Monday, October 24, 2005

Copy protection robs us of nostalgia

What follows may be the most bizarre argument against digital media copy protection, but bear with me. I'm not condoning piracy, just hear me out.

In the near future, copy protection on (PC) video game discs will not allow gamers to return to their "roots" and play the old school classic games we loved so well. It's really started already, but the more time that passes, the more widespread (and more bulletproof) copy protection will become, effectively locking us out of our own games. You might not be following me. Let me back up.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling nostalgic and decided it was time to play through the Monkey Island series again. So I went looking for my "Monkey Island Madness" disc that I purchased as part of the Lucasarts Adventure Archive Vol III. It was nowhere to be found. I double-checked, no dice. I started to panic. I got the Archive from the Lucasarts store at least 4 years ago, when they were still selling it retail. You can't get the Archive anymore. Well, not for a reasonable price, anyway, and then it's used.

I really didn't want to plunk down upwards of 80 bucks just to get the first two Monkey Island games again. So I called Justin and asked him to check his collection, perhaps I'd let him borrow it. Score! He had it. After I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief, he made an excellent suggestion. We both have our share of classic games that you can't pick up cheap, or simply just can't get anymore. He said we should back them up on DVD and put them in a safe place, so if any of them should ever be lost, we're not screwed.

I did just that, but I ran into a handful that had copy protection. I managed to circumvent it, so that I could make a perfectly legal backup of a game that I purchased legally. But what happens when the copy protection gets so good that you simply can't make a copy of a game? Wait, it already exists. As far as I know, Starforce is absolutely impossible to crack.

Now we reach my point. Ten years from now, when we gamers want to go back and revisit the classic games from the turn of the century, if we managed to lose or ruin our original game discs, too fucking bad! We've lost the ability at that point to kick it old school, because of the goddamn copy protection.

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