Well, funny you should mention it because this came out less than a month ago:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-10-28/pdf/2021-2...
> Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
> [..]
> 1. Computer Programs — Video Game Preservation
> SPN and LCA petitioned to renew the exemption for preservation of video games for which outside server support has been discontinued. No oppositions were filed against readoption of this exemption, and Consumer Reports submitted a comment in support of the renewal petition. The petition stated that libraries, archives, and museums continue to need the exemption to preserve and curate video games in playable form. For example, the petition highlighted Georgia Tech University Library’s Computing Lab, retroTECH, which has made a significant collection of recovered video game consoles accessible for research and teaching uses pursuant to the exemption. [..] This existing exemption, as well as the above exemption pertaining to software preservation, serve as the baseline in assessing whether to recommend any expansions in Class 14.
I am sour however that the Wii Remotes are not working with the Switch though, as I find the Wii Wheel to be a superior experience when playing Mario Kart. There is no technical reason for this as far as I can tell as the Switch still uses Bluetooth for connectivity. Now, there are new wheels, but just like the Joy-Cons, they are far too small to be comfortable given the size of my hands.
Specifically: I want to add direct support for proper e-drums played via MIDI into Dolphin, without the various hacks to get it to emulate a keyboard etc, and compatible even with the Pro Drums mode in RB3.
Guitars are simultaneously an easier and harder question: would require a DIY guitar, but can be fed into Dolphin just by emulating a HID device.
email is in my bio if you want to discuss
It's certainly admirable, but to me it feels like Windows and all of the closed OSes will eventually die outside of museums and give way to open systems instead, at the same time killing any hopes of running older games and such, outside of cases where they are pretty simple, there have been source code leaks or other things to make running them easier (e.g. huge cult following). For example, you can probably port over something like "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" in a feasible amount of time[1] but something like "Cyberpunk 2077" or "Grand Theft Auto V" would be way more complicated in comparison.
Thus, your choices are probably limited to the following:
- use open systems and say no to playing games that don't support them, out of principle or otherwise
- use both open and closed systems, like in a dual boot configuration (or VM with GPU passthrough and relative mouse movement mode which is hard), for when you can't go without those games
- attempt to use workarounds like Wine or Proton or whatever, but don't expect everything to work out of the box, especially with hostile DRM
Linked, because it's actually pretty interesting:
as if it was better in flight simulator dvd edition deluxe premium whatever. that thing gave me windows 98 floppy vibes and than the windows store basically failed to play it, even on completly newly installed windows. basically I helped a customers son to install and play his 130€ game..... support was clueless, you won't make this shit up, just google https://www.google.com/search?q=flight+simulator+windows+sto....
I mean you install the game with 10 DVD's !!!! 10 and that alone takes like over 1-2 hours. after that you NEED to keep dvd 1 inside the drive AND you of course need an internet connection and the store needs to work and and and, most often the store just fails to activate. (good news you can download it from the store and if you are lucky it will start)
What changed this generation? Game Pass? Maybe consumers becoming accustomed to streaming services and being held hostage by monthly fees?
It's quite curious.
Sounds bleak but likely to me.
Stuff got normalized.
There are difficulties in this with third party licensing, which can get quite complex, going beyond content licenses (such as a Star Wars game or licenses for music tracks) but including many third party technology licenses. Those kinds of issues don't come into play as much with things like movies and other media.
What Spencer is proposing makes a lot of sense but it's not really done from the perspective of rolling back DRM or sunsetting copyright protections. It's about encouraging publishers and developers to support old titles better for emulation, and making it into a business. They're not really thinking about archival considerations or opening up modding.
Particularly now, with the games industry entering into a mature phase, they're mostly tapped as it relates to new ideas and are looking for ways to make more money on the back catalog.
Who needs freedom if the dictator is always benevolent?
These days crossplay removes that secuirty blanket (After all, thats all it was, a secuirty blanket).
The 360 is a nice example, until the DVD-Rom firmware mod was out there things were pretty peaceful in the online gaming space (Excluding people using external manipulation such as network manipulation or exploiting bugs in the code allowing them to get into out-of-bounds areas. Things like aim bots just wasn't a thing).
Once the DRM was bypassed starting with the DVD-Rom mod people quickly found that often the only file that was checked for modifications was the .xex file that the console executed. Many games would just have their configs in scripts that could just be easily edited, burnt onto a fresh disk and the game would just happily use those edited configs because the games were pretty much client authoritative esp thanks to the peer to peer nature most games used.
To get around Tilte Updates / Server side game configs people would use scripts which were still loaded off disk to change the TU/server side loaded config values back to what ever they wanted after the game had loaded/fetched them.
The JTAG & Reset glitch hacks gave cheats more freedom as a) they didn't have to burn a new DVD with every change they wanted to make b) gave them even more freedom on the system to change things as they were basically "root".
My point being that many console games at the time used the consoles DRM as their anti-cheat, once one was broken, so was the other.
lumping competitive multiplayer games in with single-player games, then saying DRM is required is all nonsense.
anti-cheat measures and DRM are different things.
Hmm... not sure I can imagine preservation of video games being high on legislature's priorities.
In the UK (and I think most of the EU) there are similar national bodies to which one can apply for permission to break DRM -- e.g. in the UK there's a long and complex review process by the civil servants at the department for culture, media and sport [2]. Of course, none of these things actually break DRM. They just say that you can break DRM without getting in trouble.
Who knows, in 2055 maybe my handy device at `/dev/quantum/simultaneous_annealer` will magically break five rounds of 256-bit AES or whatever Microsoft use...
[1] https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/26/18027200/video-game-drm-c...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technological-pro...
"I am the library of the Senate!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtaEdpEuOyE)
I find it amusing that this power is vested in the library of congress.
That same DRM has kept consoles from becoming a wild west for exploits and hacks. MS has the right idea, conservation should be on the creators, not a community hacking away to do what the creators could have easily...
Anyone who actually knows the state of the art (or even just knows what DRM actually is...) realizes this.
I've worked as a game networking programmer on a console title and can confidently say the most reliable protection against cheaters is DRM.
DRM isn't just you can't pirate it, it's: you can't modify it, you can't deeply inspect it, you can't redefine aspects of your identity (ie. hardware bans)
These are things that are nightmares for Stallmanists, but this is one case where they're perfectly matched to the use case.
A console is a game playing machine primarily and sold on this premise. The only time we ever saw a deviation for that was the PS3, and they were punished when they had to walk it back. Don't expect it that again...
I would not buy a console without DRM. It's practically the only benefit over PC and its wild-wild west of cheating. The lengths that console players end up going to for any sort of unfair advantage are almost comical in comparison...
To improve responsiveness and reduce lag clients today run a lot of simulations and the servers just do basic consolidation within a given time window, server side anti cheat alone is very hard to implement without degrading the user experience on the client which is why anti cheat today is so aggressive on the client side basically looking for any possible manipulation.
Microsoft's DRM on their latest xbox is insane – they actively consider the customer hostile at every available opportunity, have essentially always-online DRM, including for physical discs [1] and have had senior architects giving talks explaining how the "only" way to make a games console is to have a physically secure enclave in a chip with a truly unique root of trust, a very strict hardware watchdog, engineered resistance to under/overvoltage or clocking techniques and literally everything, including all buses and IO, encrypted to the nines. This is clearly incompatible with recording history (and also produces lots of errors like "this game isn't ready yet" – utter tosh. New Xbox consoles require an internet connection at least once to "activate" and play games – meaning any unsold will become e-waste once the servers shut down [2]).
I'm glad they're making the argument -- the preservation of our culture is hugely important, and emulation is a good way to do it, particularly if industry sponsored (I think it's a shame that, e.g. there isn't a good PS4 emulator yet) -- but there's a definite false narrative behind this.
[1] https://nichegamer.com/xbox-series-x-reportedly-has-always-o...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E983349p7Q