn’t take anything away from anyone, just sold something that would change form after sale. And they knew that this stunt would only increase the art’s value going in.
I agree with your sentiment that a creator should have control over their work. However. I do feel that an art piece which can only exist in one form is different from commercial mass media. Mainly because you start getting in to an “original vs a copy” territory. While I believe an owner of something should have control over copyrights…once someone legally owns a “copy” of something that copy should be theirs since the owner made the mass media thing for the public to consume I believe the public should, at some point, have a say in the future trajectory of the product, after all it is still the public who “decide” if a product is good and will be remembered, and they even “decide” the value of the product as well.
Art is usually only made for a select few to own…it is “artisanal”…meanwhile video games are made for a much larger group…
Moshi moshi, mr publisher? That book I released a year ago? Yeah, I want all copies destroyed. Yes, I mean ALL of them, including copies currently in possession of people who bought it legally.
Game preservation is dying because of DRM. You want games you can still play in 10 years, pirate that sht and donate to those keeping up the good art of game cracking. It’s either that or buying remakes a decade later that are just thinly reskinned. I can live with sht like denuvo since newer games just remove it after a year and then I can buy it. Storefronts like uplay or egs that are dependent on a malignant profit only entity are at best mid-term rentals and at worst spyware you have to pay for the privilege to use.
Furthermore, if you don’t want to pirate: Buy your games on GoG. They are DRM free and you don’t need the launcher to play (GoG Galaxy is amazing though btw)
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I bought a bunch of music on Google Play Music, forgot about it. Come back a year later and it’s all deleted because they shut the service down.
It’s still on your YouTube Music account, if you clicked that button.
Should be automatic, but…
Sadly there was a pretty short grace period to do so. It should have indeed been automatic.
Yep, I was sent one email to an old email address I do not use.
laughs in yo-ho-ho
Never buy from the cloud, only rent.
Your purchases didn’t migrate over to YouTube music?? I still have all the music I bought
I did find that some of my uploaded library got changed to different versions of songs, which I didn’t like.
Spotify did that too. Got to listen to THE definitive worst cover of Hotel California I’ve ever heard. I don’t trust cloud services with my music anymore. Mp3’s forever.
This is why hard copy is refusing to die.
You had a limited time window to manually do that. I didn’t get the memo.
I think illegal might be a little bit too far
I read more, and I changed my mind. I think it’s fair to require games to state a minimum time frame of support. Like say, a year. And if they cancel the game before then, you get a full refund including microtransactions etc.
Someone is very addicted to Facebook games rofl
“You know that thing you legally purchased? We’re taking it away and you’re not getting your money back.”
And this is why I only buy games that I can load on a PC and play without an internet connection.
This really sucks when you have to explain this kind of thing to your kids…
That’s the horrible thing about online services. You never really own it, it can be taken away from you at any time. If you want to preserve something, you need physical and/or offline access.
And in addition to that sentiment, compression from moving or sending a copy of a copy is known to very slowly degrade digital media, so physical is almost always preferred.
Err, no. Lossless compression is lossless and there are a bunch of techniques to ensure that a copy is bit-for-bit identical to the original
As long as you are very serious about your backup system, digital can outlast physical.
Sure, it’s possible, but it’s unlikely. A properly kept laserdisc compared to, for example, a YouTube Video isn’t even a competition. Physical media not exposed to radiation or impact can last decades if not centuries. Don’t even get me started on Vynil.
Piracy is a pretty great backup system for everyone. You’re welcome.
Somebody somewhere is archiving it or it has the same problem.
Literally every seeder is part of that archive. You can look at individual trackers in the microcosm as individual archives and indices, but it’s the culture of piracy that causes the wide scale collection and preservation of media.
We’re actually at this kind of interesting cross-generational point of guerilla archival where it’s become easier to find certain obscure pieces of media history. I suspect this is in large part due to things like bounties, where suddenly a forgotten VHS of a 35 year old HBO special that aired once or twice could be a step toward a higher rank and greater access to a wider range of media.
Modern piracy has a strong incentive toward finding lost material that’s no longer readily available. Zero day content is great, but have you seen the RADAR pilot or both seasons of AfterMASH?
They belong in a museum. Indie would be proud, even if Harrison wouldn’t. Not that I know his perspective on piracy.
I have a folder on my D: called OLDINSTALL.
It’s my entire hard drive from 1996, including DOS.
I think it’s a couple hundred megabytes in size, but the vast majority of the files and games were exclusively in floppy disk format.
I don’t have a floppy drive or any disks anymore.
Games don’t get lossy compressed when sent. They aren’t films or photographs.
Also even if you’re using lossy compression you don’t recompress things every time lol.
If you use most digital formats for media and compress them with something like .7z or Winrar, then it might take years or decades to noticeable degrade, but it is still a matter of when not if.
Holy crap. File compression is not the same thing as lossy media compression.
File compression uses mathematical algorithms to create definable outcomes. Meaning it doesn’t matter how much you compress/uncompress a file, it will always be exactly the same.
5 X 2 will always give you 10 and 10 ÷ 2 will always give you 5.
It is literally the other way around.
There is no way for digital media to degrade, unless it is the physical media.
Compression and transmission of data causes loss of parity. We lose or flip some 1s and 0s. Over time the effects become very noticeable. The best visual example I can think of are experiments where YouTubers downloaded and reuploaded their own video 100 times, it very quickly degrades. In a more reasonable scenario, near lossless file types and compressions would degrade much more slowly.
This has nothing to do with copying a file. YouTube re-encodes videos whenever they are uploaded.
A file DOES NOT DEGRADE when it is copied. That is something that happened to VHS and cassette tapes. It does not happen to digital files. You can even verify this by generating a hash of a file, copy it 10,000 times, and generate a new hash and they would be 100% identical.
You should perform that exact experiment with a sufficient number of bits, you’ll be surprised.
No I won’t be, because I’ve done this before for various reasons, but not a single but was changed.
Let me put it this way. A computer stores programs and instructions it needs to run in files on a drive. These files contain exact and precise instructions for various components to operate. If even a SINGLE bit is off in just a couple of the OS files, your computer will start throwing constant errors if not just crashing entirely.
And this isn’t just theory. It’s provable. Cosmic rays have been known to sometimes hit a drive and cause a bit-flip. Or another issue is a drive not being powered on for a long time causing bit-rot
At this point I’m starting to think you’re a troll. There’s no way someone believes what you’re saying.
Edit: autocorrect
That just means Youtube’s software uses lossy compression, that is a Youtube problem, not a digital media problem. Are you familiar with the concept of file hashing? A short string can be derived from a file, such that if any bit of the file is altered, it will produce a different hash. This can be used in combination with other methods to ensure perfect data consistency; for example a file torrent that remains well seeded won’t degrade, because the hash is checked by the software, so if anyone’s copy changes at all due to physical degradation of a harddrive or whatever other reason, the error will be recognized and routed around. If you don’t want to rely on other people to preserve something, there is always RAID, a 50 year old technology that also avoids data changing or being lost assuming that you maintain your hardware and replace disks as they break.
Here’s the fundamental reason you’re wrong about this: computers are capable of accounting for every bit, conclusively determining if even one of them has changed, and restoring from redundant backup. If someone wants to perfectly preserve a digital file and has the necessary resources and knowledge, they can easily do so. No offense but what you are saying is ignorant of a basic property of how computers work and what they are capable of.
It’s the most obvious example of a digital media problem. Computers might be able to account for every bit with the use of parity files and backups with frequent parity checks, but the fact is most people aren’t running a server with 4 separately powered and monitored drives as their home computer, and even the most complex system of data storage can fail or degrade eventually.
We live in a world of problems, like the YouTube problem, compression problems, encoding problems, etc. We do because we chose efficiency and ease of use over permanency.
Yes, and this can be done through mostly automatic or distributed processes.
I wouldn’t describe it as complex, just the bare minimum of what is required to actually preserve data with no loss. All physical mediums may degrade through physical processes, but redundant systems can do better.
It isn’t hard to seed a torrent. If a group of people want to preserve a file, they can do it this way, perfectly, forever, so long as there remain people willing to devote space and bandwidth.
All of these problems boil down to intent. Do people intend to preserve a file, do they not care, do they actively favor degradation? In the case of the OP game, it seems that the latter must be the case. Same with Youtube, same with all those media companies removing shows and movies entirely from all public availability, same with a lot of companies. If someone wants to preserve something, they choose the correct algorithms, simple as that. There isn’t necessarily much of a tradeoff for efficiency and ease of use in doing so, disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap, the technology is mature and not complicated to use. Long term physical storage can be a part of that, but it isn’t a replacement for intent or process.
You’re referring to a video codec degrading as it keeps rendering the video again, not just copying and pasting the bits. There is no degradation from copying and pasting a file as-is.
No, I am not referring to that. YouTubers have the option to download their own videos. Not steal it with a video downloading tool.
That’s YouTube’s processed video not the original.
Nah
My proposal is for a mandated label on software and hardware to indicate that it will stop working when some online service goes offline.
Ironically Nintendo sort of did that on physical boxes for their consoles that was actually just a download key in a cartridge
And then what? Corporations will just slap a disclaimer on their products informing you of said condition and that you need to agree, understand and accept these terms and conditions and call it a day.
Aye, but forcing them to put a clear “We support this until this date” label will make that a mandated part of their marketed.
That or, you know, force companies to release server software when they sunset support for their product. That would also be nice.
deleted by creator
Which is why we need meaningful consumer protections around this. Something with teeth to force publishers to back these sorts of things.
deleted by creator
I feel like lack of ownership of more and more things in our lives is a sign of problems. Sure, this is just a silly game. But this kind of shit is already hitting cars.
deleted by creator
And then products without that label would gain at least a little a bit of market share. Most people still buy inefficient fridges because they are shinier, but at least a few read those yellow labels mandated by law and choose the more efficient ones.
But then how can they force you to buy a new one?
In theory, Ross Scott is (or at least was) trying to get something done about this. https://youtu.be/tUAX0gnZ3Nw?si=acNlZLK8MRqKWwgh
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I’ve had that thought many times. I wish companies would release the source of games they discontinue instead of letting them completely die out.
It’s meta lol. It’s the devil.
the problem is that we’ve allowed this to happen. all mobile games function this way, the “rug” can be pulled at any time. all that money you spent on gacha pulls, was it worth it?
the problem goes back innocuously to MMO subscriptions, i think. which had a valid reason for existing, but an MMO can be “rug pulled” at any time as well, thankfully most of the greats have stayed up (wow, ffxi, eq) but ONE DAY they will be gone forever, relegated to private servers only.
I appreciate the sentiment around preservation, but there’s an argument to be made that if you make something, you should get to decide if you want to destroy it. Banksy did something like this recently by destroying one of his pieces of art when it went up for auction.
@Kushan so you’re saying they should be able to take your money and then destroy what you bought with out any sort of warning or compensation right? I strongly disagree with you if that’s what you’re saying.
No no, not at all - I agree with you, if you sell something to someone you shouldn’t be able to just take it back arbitrarily.
However, OP is talking about forcing companies to open source something they created - and while I love open source and am a big supporter of it, I don’t think that’s necessarily right either.
This is more like if it was successfully sold at auction, and THEN banksy destroyed it after taking the money.
I don’t believe in that at all, human lives and the feelings associated with them are finite, the appreciation of art lasts as long as the canvas does which can be hundreds to thousands of years depending on what it is. The feelings they feel as the artist aren’t significant on that time-frame and whatever respect I have for them is irrelevant in that context. I believe in preservation even against the will of creators because it benefits future generations, for the same reason historical knowledge does and their feelings today do not.
People have told me I’d feel different if it was my art but not really (I find that argument incredibly presumptuous and condescending which is why I’m acknowledging them here before anyone has the chance to make them as some kind of comeback), I recognize the value of art and the fact that just like these other artists I won’t be around forever either.
The Banksy example is also bad because they didn’t take anything away from anyone, just sold something that would change form after sale. And they knew that this stunt would only increase the art’s value going in.
That’s completely different? Also the owner still had an art piece. Just a destroyed one. That was arguably worth more.
I agree with your sentiment that a creator should have control over their work. However. I do feel that an art piece which can only exist in one form is different from commercial mass media. Mainly because you start getting in to an “original vs a copy” territory. While I believe an owner of something should have control over copyrights…once someone legally owns a “copy” of something that copy should be theirs since the owner made the mass media thing for the public to consume I believe the public should, at some point, have a say in the future trajectory of the product, after all it is still the public who “decide” if a product is good and will be remembered, and they even “decide” the value of the product as well.
Art is usually only made for a select few to own…it is “artisanal”…meanwhile video games are made for a much larger group…
Do you really defend that kind of right?
That’s not what I’m defending at all.
Motor City Online all over again
Game preservation is dying because of DRM. You want games you can still play in 10 years, pirate that sht and donate to those keeping up the good art of game cracking. It’s either that or buying remakes a decade later that are just thinly reskinned. I can live with sht like denuvo since newer games just remove it after a year and then I can buy it. Storefronts like uplay or egs that are dependent on a malignant profit only entity are at best mid-term rentals and at worst spyware you have to pay for the privilege to use.
Furthermore, if you don’t want to pirate: Buy your games on GoG. They are DRM free and you don’t need the launcher to play (GoG Galaxy is amazing though btw)
Why should a developer be forced to forfeit their source code just because they don’t want to sell their game any longer?
If people focused on DRM-free games instead, this wouldn’t be an issue in the first place.