Yes. But not for everyone. Nor about all of it.
To each their choices about their limited resources.

It's all tears in the rain one way or another. :)

Most of the early episodes of Johnny Carson were thrown away, mostly due to the network's incompetence. Most of old vintage television is gone forever because the network executives at that time did not see a real need to preserve physical media, and much of it was filmed on kinoscope, which degrades badly over time.

Someone out there must care about those old 1980s arcade games or such revered movies like Wizard of Oz and Singin in the Rain. Both of which were made for a different audience and generation, most young people won't understand the concepts but unfortunately that's the way things are.

Which is also true for Picasso, Bosch or Cranach, Beethoven, Mozart or Mussorgsky or even Shakespeare, Homer or Goethe...

And it doesn't stop there. Watching the original Star Trek series now is a very different experience than for the people who saw it when it first aired.

The whole "getting thrown out and being lost for all time" thing nearly happened to System Shock 2. The source code was lost, and it was only by some miracle that somebody came across a Dreamcast port that was being developed - with the source code intact. The details are murky, but the anonymously released NewDark engine is likely to be a child of these events.

Without this modification, the digital release of System Shock 2 would have had many compatibility issues with modern hardware. Ditto for the first two Thief games.

There is ongoing effort by archives, museums, game communities etc (and gog e.g. Airline tycoon) that source code ends up here, the best and future proof preservation.

And the list is growing and has reached nearly 200 items... we should keep advertising for it :)
here a gog wish

Don't go to multipar.eu. multipar.eu is distributing altered versions of MultiPar that I'm betting contain viruses or other malware.

This is a very old thread, how did you find it?

I did a search for MultiPar to see if anyone is using it to protect their old games from corruption over time:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general?search=multipar

I found a lot less than I expected. Everyone should be using MultiPar. Today GOG support sent me a MultiPar file to repair errors in a large game so I wouldn't need to download the whole thing again. It worked flawlessly.

Removal of DRM I kind of agree but emulation? What has piracy to do with emulations? The problem of missing compatible host software and hardware is a threat to classic games by itself. And DRM comes on top of it.

Yeah, I've always said that the "scene" will keep classics alive while companies ignore preservation due to lack of profit. If the internet ever becomes fully controlled though, something a lot of governments would like to do, then it becomes a lot less of a comfort.

The thing is, if you don't own the console (f.ex. the firmware blob from an PS2 console. Some emulators are built around them), nor the game itself, you're not exactly allowed to use them.

Everyone that actually copies, archives, and re-distribute most software are considered 'pirates', even thought they preserves a bit of our history when no or few official ones exists, legally speaking.

As long as we have these archaic laws around ageing software we might as well just assume we will loose some of our history (not that we haven't seen that before either).

Thank you for the warning. I have checksummed the version I got from both sources and they match. Not to say that will always be the case, so stay woke, people. Official linky: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA021385/

Ah, now I understand. The problem is basically that when you bought a license of the game (you never really own it anyway) you agreed to only playing on the "real hardware" not on some emulators and then later, if the hardware doesn't work anymore, you cannot play it anymore and it is lost.

I see an even more evil threat. What if the legal copyright holder just decides not to sell a game anymore? Without any technical problems every game could be legally forced to fade into obscurity. Maybe the existing licenses could then be resold (one could maybe extend the first-sales doctrine towards such cases).

On the other hand I don't see this laws as archaic. I have more sympathy for the IP owners here. You cannot force them to continue selling their stuff or preserving and upgrading it. If people want something preserved they should pay for the preservation or make the stuff themselves.

I think this post touches on the most relevant long term issue: The active effort. We're still in a race to preserve older games on decaying media, from draconian DRM, from a broken copyright system, but in the long run, who's going to care enough to do it? As the people who played and loved these games ultimately pass away over time, and as thousands of new games are released every year, who's going to keep up with the software compatibility, hardware compatibility, and enormous cost of preserving these games they've never played or even heard of in the face of all these obstacles and the obstacles Fenixp mentioned?

All we can really do is support entities that better the landscape of game preservation, backup what we have, and hope for the best. Sites like GOG (Even though game preservation isn't explicitly part of what they do) give me a little hope since they've found a way to profitably preserve games via DRM-free mass distribution and easy backups. The Internet Archive is making a valiant effort (and you should donate to it), but time, apathy, and ignorance are inescapable.

Edit: Oh and in addition to what I mentioned in the last paragraph about what we can do, be passionate. If you love a game, tell people about it. Stream it. Take screenshots. Awareness will be key to any and all preservation efforts.

Edit 2: also didn't realize until now that this thread was a necrobump.

"...is there not a legitimate risk of classic games fading into obscurity?"

Not in terms of storing or preserving older games. People passionate about it will find ways of collecting and storing these games, through whatever means possible.

In terms of keeping future gamers interested in playing these older games?! That's a different story. I can't see that happening, older games will be less and less popular with each new generation or cohort of gamers. A few games like Morrowind, Heroes of Might & Magic, Crysis and Deus Ex will probably always find an audience, but most will not.