TL;DR: Publishers pull games from storefronts, shut down authentication servers, and let 87% of pre-2010 titles go out of print. Preservation is the deliberate, often unglamorous work of keeping a game playable after a company stops caring whether it is.
Game preservation is the ongoing work of keeping games, consoles, and the digital infrastructure around them playable once their original hardware, storefront, or publisher support disappears. Most of that work is one of two things: pulling the game data off an original cartridge or disc before it fails, or maintaining ageing hardware by replacing failing components and sourcing increasingly rare parts. Once a game has been archived, emulation is usually the most practical way to play it, as working original hardware becomes harder to find every year.
Origin & Context
Old games don't lose their copyright simply because nobody sells them anymore. For many years, that created a legal grey area for libraries and museums. Copying a game or bypassing its copy protection for preservation could technically violate copyright law, even when the sole purpose was to prevent the game from disappearing.
That began to change in 2015, when US copyright regulators introduced limited exemptions allowing libraries, archives, and museums to preserve out-of-print games. A 2018 update expanded those exemptions to include games that depended on authentication servers that had permanently shut down. The exemptions remain narrow, however. In 2024, regulators rejected a proposal that would have allowed people to access preserved games remotely instead of visiting the institution in person. As a result, preservation has become legally easier for institutions, but not for individuals.
Why It Matters for Digital Independence
A game you paid for can become inaccessible the moment a publisher decides the licensing deal, authentication server, or digital storefront is no longer worth maintaining. Nintendo closed purchases on the 3DS and Wii U eShops in 2023, leaving hundreds of digital-only games unavailable to new buyers. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down the original The Crew, rendering a legally purchased game unplayable.
These cases illustrate a broader shift in digital ownership: paying for a game often grants only a licence, not permanent access. That licence exists only as long as the publisher continues to support it.
Preservation provides an alternative. By archiving games, documenting hardware, and ensuring software remains playable long after commercial support ends, it prevents publishers from effectively erasing parts of gaming history.
That work is not limited to non-profit organisations or volunteer communities. GOG has built a successful business by restoring classic games, removing DRM, and updating them for modern operating systems. It demonstrates that preservation can protect players' long-term access while also making commercial sense.
Real-World Examples
The Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network sampled 1,500 games released before 2010 for their 2023 Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market and found 87% of them out of print in the US. Some platforms fared even worse: fewer than 6% of Game Boy games and fewer than 5% of Commodore 64 titles remained commercially available. Those figures illustrate the scale of the preservation challenge. A handful of high-profile re-releases cannot reverse decades of disappearing software.
On r/emulation, the discussion has largely moved beyond asking whether preservation is legal. Instead, users focus on how to dump their own cartridge collections before ageing hardware fails. Tools such as the Retrode and GBxCart RW allow owners to create verified backups rather than relying on ROMs uploaded by unknown sources. For many enthusiasts, preservation is less about courtroom battles than careful documentation, hardware maintenance, and verifying data.
Many games also require preservation because they were never released outside Japan. Entire libraries of arcade games, RPGs, and shoot-'em-ups from the 1980s and 1990s never received official releases in North America or Europe. For players outside Japan, there was never a legitimate way to buy many of these titles. In those cases, preservation is often the only practical way to study or experience them today.
What You Can Do
Before preserving a game yourself, check whether it has already been archived. Resources such as the Video Game History Foundation and PCGamingWiki track games that remain commercially available as well as those that are no longer in print.
If you want to create your own archival copy, the tools depend on the platform. Devices such as the Retrode can dump SNES and Sega Genesis cartridges, while the GBxCart RW supports the Game Boy family. Arcade boards, optical discs, and older computers each require different hardware, and compatibility often varies between hardware revisions.
Time matters. Many cartridges from the 1980s and 1990s store save data on soldered coin-cell batteries rather than flash memory. Those batteries are now reaching the end of their lifespan, permanently erasing save files even when the game itself remains intact.
Finally, don't stop at creating a backup. Preservation projects such as No-Intro and Redump verify ROM dumps by comparing their checksums against databases of known-good copies. That verification process helps ensure that archived games remain accurate and trustworthy for future preservation work.
Related Terms
- Emulation — the software layer that actually makes preserved games playable again.
- ROM — the archived game file itself, the format most preservation work produces.
- Abandonware — the murkier ethical territory around games nobody preserves officially.
- Retro Gaming — the community and hobby that keeps most preservation work funded by attention, if not by publishers.