Publishers Have Finally Said Out Loud What Shouldn’t Be Said About Retro Games

22 Dic Publishers Have Finally Said Out Loud What Shouldn’t Be Said About Retro Games

In a recent move against the archiving of video game history, publishers have finally revealed the truth about why they despise retro games so much.

The recent legal case surrounding the archiving of video games, which was covered by Games Radar, has now concluded. Unfortunately, the final ruling firmly opposes making video game history available to everyone. Obviously, this is a culturally horrible and sad measure, but it will also affect those who want to create games in the future.

After all, imagine not being able to go to a library and read the works of Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, or any other historical author. Without easy access to the history of literature, what could anyone expect for the future? The same applies to games: we all need access to the formative titles that shaped the medium. They are like required reading before even stepping into the world of game creation. However, the motivation behind this protectionism is deeply disappointing. Once again, it comes from the rotting den of iniquity: video game publishing.

With all the layoffs in the video game industry to compensate for the rampant overspending in the publishing sector, the reality behind keeping retro games in a walled-off pay garden is to charge new money for old content and control the market to force players to play new games.

We’ve had over a decade to prove that AAA games are not commercially viable. The budgets and profits are unsustainable. However, to sustain these enormous budgets, the industry effectively eliminated mid-tier games. These mid-tier games are what kept the medium alive and allowed it to flourish simply because there was more variety to satisfy the disparate tastes of people.

Retro games are also part of this cultural ecosystem, and now they’re off-limits and controlled by publishers who are clearly inept and greedy. Today is a sad day for video games, but in a way, the openly brazen attitude of publishers is definitely something the gaming community will not quickly forget.