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Can an online library of classic video games ever be legal?
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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I don’t understand why these legacy game license owners don’t start licensing out their old games on the cheap to game services like Apple Arcade or Steam to get extra revenue on them. They learned that lesson in video streaming and it gave a ton of mostly dead IP new life.
Video games were such a wild west back in the 80s and 90s that it's often not clear who even owns the copyright anymore.
There is a lot of abandonware and stuff where the companies just dissolved and ownership of any IP is questionable at best.
But also I don't think there's a way to give Nintendo/Game Freak money to play Gen 1 Pokemon at the moment? There's plenty of stuff like that. Sega and SquareEnix and some others have done a decent job of licensing/re-releasing some games. But there's plenty out there that they 'could' release and seemingly have no interest.
Well in that case, there's nobody to sue!