One of the biggest challenges when it comes to game preservation is, ironically, the companies which own the assets and code.
As Fallout creator Tim Cain has already revealed, we very nearly lost the source code for the original game, but thankfully that was avoided, with no thanks to the company that made it.
Cain has been speaking again on his YouTube channel on this topic, and laments the fact that the IP holders take "authority" over code but then shirk the "responsibility" of properly preserving it for future generations.
"I've lost stuff, and I think I take an active effort to keep a lot of things, so I can see why companies have lost stuff," explains Cain in his latest video. "However, they had the responsibility to do it. That I think is the difference."
Today, preserving code is easier than it was back in the 1990s. As Cain explains, code was often backed up on DAT tapes, which have a short lifespan before they begin to deteriorate. Making sure code and assets are preserved is often an arduous process – and that's before you have to deal with publishers and studios ordering you to delete data when development is over. "They told me to destroy it," says Cain when talking about publisher pressure. "I did … When you're being threatened with a lawsuit, you delete it all."
What really grinds Cain's gears is that IP owners stake their claim to these materials and won't allow developers to preserve them, but then don't follow up on doing the hard work themselves:
"A few months ago, I did a video on game preservation. A lot of companies have lost things. I kind of sounded mad about it, and in a way I am. If you take the authority to keep these things and tell other people not to, and that they have no right to, then you also have to take the responsibility to keep them. It just kind of makes me mad when repeatedly companies, and especially people high up at companies, take authority but no responsibility."