#video-game-preservation

#video-game-preservation

In 2012, programmer Chris Oberth passed away after a career that spanned from the dawn of video games in the late '70s to the PlayStation 2 era. Now, one of Oberth's unfinished games, Xcavator 2025, has been completed and it's slated for a physical release on the console it was originally intended for: the NES. The Video Game History Foundation--with the permission and support of Oberth's family--found the source code for Xcavator 2025 in Oberth's development archives.

Concord barely lasted two weeks before Sony pulled the plug on it, and it seems determined to keep the game offline as it just issued DMCA notices against a fan-made effort to revive the live-service shooter as Concord Delta. Recently, several Concord fans had managed to resurrect the game with some technical wizardry, and although the project was in a buggy WIP state, it was still a playable build on a custom server.

The Stop Killing Games campaign is continuing to gain momentum after hitting more than a million signatures in July. After a July 31st deadline, the movement secured around 1.45 million signatures, which the organizers are currently in the process of verifying. The initiative aims to enact legislation that preserves access to video games, even when developers decide to end support, as seen with Ubisoft when it delisted The Crew and revoked access to players who already purchased the game.