Vanishing act: 87% of classic video games are no longer available commercially | The disappearance of classic video games

Technology@lemmy.world – 366 points – 1 years ago

Vanishing act: 87% of classic video games are no longer available commercially

That probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to retro gaming enthusiasts, but those outside the gaming community might not even know there is a problem....

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Imagine if you couldn't buy classic movies or albums...

I'd be interested to know what the % is for movies and TV to be honest. I know Dr Who for example has like 100 episodes that have just been lost. There's no copies of them anywhere that anyone knows of.

A lot of old films were lost in studio fires, or simply not putting in the effort to preserve. The software industry, and games in particular, have not learned from this at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_MGM_vault_fire - tellingly "Despite the fire, 68 percent of silent films produced by MGM survived, the highest rate from any major studio."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire - reportedly nothing irreplaceable was lost. But master recording for a lot of muscians were lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films - "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever" and "A study by the Library of Congress states that 75% of all silent films are now lost."