Should The Act Of Preserving Old Games Be Illegal?

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Fellow gamers, we need to make our voices heard on this one.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/v ... d-archives
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/09/ ... ts-hacking

I do not approve of this one bit. The ESA has been bought out by big money industries. There needs to be copyright exemption in order for gamers to experience older and obscure titles, long abandoned by developers and publishers, that most people don't remember. Art Museums and Archives need this too.

ESA was set up by the gaming industry itself to be the spokesperson and lobby for the industry.

The ESA is right on legal principle as in you cannot rip, upload a ROM of the game without the explicit permission from the copyright holder(s).

If the copyright holder(s) allows for the ROM to be freely available then it is legal.

This applies to all copyrighted material.

As long as you back up your games from copies you own, without letting people know about it, then you are fine.

The full legal disclaimer is in the back of every instruction booklet and gaming package.

......holding onto or transferring ancient game data is "hacking"?

Based on the monstrous, bloated rom archive I have (and this crap is one of the reasons I have it... "just in case", you know), then, I must be the ULTIMATE HACKING GOD. Despite the part where I couldnt ACTUALLY hack into... anything. What with not having the foggiest clue as to how. "Hacking" my ass.

Good grief. This is one of those things that gets brought up and argued about by people like that every now and then, and every single time, I just shake my head in derision.

I've always been concerned with the legality (or at least the laws surrounding) digital media. I doubt the issues would be minimal in comparison if it was a physical disc/disk/cartridge library. Academic bodies and other institutes digitise their archives regularly, except their archives are old. To avoid legal trouble, wait 70 years until after the original copyright expires, then it's effectively public property and you can "hack" all you want.

I do think that if the original copyright holding company no longer exists then the property should have no copyright.

Companies can always rig the laws to make copyright last even longer. 70 can turn into 100 for we all know.

No, it shouldn't be illegal to preserve old games, and especially not in this fashion.

Preserving an old game is nowhere near the same as deliberately hacking a game and calling it something you've made. There are clear differences.

You know what? This may sound stupid, but I recently bought a copy of Ultimate Doom from Steam. Ultimate Doom doesn't run well on modern operating systems so in order to preserve its playability on Windows 8.1, you have to download Notepad++ and alter some configurations and soon enough, I had Ultimate Doom running smoothly. Unfortunately, the ESA would consider these alterations as illegal hacking. So just because I wanted to play Ultimate Doom, which I legally bought from Steam, on my PC by altering some configuration files in Notepad to make it run better, that automatically makes ME liable and I should go to jail.

Bullshyt!

Ooh, I've done worse.

I bought that (and Hexen) on Steam, right? Well, they didnt really work very well, so what I ACTUALLY ended up doing was going and downloading zDoom, and just using that to run the WAD files and such that make up those games, which also gives me mouse aim that worked how I wanted it, and changes some other stuff to make the interface easier. And that worked out well, but yeah, used a totally seperate program that I downloaded.

And of course, way back when, when Doom 2 hadnt been out all that long, I used to mess with all these editors and learned how to make levels and change internal stats and textures and do all of that fun stuff... there was this 1000-page book (no, seriously, it's huge) on how to do this that was sold in stores. Had a big blue demon guy on the front, I still have it. I had LOTS of fun with this and it just cemented my enjoyment of the games. Ended up buying more things for it like level packs later on when those started to appear.

But ZOMG, hacking! Ugh. I'd like to say "surely at some point SOMEONE will realize how stupid this is" particularly with the legions of modders out there that like to make mods for all sorts of games, but.... corporate logic.... yeah.

Just.... ugh.

They had a book for editing Doom II? Okay, I have a serious question. Is there anything in that book that can help with the final boss? I don't mind how I have to beat the final boss, I just don't like how the final boss beats me. I hate it when I have godmode on and then he fires some cube at me which spawn a monster and then I'm dead. My dodging sucks.

I can understand why companies would want to protect their intellectual property from piracy and such, but when a company holds onto an IP and allows it to fade into obscurity by refusing to allow anyone else to do anything with it, then they are effectively allowing that IP to die.

Fan preservation, though technically illegal in many cases due to piracy, is one of the best forms of preservation for old IPs, in my opinion. Dedicated fans will often stop at no end to keep old IPs alive by maintaining interest, redistributing content, and even creating new content. Unfortunately, copyright trolls often don't see how important this is, and they step in and try to put a stop to it.

Now, a few people in this thread have mentioned modifying Doom, and I will note that compared to other companies, iD Software has been quite tolerant of fans modifying their games, and at many times, they've even encouraged it. Not only do most of their games have standardized mod systems in place (WADs, QuakeC, etc.), but they've also released a significant number of their engines as open source. Unfortunately, when Zenimax bought them out, this put an end to them open-sourcing their engines, so we likely won't be seeing any Doom 3 or RAGE ports. There's nothing illegal about taking your old doom2.wad file and running it with a different engine though, or modifying the ini file settings.

None of what you did is illegal. You bought the game, and iD has made it pretty clear that they're OK with people modding their game or running it on different engines. Just as long as you're not redistributing the game files, you're in the clear.

If you're playing on Nightmare, cheat codes dont actually work. Beyond that, I typically never play games with cheats on, so I cant speak for that aspect. If trying to beat the thing normally though, the key is to pay attention only to the monsters that the thing spawns; dont attack the face unless the area surrounding you is clear, as your aim has to be very specific and hit the brain bit properly (as in, it has to actually go INSIDE it, as the thing that is your actual target is past the fake wall that is the brain texture). You can tell when it takes damage because it'll let out this distorted scream. When it fires a cube, and that cube gets close to the platform, ignore the face and focus on whatever comes out of the cube instead. The boss doesnt seem to have any real way of damaging you beyond that... it's not so much a fight against a boss, but instead a fight against the monsters you've already been dealing with a hundred times over, except that they wont stop appearing until it's over. There are items found off of the main platform, but the floor there is damaging, so dont stay on it too long.

Rockets are good to use against the face itself, but splash damage from a miss wont actually hit the target inside; it has to be a direct impact or it wont do anything.

Also, as an amusing Easter egg, I wont spoil it, but try using the no-clip code at some point, and going through the brain wall yourself, to see what the actual target is; it's pretty funny. There's a hint to this in what the demon says just before the fight starts, if you were to take that message and replay it backwards. None of this will actually do anything special, it's just an amusing secret to find.

Cheat codes are pretty much how I play my games nowadays. I've seen the actual target in a video and I know what the message says when reversed. So if I use noclip and go into the final boss' brain and shoot the thing inside, it'll still take damage and I can beat the game that way right?

Ripping a CD to your computer: legal. Recording a TV programme or film: legal. Ripping DVDs: recently legal. Exhibiting them to more then 6 people, or exhibiting them for profit: illegal. Recording the radio: who knows now? Emulation: legal. Distribution or use of "ripped" or otherwise acquired digital content: illegal. Exhibiting yourself playing games: probably legal. Exhibiting yourself playing games and charging people. Probably illegal. Exhibiting yourself playing "pirated" games: also probably illegal. Consistency not found.

But if a studio no longer exists, how can it own intellectual property? A dead studio surely has no estate.

An issue is actually how to preserve games. I read an article recently that highlighted how easy it is for us to preserve something digital, but have no means of accessing it. Like creating a time capsule, locking it and throwing away the key. The idea was to create format which describe how they should be read. That, or archiving the code in glass (or crystal), and also archiving the code to read it.

Don't class it as software. Class it as art. Then the regulations change.

I have no idea. Like I said, I dont really use codes; makes games boring. I only know of any of them because they're good for editing, sort of, but come to think of it I never really used them for that either...

Either way what I DO know is that used wrong, the noclip thing can completely crash the hell out of the game.

And hell, it doesnt even sound like the codes are working right for you to begin with. In god mode, it's IMPOSSIBLE TO LOSE. How you were getting stuck on that boss thing to begin with... I dont know. The idea is that *nothing* can harm you, no matter what. If that isnt working right, well.... yeah.

I will say though that the game's ending isnt worth that amount of trouble though. It's one page of crappy text... that's pretty much it. Doom was never about the story or anything like that, it was about the experience of getting there. With explosions.

From what I've read, if you get hit by one of those cubes that spawns a monster in your place, you still die even if god mode is turned on. One hit kill telefrag.

No I don't think so.