Summer Flame Day 2022– In Piracy We Trust Redux
The past year has been turbulent in terms of digital games ownership, and the overall longevity and the availability of games on various platforms. Publishers again reminded us that you in fact don’t own your games, and access to them can be taken away in a moment. It is time to revisit the Summer Flame Day article I wrote in 2012. Ten years after my original article it feels like the landscape is a mixed bag, but not much has fundamentally changed. Piracy is the only way to really preserve video games.
I believe most of my arguments have stood the test of time. So let’s go over the news in 2021 and 2022, plus what gaming companies are right doing now.
In March 2021 Sony officially announced the impending closures of the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable digital stores. Players would have completely lost the ability to purchase games, movies, DLC, and the ability to redeem vouchers or use funds in their wallets. The ability to re-download games would have been preserved for an unknown period of time. The news sparked a rush on those respective stores as people loaded up their wallets and downloaded as many games as possible to their PlayStation systems. Personally, I spent about $200 to cover games I knew I’d want to replay someday on my PSP, PSVita, and PS3.
It turns out between the vocal backlash from fans and the rush on the system stores, Sony ultimately relented in late April. The PSP digital store didn’t survive the cut, but the PS3 and the Vita would be granted a stay of execution. Many fans breathed a sigh of relief, but Sony (at least under CEO Jim Ryan’s leadership) is determined to pull fans into the future, not keep them rooted in the past. The PS3 and PSVita stores have slowly had their functionality taken away. Since October 2021, the PS3 and Vita have had the ability to make purchases with PayPal and credit/debit cards removed, the ability to renew PS+ subscriptions is gone, the ability to create new PSN accounts is no more, and finally the ability to transfer PS1 games from a PS3 to a Vita was also removed. That last point also includes the ability to transfer save data. All of this must be done via PC now. (If you don’t own a PC of some type, you’re just out of luck.)
On a slightly separate, but also important issue in July 21, 2021 it was discovered if the internal CMOS battery in the PS3, PS4, and PS5 were ever to die or be removed and the consoles didn’t have access to the internet and PSN, all digital content on those systems would simply stop working. These batteries generally last up to 15 years, so the oldest PS3 systems were in danger of no longer having functional digital content. Physical discs work just fine. On the PS4 all physical and digital games would cease to work. After months of silence amid the criticism, Sony finally patched the issue on the PS4 (and eventually the PS5) in September. However, the PS3 has not been issued such an update, even as of this writing.
It might be tempting to say “Being a PlayStation fan seems rough. Thankfully Nintendo has my back.” If you actually said that, then you might have been sleeping under a news rock for the past few months. In February of this year, Nintendo announced it would be shutting down the eShop for both the Wii U and the 3DS in March 2023. In giving fans a little over a year to purchase what they want, Nintendo seems to have learned some lessons from the criticism Sony rightfully received. That said, a year is generous, but Nintendo has been determined to make accessibility to those stores difficult. In late May users lost the ability to add funds via credit/debit cards to their eShop accounts on the Wii U and 3DS. At the end of August users will lose the ability to add funds to those respective shops via Nintendo eShop cards– effectively cutting off purchases way before the March 2023 deadline.
In their own FAQ Nintendo states the closure is just part of any product life-cycle and that the company does not have an obligation to preserve classic games. (Of course the last bit about game preservation was deleted from Nintendo’s FAQ, but thankfully the internet remembers.) This premature end means that lots of games will suddenly disappear, especially digital-only releases unless they are ported to other systems. This also includes the games found on the virtual consoles.
Hopes of at least being able to re-download purchased games don’t have a rosy long-term outlook if Nintendo’s older systems are anything to go by. In March of this year users suddenly noticed they no longer had the ability to re-download their purchased games on the Wii and the DSi shops. The shops were simply “under maintenance.” After months of asking Nintendo for clarification and a restoration of the service, the company responded in late May. The response was that there was nothing to announce. A month later and nothing has changed. In contrast, a bug hit PS3 and Vita users making some or all classic games unplayable on those systems. Fortunately the issue was addressed and fixed, though it took a few days.
Perhaps the only solution to games suddenly going away or being rendered unplayable is to just stick to PC. Unfortunately, PC has its own issues regarding DRM and what happens when there’s a major service outage. In November 2021, games running the Denuvo DRM technology were unplayable for an entire weekend because the company’s domain name expired. This affected users across a variety of launchers, including Steam. In December, Amazon’s AWS experienced a major data center outage that affected a variety of companies, including the Epic Games Store. While the AWS service was unavailable users couldn’t log in, access the store, or access their games library.
On the console side of things Nintendo and Sony have embraced subscription-based solutions to game availability and a degree of preservation. They are essentially following Microsoft’s lead with Game Pass. In the case of Nintendo, after making miniature game consoles available for a limited time (the NES Classic and the SNES Classic), they’ve focused hard on Switch Online and the Expansion Pack. NES and SNES games are slowly released each month with some online capability added. The Expansion Pack adds Sega Genesis and N64 games to the mix in addition to DLC packs for certain games. It’s clear with this feature that Virtual Console as a concept is dead, as subscription fees are a more lucrative source of income. The only problem is that releases are bafflingly slow and niche. Considering how big Nintendo’s library is, their online offerings are almost a joke at this point.
On the Sony side, they have recently revamped PlayStation Plus to better compete with Game Pass. The service has been split into Essential, Extra, and Premium tiers with Essential being the original PS+ offerings and the two higher tiers rolling PS Now into their services. The Premium tier offers hundreds of PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games to stream or download (sans PS3 games). The streaming service is available on PS4, PS5, and PC. So far reactions to the classic games offerings on the PS+ Premium tier are mixed at best. The service itself is new, so time will tell how many games are being added to the library. That said, the effort itself is still more impressive than Nintendo’s. This is not enough to make me consider upgrading my PS+ Essential subscription, though.
On the ports side, we’ve seen a lot of games announced for newer consoles in either the form of remasters, remakes, or enhanced ports. For example, we have Persona 3 Portable heading to current consoles (excluding the Switch) and PC. Last year we saw Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne ported to the PS4, Switch, and Steam. This year fans of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII will see that game be remade as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion.
Additionally, games that have physical releases can still be purchased, but prices have spiked recently. Games that cost $40 to $60 upon release can now cost hundreds on secondhand markets. Even getting the parts to keep hardware going can be difficult as consoles are no longer being produced or sold. Even Nintendo which used to be a wonderful place to buy parts to repair older systems has stopped selling those parts. At best people can only hope that versions of these systems are engineered in the future– something akin to Hyperkin or Analogue’s offerings.
In terms game preservation, piracy is still the way to go keep titles from completely disappearing. As we can see, the most popular titles will find their way onto new consoles, but smaller niche games won’t be so lucky. Pirating and running them on emulators is the only way fans will retain access to harder to find titles. The retro game community has ensured that new emulators for newer systems will continue to be made on PCs capable of running them. Also game systems continue to be modified to run Homebrew content. Yes, this is very much in a legal gray area, but publishers don’t seem very interested in preserving their own games for future generations. In that case, it’s up to fans to take matters into their own hands.
Piracy continues to live on and continues to be relevant. In the end corporations are not your friends.
About The Author
Angela
Executive Editor | Angela has had an addiction to video games and cartoons since she was young and impressionable. She enjoys writing long articles about these subjects and whatever else catches her eye. Mastodon
