The Entertainment Software Association (ESA,) the representative group for game publishers, has come out against an attempt by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that would allow abandoned games requiring online verification to be preserved for further use.

In 2015 many games released require online verification to be played, even if the game itself is not an online game. The system, designed to combat piracy, is arguably somewhat acceptable when the game is supported, but the problem is game publishers usually only support the games for a set period of time, and once they abandon verification support, the games then become impossible to play.

The EFF is asking the Copyright Office to give some legal protection to game enthusiasts, museums, and academics who preserve older video games and keep them playable; yes, that’s the ability to continue to play games which they have legally purchased by allowing them to circumvent the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions and find ways to continue to play these games without the need for online verification.

“Many player communities, along with museums, archives, and researchers, want to keep the games they own playable after publishers shut down the servers the games depend on” the EFF notes in a post, however “Section 1201 creates legal difficulty for these communities, which is why we’ve asked the Copyright Office to give them an exemption.”

The ESA, along with MPAA and RIAA, are instead opposing the exemption, saying that modifying games to connect to a new server (or to avoid contacting a server at all) after publisher support ends, will, amazingly “destroy the video game industry” and that it would “undermine the fundamental copyright principles on which our copyright laws are based.”

Now remember, the exemption is being asked for only for games that have been legally purchased, yet crippled by the game publisher who has decided to withdraw the ability to verify the game, turning Blu-Ray or DVD games into nothing more than shiny, expensive frisbees.

And then it gets more surreal:

ESA also says that exceptions to Section 1201’s blanket ban will send a message that “hacking—an activity closely associated with piracy in the minds of the marketplace—is lawful.”

Hacking actually is legal, just certain types of hacking aren’t, a point quite clearly missed by the ESA.

The whole notion that based on the whim of the game publisher you can no longer play a game you’ve legally purchased is obscene, and quite possibly in itself should be illegal; could you imagine buying a car then three to four years later the car maker saying sorry, we no longer provide support for the ability to turn on your car…the comparison may be extreme, but the concept is still the same: once you legally buy something you should be able to continue to use that item for as long as you own it.

More information on the case the EFF is making can be found here.

photo credit: Old media via photopin (license)