Sometimes games aren’t fully contained on their discs. Sometimes, and this is true now more than ever, a lot of the content, gameplay modes, and scripts are accessed through servers that are maintained by publishers and accessed by players. So what happens when publishers decide that it is no longer profitable to maintain these servers?
Video game archivists have considered this problem, and so have players; it’s not uncommon for the more tech-savvy among them to create and maintain their own servers, devoting much of their own money and time in order to keep some of their favorite games alive. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) forbade this until very recently. Thankfully the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has at last been able to secure certain exemptions that allow fans to make the modifications necessary for the preservation of “video games that require communication with an authentication server to allow gameplay when the requisite server is taken offline.”
While this is a definite step in the right direction, EFF senior staff attorney Mitch Stoltz in an interview with Polygon expressed his disappointment that exemptions were not permitted in the preservation of multiplayer functionality. “We’re disappointed that the Librarian didn’t grant our request to people who wanted to extend multiplayer functionality,” Stoltz said, explaining that “we think an artificial distinction [between what is and is not acceptable] is going to lead to the loss of of a lot of important video games but we think that the exemption that was granted will be helpful.”
No doubt in a few years we’ll be hearing from the EFF again as they attempt to further perfect the language of the DMCA to provide security and rights to publishers as well as the means to preserve server-based games in their entirety for future generations.
Source: Polygon