[kator]

Bigger challenge is games that die because the back-end servers are turned off and the assets are discarded. I'm on a team reverse engineering an old MMO from 2011. We've spent years rebuilding the server from packet captures and disassembly because everything official got nuked. This is just one of many examples where the customer "buys" a thing in their mind only later to find out they really didn't buy anything.

The legal situation is a mess too. We're not competing with anyone (game's been dead over a decade), we're not selling anything, but we still operate in this gray area wondering what's fair use versus what crosses a line. Copyright law wasn't written with "what if the company abandons it and erases it from existence" in mind.

Meanwhile every day that passes, more of these games just vanish permanently because preservation is treated as piracy.

[matheusmoreira]

You are a hero. Thank you for your work.

I hope the corporation has moved on and doesn't bother you. And if they do, we'll remember. I'll never forgive EA for C&Ding the attempts to revive Battlefield 2. Just one of their many atrocities.

[foxyv]

I really wish that these corporations were forced to provide copies of source code and assets to the Library of Congress to have their copyright stay in effect for longer than a year. Servers and Clients. Our government is so far behind the times it hurts. Copyright should also require a renewal fee to prevent everything from getting locked behind it for a hundred years.

[tremon]

old MMO from 2011

It makes me very angry to realize that the same people who decided to completely destroy that game still get to obstruct and/or receive benefits from any third-party effort for 61 more years.

[Wowfunhappy]

> or receive benefits from any third-party effort for 61 more years.

...do they?

Like let's say I make a modified version of this game. Technically my modification is illegal to distribute since it contains assets I don't own the rights to. However, the creators of the original game don't own the rights to my modifications either.