Do you think that video games will be still known when they will enter the public domain (copyrights expiring)?
Under current copyright law in the USA, we’re talking about Super Mario Bros becoming public domain around 2075. A number of games will no doubt remain known, one way or another, much like some very old movies remain interesting and known, but a good portion will fall into the bin of “meh, who cares”. I mean, a huge number of games are already almost entirely forgotten.
a good portion will fall into the bin of “meh, who cares”.
Some atari games are already there, and I literally had a module called “history of video games” at university. Those games came out in 1977 ish.
Even Pong won’t be public domain until 2067. Our copyright laws are horseshit.
Even if they are known, will they still be playable?
Looking at the state of the new Fifa and other sports games: No, no they won’t be playable unless someone reverse engineers EA’s servers.
Fairly certain doom will still work.
CodeMaster religiously hold onto their copyrights. I remember searching for their 8bit games of the 1980s and while copies are out there, the places that do it legally, World of Spectrum for example, don’t host them because CodeMasters refuse permission for these old games to be distributed for free.
Tbh the whole Darling family seemed a bit weird even back when they made those budget games.
Texts will have been written about them, e.g. wiki articles or fediverse posts will probably survive, but playable is another story.
99% of games are basically dead and forgotten after 5 years, current copyrights expiration terms are completely nonsensical.
I envision a future in which everything is cracked and we can all play whatever with super low latency because we live in a big sphere city in outer space.
