Products break all the time and people throw them away. Entire lines of products are dismissed and the companies don’t offer support anymore. Sometimes the manufacturers close their company and customers have to go elsewhere. It happens for both hardware and software. No product comes with a “will work forever” guarantee.
That’s right. But the chances to preserve a game are much more higher if there are copies of the game.
If I really want to I’m able to fix a lot of (hardware) products in some way to make them usable again.
But if I don’t get the complete product in the first place I’m stuck. I will never support such products from the beginning.
Not only that: Don’t forget that you could rebuild or emulate the (hardware) product.
You are not stuck. You can use the product as long as the part that you don’t own and that you don’t manage works.
I tried World of Warcraft and it was fun. I didn’t want the complete product needed to recreate that community, because at home I don’t have space for Blizzard’s datacenters.
Imagine what happens if Blizzard shuts down his servers. You won’t be able to play WoW. Never. Ever. (And you don’t need a data center to run one instance. 
)
?? That’s the problem we are talking about. It will eventually disappear while I can play my 30 years old games which don’t rely on such things.
You don’t need datacenters unless you want to have millions of other people participate on your private server.
Edit: Btw. people already have such private servers because sometimes they don’t want the current version but want to play the original WoW game (vanilla) like it originally came out.
I have also collected all TWP builds I could get my hands on!
That is/was only possible due to the fact that there are copies of the clients. With streaming that wouldn’t be possible anymore.
In that case, the product broke. I’ll substitute it with something else.
To recreate the WoW community, as I said, datacenters are necessary. Launching a local instance doesn’t provide the same experience.
I understand that. Some modern products rely on an online service, so you don’t buy/support them because they can’t be played forever, which is the kind of guarantee that you would like to exist. They will probably disappear because they are in part a service and services sooner or later close.
But I don’t stop buying (or subscribing to) services only because I couldn’t have them forever.
I tried to avoid them, yes. There was one example of a burglar alarm system that was suddenly useless just because the developer shut down the his online service.
Beside that I don’t like be forced to buy new products if the old one still works perfectly.
Guys, I understand all the arguments and strong feelings about this topic. 
I don’t want to make this conversation too long, but just want to remind of something that was lost during the conversation. Initially, we were talking about a game that has costs to be kept alive. (Server costs, the salary of IT workers…). i.e. to keep that game alive, you need to give up something else. (Some other game maybe; or aspirins for poor children; or what have you). This is what “cost” means. This is the assumption. So I pointed out that, if people don’t want to pay those costs to keep the game alive, this means that the game has more costs than benefits to them. I.e., in order to keep the game alive, people would have to give up something else that has more value for them. But then, it’s better if the game does not exist (because this allows that “something else” to be produced).
A consequence of this is that you cannot just assume that any game should exist. Maybe it should, maybe not.
Also, in this scenario where the game has costs to be kept alive, it can’t happen that a great game like Monkey Island goes offline permanently. There would be constant demand, for the same reason why there is constant demand for Wagner operas. It’s not that Wagner operas are only preserved today because some zealous historians transcribe them. There is a constant flux of people that pay money to listen to them. Monkey Island might go offline for a few years, but then it would go back online, simply because new people are born and they never played it, and it’s a great work of art, and the only way to play it is to pay.
All the above is under the assumption that the game has costs to be kept alive. Then, the conversation switched to a situation where keeping games alive has no costs. After all, if instead of making a game as online, the developer makes it offline, keeping it alive will have no costs. Right? Wrong, because there are hidden costs in that model: the fact that games will be underproduced. So it’s true that the risk of losing a game which was produced becomes zero; but fewer games will be produced in the first place. Because, if copies can be made, producers will take this into account in the decision whether to produce the game or not. But, as I said, I wasn’t adddressing this. I was only addressing the case where a game has maintenance costs.
It depends on the service for me. But when talking about games then this is mostly not acceptable.
Those new people can only enjoy old art because someone thought it was necessary to preserve them in the first place, and wasn’t hindered by some company to do so.
There are multiplayer experiences requiring online services so they can be experienced in the proper way (e.g. MMORPGs like EVE Online).
But there are singleplayer-only games with such model and also multiplayer games which can be enjoyed alone or with a small group of people without the need of millions other players (+ necessary server infrastructure).
You can have those experiences without real maintenance costs (local servers) but only if the content owner allows it / provides ways to do so.
Ehrm. No. If there isn’t enough demand, the publisher shuts down the servers. So you can’t play it anymore. But if you can’t play it, how should the publisher know (after 20 years) that there is a new demand?
If you compare games with Wagner operas (which are two completely different beasts), then you should consider, that the operas could be played because of the existing transcripts. If Wagner operas would be streaming games, Wagner himself would have kept the sheet music and burned the sheets after a year. So we wouldn’t be able to hear the opera today at all.
But that’s not valid for games! We had years where no one or only very few people have played The Dig, for example. So if we talk about streaming games, I, as a publisher, would have shut down the games.
You have only costs when you stream the games or if you need a server to run the game. And that’s exactly the point.
I’m not sure if I can follow you: We are talking about the preservation of games. If I buy a game, I could start it in 30, 40 year, if I want. That’s impossible if the game is only available as a “stream”. If a game lies in a box on my cupboard or on my harddrive, it doesn’t produce any costs.
The risk to produce a game that no one wants to play stays the same with each model.
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You make it look like companies are entities that hinder preservation of nice things… but a company has an interest to preserve its assets, because it can profit from them. Old art would be preserved by companies, because companies profit from the ticket that you pay when you want to see the art. Old art risks not being preserved only when it is not owned by a company. Only when you don’t have a way to make people pay for something they value, you don’t have incentive to preserve it.
In which ways? Can you give an example?
Where can I pay a ticket to see the C64 version of Maniac Mansion or the EGA version of Monkey Island?
And what happens if the company goes bankrupt?
Don’t let this hear a museum.
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That’s what companies do for a living. They are constantly estimating the demand for their assets, in order to understand when it is a good time to reissue them. They are always trying to figure out what consumers want.
If there is no regular reissue of Casablanca, it is only because it can be copied. If there is no regular reissue of Monkey Island, it is only because it can be copied. If there are regular reissues of Wagner’s operas at Bayreuth, it is because those seats can’t be copied. You need to pay to watch them. That’s the difference. That’s why tickets for Wagner are sold constantly, and tickets for Monkey Island are not sold constantly each year.
So, to answer the question: how does the publisher know after 3 (not 20) years that there is new demand? Because 1) a lot of time has passed, and 2) new people are born who haven’t played the product, and 3) it’s a good product that hasn’t been replaced by something better, and 4) the only way to play it is to pay. If all of these conditions hold, the publisher will guess (not know) that there is demand, and take the risk to reissue it.
The asset is sold to another company. The new company has the same incentive to preserve the assets and not destroy them, as had the previous company.
You mean if Wagner’s operas sheets were impossible to copy, they would disappear, like streaming games that are shut down? Well, streaming games are shut down because people get tired. And then after a few years they are not put back online because in the meantime they have been replaced by something better. But Wagner’s operas are different. They are not replaced by something better.There is no better substitute to some people (including me). So they would have constant reissues. Providing a constant revenue. So Wagner would never have destroyed its sheets. Even after he dies, he would have passed them to his children. Take away the possibility to have a constant revenue, and then you start risking that Wagner’s children will destroy them.
I guess the problem I see here is a difference in philosophical views of ownership and entitlement.
On the one hand, if you purchased something, it is yours to do as you wish, for how ever long you wish to do it.
On the other hand, a creator is entitled to ownership and copyright of his works – especially if he retains all rights and only grants limited access to electronic media – and to set restrictions as he sees fit.
So the question is, are you purchasing the work to own, or merely renting access to it? Most people assume the former, but the “shrinkwrap licenses” of most software products suggest (and sometimes outright explicitly state) the latter.
So, who’s right? Well, from a legal standpoint, the user appears to not stand a chance. If you bought the software and accepted the terms, it’s your own fault, and you have no claim over it when the company decides to shutdown the service or lock you out. The fact that you only accepted the terms with the “hope” that that wouldn’t happen, is immaterial.
Of course, whether this is morally right or good for society in the whole, is a completely different question.
From the perspective of an intellectual property owner, you’re all a bunch of dirty, rotten, freeloading scumbag pirates who should go straight to jail for stealing their creative work.
From the perspective of the consumer, all intellectual property owners are a bunch of evil, greedy, entitled, politically corrupt and morally bankrupt selfish bastards, who should all be burned at the stake.
Hopefully we can reconcile this during our lifetimes.
dZ.
Yes sir, I´d like to report to the committee the citizens Thimbleweed Park Forum member @seguso as well as Giuseppe “Peppone” Bottazzi the mayor of Brescello as communists.
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Yes. But also, what about someone who did neither purchase nor rent? A contract is binding only between the seller (or renter) and the buyer. Suppose A rents the book to B. But then, C sees the book on the table and copies it. Can A complain that C violated his rights in any way? C did not take or consume the property of A, he just made a copy. And C did not sign any contract with A, promising not to make a copy.
I 'm busted!