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Video game preservation, which falls in the broader category of media preservation, is the act of ensuring the accessibility and playability of older video games for the future. There are many reasons why this practice is necessary.
Reasoning
editLive-service killing
editLive-service games are very difficult to preserve due to their reliance on the parent company's will to keep the service online. Rarely companies adapt the games to be completely playable offline with all the available features that used to exist when the game was a live-service. Despite that, dedicated communities have tried to keep these games alive with their own time, money, resources and dedication out of their own will, for the love of preserving the experiences that they love.
City of Heroes - Homecoming, Club Penguin Legacy, Warhammer Online - Return of Reckoning, WildStar Nexus Forever, MapleStory MapleLegends and many more are examples of community-created private servers in order to keep the games playable.
Death of a technology
editWhen Adobe announced the end of life date of Adobe Flash Player for the 31st December 2020, many people have put effort in preserving flash video games by porting them to HTML5 or with the creation of Flash emulators like Ruffle, which allows to run flash games and content on web browsers. Additionally, Flashpoint Archive is a community project dedicated to preserve content that runs on Flash and it comes with downloadable applications that allow to download and run Flash content on the device.
Few numbers of physical copies
editSome video games only exist in physical copies and these copies are in a limited quantity. The amount of physical playable copies could be reduced because of the possibility that the media can deteriorate over time. Digitalization makes easier to copy, adapt and create backups of the original video game, making it more available for the public and the generations to come. Preservation of these physical copies are often handled by museums and non-profit organizations that try to ensure the longevity of the media in its original form.
Cultural Heritage
editLike cinema, literature, music, and television, video games are an important part of contemporary cultural heritage, they reflect the artistic, technological, political, and social conditions of the periods in which they were created. Preserving them is not only about maintaining entertainment software, but also about protecting historical records of digital culture.
Video games document the evolution of the media through storytelling and art, computer graphics and software engineering, online communities and social interactions, music and sound design, game design philosophies and player behavior and the economic and labor of the technologies and the industry.
Just like other media, some games shaped global culture such as Super Mario Bros, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Fortnite, Pokémon and many more, influencing generations of players and their growth, along with developers, artists and communities.
Efforts
editPublishing source code
editOn 18 February 2025, Valve released an update to the Source SDK, which added all the Team Fortress 2 client and server game code. With the source code content creators are allowed to build new games based off TF2.[1][2]
In February 2025, Electronic Arts (EA) made an announcement that the source code of older titles from the Command & Conquer video game franchise were recovered, and made public under the GPLv3 license.[3] To help the community further, the Steam Workshop has also been integrated into these titles to add additional community content.[3]
Id Software has published[4] the source code of various games and tools on GitHub. The repositories are for DOOM, DOOM Classic for iOS (two versions), Doom 3 BFG Edition, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 2 Tools, Quake III Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (Single Player and Multiplayer), Wolfenstein 3D for iOS, WOLF3D Browser Version and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Museums and archives
editMuseums such as The Strong National Museum of Play and Video Game History Foundation collect consoles, cartridges, design documents and promotional materials to document the evolution of the gaming industry. On the other hand, archive website and digital libraries like Internet Archive and GOG Preservation Program work to preserve games, magazines and software that might otherwise disappear due to hardware failure, discontinued support or physical media being lost.
Further reading
editReferences
edit- ↑ "The TF2 SDK has arrived!". Team Fortress. 18 Feb 2025. Archived from the original on 18 Feb 2025. Retrieved 10 Mar 2025.
- ↑ "Valve Releases Team Fortress 2 Source Code, Now open to Modders". BitSkins. 21 Feb 2025. Archived from the original on 10 Mar 2025. Retrieved 10 Mar 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Vessella, Jim (27 Feb 2025). "C&C Steam Workshop Support & Source Code". Archived from the original on 26 Jun 2025. Retrieved 9 Mar 2025 – via Reddit.
- ↑ "id Software GitHub". GitHub.
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External links
edit- Video Game History Foundation non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, celebrating, and teaching the history of video games.
- Game Preservation Society non-profit archive organization that collect, preserve, research, digitize and share materials of Japan’s video game culture.
- European Federation of Game Archives Museums and Preservation Projects preservation of digital games and other interactive experiences with focus on ensuring that the overall European legal framework is compatible with the needs of digital preservation.
- Vintage Video Game Association non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion, preservation, and licensing of vintage video games.
- Hit Save! non-profit dedicated to the preservation of video games, their history, and related physical and digital materials.
- Videogame Heritage Society Subject Specialist Network (SSN) for digital game preservation.
- Internet Archive large-scale digital archive containing playable retro games and software collections.
- The Strong National Museum of Play highly interactive, collections-based museum devoted to the history and exploration of play.
- MAME multi-purpose emulation framework which purpose is to preserve decades of software history.
- Flashpoint Archive a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.
- GOG Preservation Program ensures classic games remain playable on modern systems, even after their developers stopped supporting them.