[…] Like tears in rain. Time to die.

I’m using this Blade Runner quote because it fits the topic of this article perfectly. In recent years, more and more online stores have gone offline, taking with them a good deal of history and video games. What are the consequences of this, especially in relation to a global video game history? And how do you get to games that were shut down along with the stores?

Video games are no longer just small byproducts of an ever-growing tech industry. In Germany alone, the gaming industry generated almost 10 billion euros (including hardware) in 2023 (Source). But what can we actually still play from the beginnings or from the early days, for example, for scientific research or for nostalgic reasons? According to the Video Game History Foundation, 87% of classic video games in the USA are no longer available (Source). The preservation of video games and video game culture, especially in the area of classic video games, is becoming an increasingly important issue.

Introduction

If I remember correctly, the Virtual Console (including the Wii Shop Channel) on the Wii started it all. But for me, it started much earlier, namely on July 31, 2009. Many will now wonder why this exact date? On this day, the servers of The Matrix Online (Monolith Productions, 2005) were shut down, and that destroyed me at the time.

I know that in general the game was not very well received, but for me it was everything. The style, the world, and the interaction with other players were incredibly fascinating. But on July 31, 2009, it was all over, and even though there were efforts in the community, fan servers were never stable enough to really play on them. Video games were suddenly transient! FN1

Back to the Virtual Console, it was shut down along with the Wii Shop Channel on January 30, 2019. This meant that no more titles could be purchased online for the Wii. On March 27, 2023, the Virtual Console and the online shop for the Wii U and the 3DS followed. This is just an example or to name an example for the beginning, information on further shops will follow.

To make this clear again: the purchased titles were still available on the respective consoles and you could still play them. But new titles could no longer be purchased, and all titles that were available in the shops were gone for the time being.

It does not mean that the games cannot reappear elsewhere. However, the Wii Shop already had some special categories, because there were titles for C64, PC-Engine, MSX and NeoGeo.

What does this mean exactly?

In the worst case, this could mean that these games simply no longer exist. If the licenses are no longer picked up and no one bothers to write an emulator or ports for newer hardware, then these games no longer exist or are trapped on their original hardware or, in the above example, on the Wii.

This sounds a bit dramatic, but it is not too far from the truth. Of course, the digital games still exist on the consoles on which they were once downloaded, and the physical copies still stand on the shelves of those who purchased them.

However, they simply remain there and are neither passed on nor do they make it into a kind of archive. Of course, there are still many who sell their things to retro fans or fans of classic video games, and the market is huge. But it also has its limits, especially when it comes to making a lot of money instead of just selling goods and doing so at reasonable prices (prices of classic video games, especially in the PAL region, is another topic entirely).

Conservatories

Since the hardware manufacturers are not really willing to do this or they are not always so nice and kind to make their game database (from the respective shops) accessible to the public, only the consoles themselves remain as a small mini-database. Of course, there is also limited space on these, especially on the older ones that can only be expanded to a limited extent with external storage.

Consoles are thus becoming conservatories; the best example is the PT trailer created by Kojima Hideo for his Silent Hill project, which was not continued at the time. The trailer only exists on the PS4 consoles on which it was downloaded at the time. Although an extreme example, it still applies to titles that only appeared online or digitally.

A similar fate befell the title Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (Ubisoft Montreal, 2010), which was only released for the PS3 and XBox 360, and for a while it looked like nothing would change. Fortunately, the publisher and developers agreed, and the title is now also available for current consoles.

Nothing is safe

Sony has shown us this year (2024) that even the content of consoles is not safe and that they have full access to it. The demo of Stellar Blade (Shift Up, 2024) for the PS5 was put into the store too early and some were able to download, install and play it. When the mistake was noticed, Sony not only removed the demo from the store, but also directly from the consoles on which it was already installed. (Source)

Let’s take this a little further. Now a console manufacturer wants to close its shop, but at the same time prevent the games from being played any further, at least the purely digital titles. That would be extremely reprehensible, apart from the legal side of things, because the owner of the console has purchased the respective game. But the example of Sony has shown that it would be possible to delete the titles from the respective console even with the closure of a store.

I would love to write that I don’t believe that something like this would happen. However, the recent past has shown us that there are individuals in the tech and gaming industry who not only come up with such an idea but also carry it out.

Further shops that were closed

On March 2, 2021, Sony announced that they would close the PSP, PSVita and PS3 Store in the near future. This provoked heavy criticism against the group and Sony rowed back. The PSVita and PS3 Store are still available today, the PSP Store is theoretically still open, but the app no longer works on the PSP. Titles can be downloaded elsewhere.

On July 29, 2024, the XBox 360 Store closed its doors. However, Microsoft has made a compromise here and many titles are still available through backward compatibility and can be obtained in the current Store version.

Even though both Sony and Microsoft were quite willing to make a compromise again, it clearly shows that there are intentions to take the shops offline and thus also the availability of the libraries. At this point, it should also be mentioned again that physical titles are still playable, especially with Microsoft’s compromise solution. Digital or classic titles are usually the ones that are no longer available when a shop closes.

Availability

Here I take the liberty and fantasize a little. Because sometimes I dream that the big console manufacturers agree on who appropriates which library, in addition to their own.

So you could say that Sony has access to the old Playstation libraries and in addition, for example, the SEGA library.

At Nintendo, in addition to their own, are all the old Japanese systems such as FM Towns, MSX, PC-98 and Neo-Geo.

Microsoft takes care of its XBox libraries and also takes the old PC titles with it, so we would have that covered as well.

Yes, that would be an absolute mammoth task and I can already hear that some want to play the MSX stuff on their Playstation and others would like to have SEGA games on their Switch. A solution would have to be found for this or you are simply happy that all the old libraries are still available and are satisfied with something. I know, it is not a particularly modern attitude, but I am already a bit older.

Unfortunately, the naked reality looks completely different, because all the old libraries are completely fragmented and available on different systems, apparently still without a concept. At least the impression was that they were trying to please everyone and plunged into chaos in the process.

Is there a solution?

Difficult! Because something that I have not really mentioned yet are licenses and money.

On the one hand, the license situation of games is not always clear or it has been passed around so much that nobody knows exactly who to contact, should you want to do something with the game. In addition, the original source code is often no longer available, as they did not think about preservation or new editions (remakes / remasters) back then. Money is another matter entirely, because the former „We want to make games to inspire millions“ has given way to today’s „We want to make games to cash in millions.“ This has many reasons, including because games, just like movies, have become incredibly expensive, but also because suit-wearing armchair critics are sitting at the top of publishers and crying very loudly when they do not get a double-digit million bonus at the end of the year.

We digress and I’m getting blood pressure, back to the solution!

There are already sites that are pursuing a solution and providing the ROM / ISO files for various systems. This would have to be expanded and implemented in a kind of archive, which they technically already are. When that is in place, then you can talk about putting some money into the corresponding development of emulators. There are already a lot, but some of them run rather poorly. This would have to be expanded so that the emulators run on the current hardware of consoles and PCs.

I am aware that this approach would involve considerably more effort than it makes the impression in my short description. However, I am firmly convinced, and the evidence lies scattered everywhere in small bites, that this would be correspondingly possible. Even the problem with the licenses could be solved, but unfortunately not with greed and money! FN2

I’m already getting blood pressure again!

Conclusion

Whenever I think about this topic, I ask myself what I can do as a video game enthusiast, collector and nerd. There are already institutions that have set out to preserve video game culture, above all the German Computer Games Museum and the Flipper- und Arcademuseum Seligenstadt. Internationally, the Video Game History Foundation mentioned above is at the forefront. (Of course, there are a few more!)

But I still have the thought of doing something myself! Of course, not with my own collection, because that is my collection, but to build a kind of archive.

For everything physical, this is, soberly considered, only a question of money. If you take enough money in hand, you can buy out eBay, retro exchanges & co. and with that you would have that covered. Of course, with a corresponding system and, if possible, in such a way that not too many duplicates are created in the archive.

However, the problems start right here, because all the games that were only released digitally can only be found on the consoles on which they were downloaded (purchased) during the respective online time of the shops. What about them?

Maybe, maybe not, there are servers that have taken on these games and are available on a modded console (Do not ask for details!). This is of course a possibility, but not one that is really legal. Are you forced to such a solution? Everyone has to answer that question for themselves.

However, what cannot be argued away is the fact that a piece of video game history falls by the wayside in all of this. Especially for me, this is something extremely critical, because I deal with this medium very intensively and consider it extremely important and a kind of timestamp. But if all this disappears or is no longer available in part, then research becomes extremely difficult and we also lose a part of history, because we no longer have a document (medium video game) that proves various events.

Just as I have already explained this under timestamp with my Spider-Man example.

It is a multifaceted topic that certainly cannot be solved overnight. And yes, some things may not be as easy as I have described or imagine them. But it is guaranteed not as complicated as it makes the impression. What is certain is that everyone should get out of bed and do something to preserve this culture. Because who knows, globally speaking, how much has already disappeared and never reappears. Or how much is still hidden somewhere on a memory and should be excavated.

A provocative question to conclude: Why is a distinction made here between video games and other media? Why are video games still treated as if they were a niche product that is not worth preserving?

Footnotes

FN1
Of course, there had been server shutdowns before and after, but this one was something formative for me and actually still haunts me today.

FN2
By bites I mean that there are already very many emulators for very many systems, old and new. Through various efforts of the hardware developers, these have only become almost completely illegal. And yes, I know, the emulator itself is nothing illegal at first, but it starts with the BIOS Files, I don’t even want to say anything about the ROM and ISO Files (Please don’t ask either!). Nevertheless, the feasibility study has already been partially fulfilled by the functioning emulators.