It’s not about the IP. It’s about the actual piece of work.

Imagine if I drew a new version of the Mona Lisa, and they destroyed the original to display mine instead.

Can it run Crysis? Only if you already bought it.

They could use the old one as a placemat to protect a table from having soup spilled on it.

I agree with what Kolanaki said – it should be available simply because it existed, not just because people will want to play some version of Crysis. My preference is that each patch-level version of a game should be made available somewhere for people to check out. It’s not simply about a product being available that satisfies some need or desire (in this case, the desire to play Crysis). Works that people have made should be available for others to explore.

Also:

If there was no alternative, and debatably superior

is that true? I’m genuinely asking. I think I actually own the remastered version of Crysis, but I haven’t actually played it, as I also have the original on Steam. I thought the remastered version was a graphically improved version of the console port of Crysis, which made some changes to the way that your powers activate. And I remember everyone disliking that when the console ports first came out.

That’s why they put in the “debatably” part. Anyone can debate to their heart’s content that it is superior. And they’d still be wrong.

(To be clear, I’m agreeing, you and Kolanaki are exactly right.)

But it doesn’t even matter if it’s superior. There is value in seeing the steps of progress made to get to a superior edition. This is why we have version control for code. It’s not always just so you can do a revert or see the latest change, if it was we could just throw away commits older than a month or something. It’s valuable to be able to see the whole history. We can still learn from it and appreciate what it did for its time, even if it’s old.

Preservation, while perhaps idealistic, is about keeping every version that we can. Doom is a great example. Because Carmac released the source code, source ports have proliferated. That means anyone can play the original Doom on just about any machine. Varying degrees of accuracy to the original DOS release exist thanks to ports like Chocolate Doom, GZDoom, Eternity Engine, et al. As do varying degrees of accuracy to Doom 95, the Windows 95 rerelease. Or to the version running on Xbox packed in with Doom 3.

Ports cover the engine, but we also have an archive of all the doom.wad files, the contents. We have demo and prototype versions. The dos release. Officially patched versions. The win95 release. The Xbox release.

But a preservationist also wants the original Bethesda Unity release, wad and engine. The Kex release with the new engine and new episodes. Neither of those Bethesda engines needs to exist but why not keep them too? They’re a part of the Doom legacy, an ongoing chapter in the endless story of Doom.

Its good that in this community we’ve gotten to preserve so much. It keeps the history of one of the most important video games alive and relevant. It keeps the game itself relevant. Without the original source release, there’s no GZDoom and there’s probably no Bethesda rereleases. The impact that source release had on the gaming community, gaming as an industry, modding and indie gaming, is incalculable.

That Crysis–also a landmark game in its own time–deserves any less is laughable. The original release of the game should always be present and available: as an artifact of its time, as a fine game in its own right, and as a piece of living history that can be stood up against its remakes, sequels, and the games it inspired.

The comparison is more akin to how they have actually restored the mona lisa with chemical and color correction as a means to make it withstand the test of time. Thats essentially what has happened with the remastered version of this game.

I understand that in other instances, remasters and remakes might as well be a different game, but if you have played crysis, this is barely the case.

Im not saying its fine to lose access to original data. All im saying is in this particular case, there isnt much loss to be outraged about. The publishers havent un-alived the IP. We have just lost access to some historical data.

I am all for preservation. I dont want to underplay the detriments of lost data. I just want to subjectively quantify this loss.

That’s the first and biggest step in it being lost to history.

And when you die and your next of kin tries to recover your password and gets told by Valve that it’s not within the TOS, your copy will be just as gone and the game will be just as unperserved.

As stated in the article for anyone who missed it: it’s still available on GOG and is DRM free there. It’s also currently discounted to $4.99, so if anyone is worried about having (legal) access to the game then that option is still available (for now).

The high seas still has it’s copy as well. Heck many times I find the copy on the Internet Archive ready to go.

Goddammit, Roshi, never again.

when your 2007 nostalgia kicks in

Not like modern games look much better.

Nope, digital art doesn’t deteriorate, needs no repainting.

I’ll believe a PC game can be actually lost when it is, and I don’t mean online services ending. The game industry would need to figure out how to get rid of piracy entirely but as it stands I can find a copy of this game on archive.

That’s not how preservation works.

If it’s not made freely available, and is only held by previous purchasers with no transferable rights, it is not preserved.

What you are describing is the debate over content ownership, and if that were the topic at hand, you would he spot on. But preservation is something different. Preservation is about the long game.

uh. Shit.

I dont even know if I have a digital copy of that game. Not that I was ever gonna play it again…

I always considered it a novelty of the 2000s. It was the game I used to break in my first gaming PC, and it wasnt’ even that good of a PC to run it in the first place.

But I keep being told the trillionaire corporation steam is 100% ethical and good guys and that the billionaire Gabe is OUR billionaire and loves us!!

How is this gabes fault? Should gabe ban people from removing their own games from the store?

“Don’t talk bad about MY billionaire! ”