I forgot that Tomb predates standardized mouselook.

Yeah, it was a PITA before I found this little app to help in that regard.
(I have one button to switch to 1st person, one to pull out weapons, and another to shoot)

The whole debate with Ubisoft's comment taken out of context honestly shows how dumb alot of people are imo.

Ubisoft's comment was in regard to the growth of subscription services and gaming through subscription rather than buying an individual game like Gamepass. It was an inflammatory comment but given how popular Netflix and other streaming services are and the death of DVD sales, its not unreasonable to assume the same would happen to gaming as well as other publishers release their own streaming services.

And yeah, the author is equating digital only with DRM-ed digital games in which case, yes it is impossible to preserve. Once the servers go down, bye bye game. Honestly same for digital games that were only made thanks to licensing agreements. When the license expires, bye bye Avatar (although apparently it sucked so no big loss).

Problem is not the digital format (although changes in software over time can make older games unplayable as a result) but DRM but we lost that battle long ago when Steam became dominant anyway. GOG still fights the good fight but there is a reason why its tiny compared to Epic or Steam.

Don't blame it on Valve (or praise them for it), they were just riding the wave. They did to the PC what MS, Sony and so on did to the consoles at the same time. And people loved them for it (and many still do).
Once the "Lips" servers were shut down, all my Karaoke songs were gone, even the ones that I had on DVD. No DLC licence check, no game start. Needless to say that not even the DVD versions had a offline mode.

Physical games don't help with that at all because you can't force someone to sell their rare copy of "Sexy Mario Bros 5 JPN unrated" SNES cartridge to you, at least at a price that you can afford.

It is odd to suggest that physical delisted games would somehow be "available to all".
You talk as if streaming games is some kind of new thing that is about to happen and take over the world.

OnLive and Google Stadia already tried it, and failed. But hey, maybe the next contestant will make a feasible and successful game streaming service?

Is Nvidia's Geforce Now still a thing?

Yeah DRM was always a thing (needing CD codes and the CD in the drive to play Diablo 2 for example) but I do think Steam did a great job marketing digital only and buy from steam as a good thing for consumers.

Stadia had very low adoption rates which isnt an issue for Playstation and Xbox/PC. Microsoft bought a ton of huge studios and are releasing their AAA games Day One to PC and Xbox which is a far larger base than Stadia and its apparently already profitable so they dont face the same issue. OnLive was praised but had issues with its hardware being dependent on the internet to stream games but Gamepass/PS Plus seem to download the game onto the console which removes this issue. It also had a hardware adoption issue. If you can get access to a wider library of AAA games at a lower price and most gamers dont seem to even finish the games they play (games have a finish rate of around 50%); I can see gamers moving toward streaming for the big platforms.

That I can hundred percent agree on.

Many forget that there were DRM free competitors at the time, mcgame for example. But Valve did a good job pushing them out of the market. We can hate Steam for a lot of aspects, but the Valve guys were good at what they were doing, that much credit we must give them.

Micsoroft would have had the chance to beat them, but they didn't think the PC to be important enough and focused on consoles, fearing Sonys competition more than Valves. They created a the half baked GFWL for PC, that was actually used in some popular games (Batman Arkham City, GTA4), but it didn't work properly and was pulled back. Only now with XBox Live they stand a chance and that I fully ignore, because they encrypt the installed files and that's an absolute No-Go and the worst that can happen for game preservation.

Of course. It's a streaming service - it's pretty good, provided you have a really good Internet connection.

It's probably the future, though - just like XCloud for PC and consoles....for better (great as an EXTRA option) and/or for worse (bad if that becomes the ONLY way to play games).
GreenMan had Capsule (didn't last); Stardock has Impulse, which they sold to GameStop (both versions did NOT last); Direct2Drive failed got bought by GameFly and GameFly PC App didn't last either; etc etc.


Diablo 2 PC (old versions) removed the DRM, provided you install last few patches and follow the instruction of copying the right files to the Diablo 2 folder.

"So yes, digital-only Alan Wake 2 can be preserved just fine, as long as it doesn't rely on online DRM"

This, imagine if we have some sort p2p file sharing for these games... We can keep them forever.

Microsoft is pro-DRM anyway. I think they are planning on taking Valve's PC marketshare through Gamepass though. There is a reason why its PC and Xbox and not console only. I also think Gamepass has a really good chance at cutting Steam's reign too. New business model with a more appealing price point. I dont know how many Steam players buy old games but the appeal of being able to play the latest AAA games "for free" vs having to wait for a sale would be appealing to many gamers. Wouldnt be surprised if Microsoft also makes some of their PC releases Gamepass-exlusive if the service really takes off.

OG Diablo 2 eventually removed the DRM after many years. There are still cases where devs dont remove the DRM as well.

isn't it possible to preserve games even if there's DRM? i think pirates mod the games with DRM to remove it. pretty sure exclusives on subscription services will be the only games we can't preserve.

That much is clear, it was just about Valve vs Microsoft. When it comes to preservation, Valve is bad, Microsoft is worse. Microsoft tried to replace Steam for a long time now. But currently - if I had to chose between Valve and Microsoft, I would buy on Steam, because of the encrypted files.
I bought one game in the MS Windows Store that got delisted sometime later and it can't be installed anymore. I still have it on my HD, but can't create a backup of it without decrypting the directories first.
Anothe free game (Prince of Persia classic collection) also got delisted. It had the option to upgrade to a add free version, but when I tried, I was told that was not possible. It also got delisted. Same stories, backups are only possible with some effort (and of course there's always adds that can't be removed).

Anyone here familliar with youtuber Ross Scott? Of Freeman's Mind fame?

He's someone with a serious passion for game preservation and has been doing coverage on dead games for years, and he's currently trying to find people help him launch a legal case against the destruction of games that are being arbitrarily locked online, by targetting Ubisoft's impending shutdown of The Crew, a game with one of the most expansive and detailed open worlds ever created. This game could be fully funtional offline, but it has remained uncrackable and when Ubi shuts the server off, the game will be rendered forever dead. He's going to look at whatever possible courses of action could be taken, and which countries would give him the best case.

If anyone here thinks they can help, I'd suggest giving this video a watch.