@Coalescence —yes, Pokémon is what made the link cable explode in popularity—at least in the UK, in my experience. To the point that official cables were very difficult to find in UK shops and third-party cables met the demand. It was a "ooo! You've got a link cable!" and guaranteed you popularity in the playground.
@avcrypt —see my above comment about when a game I worked on for both Steam and Nintendo Switch ending up being pirated, and also note that I do interviews on cryptography, so you may want to rein in the attitude.
When you said
"I'm not sure you understand what copy protection exists to do."
followed by
"they might have well not included any at all given how trivially they implemented it."
it is quite literally making my point that it's inevitable whilst also invalidating your incorrect assertion that I somehow don't understand the purpose of DRM.
By your same flawed logic, because every game on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch gets pirated, that must thus mean that the publisher and also Sony and Nintendo are somehow not trustworthy? Bizarre take.
Keep in mind that the likes of Denuovo cost USD $25,000 per month with an additional $0.50 per license activation. Do you really think the economic reality of an indie game like this makes that viable? There's a reason that even larger titles remove their Denuvo after a while—it stops making economic sense even for them.
Maybe indies just aren't shaking the magical money tree hard enough. "Why do indie films not have all-star ensemble casts, Spielberg, Zimmer, Arri Alexa cameras et al? If your hard work gets pirated then that's your fault because you didn't spend enough of your infinite pot of money on preventing the inevitable. It's only money and all creatives are loaded because it's movies/music/video games/books/art" is the kind of energy this comment gives.
Seems to me that you just wanted to use a stranger as an emotional punching bag and it didn't work out for you—all the same, I hope you got whatever it is that's up out of your system. Maybe go play a game or something next time.
@Exerion76 —we are just feeding a troll at this point. He would argue that black was white if he thought it would get him some attention. Of course the game has bugs and isn't ready for a physical edition, otherwise it would have been there day one.
@AllieKitsune —game is a few megabytes—I'm sure you can make it fit on your laptop if you delete a few screenshots or bloatware that comes with the laptop.
Tell me again how this is ready to ship a physical edition of. Better to delay and make sure it's as good as it can be than manufacture buggy physical editions that won't sell because they're flawed.
@SteveFox —there's plenty of options, including PC right now, current-gen consoles, a future physical edition for MegaDrive/Genesis, even arcades. The unjustified sense of entitlement and lack of respect towards the studio is ludicrous.
The topic isn't about playing pirated copies of games, it's about rugpulling a small studio's release arrangement with their publisher and potentially jeopardizing their finances following years of dev on a niche title.
Being able to play the ROM on MegaDrive/Genesis before it's even considered finished for the target original hardware for the studio and publisher to even be able to manufacture the physical copies is a consequence of the above—not difficult to understand. It not being ready yet is exactly why there isn't a physical version yet, and if a ROM was a consideration, also why there would be no ROM at this stage.
Big "hurrdurr, I pirated this unfinished movie and it's not good, it's a bad movie, you should not buy this movie or go to see it" energy. He who pays the least complains the most.
@avcrypt —if it exists, the DRM will inevitably be cracked on it (online functionality notwithstanding). Doesn't matter what the publisher could have done, it was inevitably going to happen. The higher the profile, the shorter the time it takes for it to happen.
If Nintendo with their enormous war chest can't protect their updated ROMs from being extracted and ran on retro hardware or emulators, why would this be any different? If it could be done, it would be done. This is why AAA pushes online functionality so hard, because if someone pirates it, they miss out on the crux of the experience. Apples and oranges though. Hurts the little guy more than it hurts the faceless corp with a legion of shareholders—employees cop for commercial failures though.
@cawley1 —I'm not privy to numbers or circumstances, but when any trustworthy major figure publicly pleads for support of their latest offering due to circumstances outside of their control, I wouldn't be so quick to assume anything when the likes of this can harm confidence with the publisher.
These things very niche, but they seldom ever feel it.
Take Revolution Software—despite Broken Sword having a seemingly huge cult following, working on game adaptations for major IP et al, the studio has closed its doors repeatedly. Being indie is difficult. Quality games are seldom ever enough, and the business aspect is complex and ever-changing with totally weird mixed revenue streams that are different for every game and studio.
The Road to Revolution book is pretty enlightening about the economics of indie studios BTW (amidst many other things), it's worth a read if you're genuinely interested in how someone can make something amazing, yet due to whatever agreement the studio had to settle for, it's not necessarily easy to survive long-term, but they took it because that's what there was and they had to accept something to actually have some hope of staying afloat with a project and assumed future revenue stream.
However, Revolution also reopened its doors repeatedly and is still making games, but it is sincerely passion for the the art that keeps these things viable—both from the team and the audience. They've done crowdfunding too. I've also been a part of a few games that have crashed-and-burned in crowdfunding despite having known talents attached to it. Tis a fickle ol' thing. Nothing is certain with this stuff, and over-budget and behind schedule is the norm in indie.
@Ristar24 —Evercade was mentioned on Twitter/X earlier, but with legal agreements in place, it is what it is in terms of the upcoming physical release as it stands, and no further comment can be given at this moment in time.
Evercade also much more niche than the many MegaDrive/Genesis consoles already out there. I've known some folks to do well with an Evercade release, but others not so much (old well-known classic games being re-released tend to do well).
Think it depends on where/who your existing fanbase is. I notice many more Brits into Evercade in my own experiences (got a real surprise with how many Brits talked about Soul Reaver on Evercade on Bluesky et al), but I've yet to encounter a Brit who had heard about Earthion, whereas I was surprised by the difference in US folks knowing about it when talking about upcoming games I was excited for.
@cawley1 —ZPF ROM is available. ZPF is lower profile than a new Yuzo Koshiro game though. They're also apples and oranges as ZPF successfully crowd-funded the project for $204,670—they stand a better chance of riding it out, just like we didn't flinch when All Walls Must Fall got pirated on PC and Switch as the whole thing was paid for between Kickstarter and a creative grant in Berlin.
@gingerbeardman —then you do you—doesn't mean others won't. Regardless of however you feel about LRG, they remain in business, and they also understand the market demographic that's relevant to them or they wouldn't continue to do business. LRG is really non sequitur to the topic at hand about people pirating a game that isn't ready to be released on MegaDrive/Genesis whilst people try to justify the "why" despite the pages of indie history being cluttered with studios that deserved better than what the public gave them. The meaningful topics are really that of respect, trust and consent.
@Fiyz —media in any medium is easily pirated—even pre-release not uncommonly. Rate of piracy is higher on current-gen consoles because that's where the overwhelming majority of players are, and enabling piracy on modern consoles is cheaper than on retro ones, plus most current game-playing demographics want to play modern games on modern consoles. If it wasn't the case, AAA would be focusing on old games for old consoles too, and console manufacturers would be selling you upgrades for your old hardware. New games for old consoles are a labour of love.
Volume and revenue of modern versus yesteryear hardware for indie titles that are high quality? Now that's a whole other thing and totally relative. It's like music—most people will listen to the digital version of something, but it'll be the short run of vinyl, tapes and t-shirts that meant the most in terms of the bottom-line and viability of further projects.
On the one hand, I am the first to tell people that digitally-recorded music sounds worse on vinyl. On the other hand, whilst it might be a gimmick/novelty, it is actually something people will buy (despite offering them DSD source quality et al digitally), even if they never actually play the record as they not uncommonly don't even own a turntable—but the customers generally understand that they're funding the next project one way or another. Physical editions of games aren't any different. Anyone disagrees? Well, perhaps it simply isn't aimed at you.
@Scollurio —LRG specialize in physical editions—the market is flooded with unlicensed counterfeits/reproductions (whatever you want to call them) of both classic and contemporary games for old consoles—even fan-made ROM-hacks of classic games get unlicensed physical editions.
I imagine the same is going to end up being true for Earthion, and with what the average repro/fake costs, complete with box and manual, from various online marketplaces—that's a very serious potential problem for LRG and makes the whole thing more of a risk.
Sure, some people would buy a ROM, but LRG obviously knows whether or not this approach works (this is literally what their entire business model lives and dies on after all), just like I know whether you can give away records that are pay-what-you-want in a sustainable way—even Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails couldn't make that model work, despite the best of intentions for the audience. The audience doesn't understand that these models place a lot of trust in the public to do the right thing and support what they enjoy if they want more of what they enjoy—if they can afford to support it. Ergo, not all pirates can afford to pay, thus they aren't lost sales, but not every pirate is broke, and would have otherwise bought the thing if they couldn't play it any other way.
If it comes down to a physical edition being possible versus not being possible, the potential of it being possible is something that's going to be pursued (makes the whole thing feel more satisfying from the dev perspective), but it represents a calculated risk for the publisher that ultimately has to make sense. Choosing to do a physical edition doesn't have to make sense to anyone but ANCIENT—it's their baby. Likewise, following through on the physical version is also the prerogative of LRG, agreements not withstanding.
IMO, the "best" solution for enthusiast players would be the contemporary equivalent to MegaNet, Satellaview et al—an official cartridge with WiFi for a proper online storefront. But from a dev perspective, it's just selling via another digital store that you get 70% of and have to price low to compete with everything else distributed digitally, and another opportunity to be told to eff yourself if you aren't ticking whatever boxes they want ticking in terms of content, regional censorship et al.
You're not really any better off as an indie studio for that being an option as the potential market for that is a fraction of the one who would buy a new, straight-forward, physical version of a game as they don't need a non-existent hypothetical future WiFi-enabled cart with a digital storefront, because physical copies are a thing here in the present. Only advantage would be in being able to patch your game, but then we're back at the problem of modern gaming where lots of things ship when they're meant to, but they don't ship in a good state and need a lot of post-release updates to get them to where they should be. When indie gets a physical release, it's usually because someone believes it's as good as it is going to be.
You usually can't fix socioeconomic problems with technological solutions—you also can't fix greed. The only way humanity will ever make sense of all this in terms of sustaining art without trusting the public to not be stupid about it is with UBI, IMO—chances of that happening? Not in my lifetime, but good luck to the future generations who try to figure it out, I'm rooting for you.
@SlangWon —as for me being pretentious about art, sure, if that's how you would prefer to view it (I don't care).
However, there's a reason I get to work on scores as a composer and re-recording mixer for journalism award-winning docs, games et al, and why I continually get to create stuff with people I respect. It's because I am passionate about the artistic value of something, and know not to listen to armchair commentators who just consume the output rather than contribute something to the culture.
But, you know, that's just my perspective, just like me being "pretentious" about art is yours. Indie isn't AAA. Indie doesn't usually have a safety net. Yuzo has been indie for quite literally decades—ANCIENT knows what they're doing. They know how to balance art and business just fine.
@Razieluigi —I respect, appreciate and agree with a lot of where you're coming from to a great extent.
However, they are not the publisher and thus not the manufacturer of the physical edition. Nobody wants to be left sitting on physical copies that haven't sold, or worse, may never sell.
ANCIENT has sold out recent physical releases before, e.g., NES physical version of Amazon's Training Road (USD $59.99). ANCIENT has also offered a free ROM (Amazon's Running Diet) before that. Amazon's Training Road is an enhanced version of Amazon's Running Diet. If there's anyone who would know what they're doing over this, it's ANCIENT, IMO. They understand their market, and there's a reason they're doing it this way. I am certain LRG also understands it too, they also published Amazon's Training Road.
Earthion isn't a novelty created in a month, it represents years of hard work from a veteran. A new high-quality game from Yuzo Koshiro is a good opportunity for a physical release and to encourage more interest in this area (and in arcades, which I'm also deeply passionate about—if you haven't got arcades in your area, perhaps this is what's attempted to be avoided for those who still have them), but the ROM getting pirated and the discourse surrounding it inevitably undermines the confidence of the publisher with a physical release. It's already a risk to do a physical MegaDrive/Genesis cartridge, but what folks don't realize is that by this being pirated, they're potentially risking screwing themselves out of a physical release and out of further new games for old consoles.
It's clear ANCIENT isn't happy with how the MegaDrive/Genesis version is at present, hence the desire to be able to get it perfect as they can't patch physical copies. A problem like that is significant for small biz in both trust and cost. I respect the decision. It might not make sense to others, but it doesn't have to be understood, it just has to be respected.
I say let ANCIENT do what they want to do and give them the space to breathe and make the thing happen in the way they want it to rather than lambast and complain that it isn't how you would do it. If you want to do it your way then start making games (I did).
A friend I ran a record label with in Berlin now runs his own label, and they do vinyl-only releases, and yes, of course, it gets pirated in the end. But the next project gets funded via the physical edition, because digital isn't paying for anything with music.
Games are a different story—I composed music for All Walls Must Fall on both Steam and Nintendo Switch—now we give the game away for free to whoever wants it so that it's preserved into the future and it can stand as testament to who we were, where we were and how we felt. Unlike ANCIENT, we had a successful Kickstarter (€36,576 and we only asked for €15,000), funding was also matched by a local scheme in Berlin. ANCIENT and LRG don't have leeway for problems and to not get compensated for what they've created. The level of risk is appreciable.
In the spirit of openness, Yuzo and I are mutuals. We haven't had a conversation regarding any of this (that's intentional on my behalf as I have very strong opinions on balancing making art and staying afloat, having both succeeded and crashed-and-burned in equal measure over the years), but it's easy to understand the above, IMO.
@SlangWon —then perhaps you aren't the primary or prioritized target demographic. What an outlier consumer wants versus the wishes of an indie creator with a market they have an understanding of and clear intent towards? The wishes come first every time. There's a very specific goal in mind with it.
Not everything is for everyone. To demand otherwise is to to disrespect the intent of the creator with their art. There's a reason AAA doesn't do stuff like this, and there's a reason why this is being done how it is.
Even folks in the comments saying they bought it on Steam then ripped the ROM to play it elsewhere—have some self-respect, patience and respect towards the creators. If it isn't as good as they would like it to be on MegaDrive/Genesis yet, then perhaps it's worth waiting to enjoy it as they intend for it to be.
@SlangWon —arcade players are paying customers too. The goal is to bring renewed interest to the concept of arcades, which are really struggling currently post-COVID.
If you want to play what you feel is the best version then go to the arcade and play that version.
@gingerbeardman —if you want to support the devs then simply buy the game. It helps it rank on digital storefronts in terms of algorithmic discovery, and if you do decide to play it and enjoy it, post a positive review on the product page. People would be surprised how impactful this can be to smaller titles.
I'll be honest, it's just a brand. The thing that made Commodore what it was—the people and the zeitgeist—are long gone.
I love the history of Commodore, but we shouldn't pretend that the value was the brand, because that misrepresents the historic and ongoing relevance of what was achieved.
@jamess —why would it "get good enough"? This inevitablism is bizarre.
The stats are showing that if this isn't a technological dead-end then smaller models with as few tokens as you can get away with will yield far better 'capabilities' as more tokens means worse output. Yet for 99% of what people are trying to throw this "technology" (lol) at, it's never going to be appropriate or reliable.
You can't own the copyright on the output of gen AI, thus you can't prevent your work from people ripping it off, abusing it, pirating it et al.
The only thing gen AI can spit out is what's already in its training data. If anything, AI represents a stagnation in creativity. Anybody who says otherwise doesn't understand what it does. The hype is breathless and bordering on cult-like magical thinking. Dangerous.
@1040STF —and yet LLMs show time and time again that they're bad at mathematics. E.g., asking it how many `r` are in the word `strawberry`.
I argue that cleaning up the audio will strip it of what makes it appealing. The imperfections are what makes it aesthetically complete.
I spend a large amount of time cleaning up audio for TV, film and video games, and we don't need AI to clean up something as simple as a hiss. You can literally set-and-forget a notch EQ to filter out hiss on GB (though why you'd want to, I've no idea). If you need AI to do that then you should look for another job. Takes seconds, costs nothing, doesn't guzzle electricity and destroy the planet, and even an idiot could do it (they do). We've been able to do it for decades, into the previous century.
You're also missing the obvious—if you want "pure" then you record the output of an emulator—or if you're smart, you just use on-console DSP on the output of your remastered version, thus killing the need to even mess around with PCM files, and players can toggle it on and off.
I can tell you don't know anything about this yet feel the need to be an armchair commentator. It's unhelpful and muddies the water massively on an important topic. Perhaps let the experts discuss it, otherwise we are going to end up going down a bad path.
Whilst I don't know what terms rights licensing or purchase agreements have been made with the authors, in scenarios like this, if it is the case that the publisher owns the IP, it should be forfeit and returned to the author(s) so they can distribute it themselves. Hopefully their agreement has some kind of clause to facilitate that if necessary, but I doubt it.
Whilst it isn't going to fill their coffers overnight, authors being able to go direct to consumers with digital and print-on-demand would go some way to putting things right. Not what backers wants to read I'm sure as they already paid for a copy, but as someone who wasn't a backer, but wants a book (some excellent looking stuff that has me intrigued) but would rather pay the author(s) directly, it's tragic to say the least.
To any authors reading, I want your books, as do friends—there is a demand for them. The market exists.
Whilst I agree with the sentiment and said similarly in another comment, these projects run on the efforts of volunteers.
Yes, some people will be old and will only have knowledge of old methodologies for things beyond their area of expertise. They don't have the financial obligations of the youth with families, mortgages et al to worry them. Likewise, some people will be old because they are experts and helped create the hardware itself or the cultural works themselves.
In typical FOSS style, I'll tell you "pull requests welcome", or ask "will you be volunteering?".
These projects work with who and what they've got. Without these "old doofuses", I'm quite certain that neither you nor most of the youth would be creating floppy drive emulators for decades-old Japanese computers in their place. It isn't like ripping CDs or DVDs. Have some respect.
We all have a part to play in the preservation of our cultural heritage as a species.
@Crabbitsteve, it isn't about what you personally do or do not need. This is about preserving the cultural record for the species as a whole. Our history is being lost at an alarming rate because of attitudes like yours.
I am glad that what you care about has been "preserved" (if it lasts long enough, I bet most of it will likely go to landfill when you die—yes, that sucks, absolutely), but for many, myself included, a lot of lost media will never be recovered and is gone forever.
It represents a huge loss culturally and historically—we understand ourselves less as a species, as communities, and as people due to it. We even understand other cultural works less due to the loss of context.
You only need to look at how many losses of manga, or books that were translated into Japanese that contained mistakes or intentional censorship. There is now so much context that we lack.
Games? You surely can't be serious in saying that everything that matters to you has been preserved by you if you don't know it even exists until you or someone else wants it. No one individual can possibly have that level of insight into the cultural output of an entire country in any single given medium. Not possible. This is why there are multiple experts that are consulted with on these matters and not just one.
I've run several archivism projects, both in terms of finding the physical or digital source, copies of it, restoring or helping understand what was discovered, and helping with the re-release ultimately.
I am passionate about archivism, hence there are volunteers for these projects in the first place. Ripping some analog or digital media to a NAS at home for your own use is not archivism or preservation in any meaningful capacity. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter, of course it does, it is individual efforts that frequently save the day in terms of eventually tracking things down to be properly archived in the long-term. Absolutely not knocking what you do for yourself—keep that up.
There's a reason game devs are honorary members of this project and not armchair commentators with a NAS. That's not me knocking you either, but that's me drawing the line to distinguish between someone who contributed to creating these cultural works versus someone who consumes them and thus has no vested interest or understanding of their importance.
You preserving something for yourself is comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same thing whatsoever.
I'm absolutely all for making sure this isn't lost, but if we are going to ask the question of "why is this failing?" then we really should be looking at the obvious.
We should be prepared to say these things with the context of helping rather than hurting. The survival of efforts like these is of utmost importance.
The lack of downloads for a PDF newsletter is not difficult to grasp. Even when the project began, this was an archaic method of distributing information, let alone having it crawled and rank well on search engines.
If you were to follow the same model with Time Extension, it would not see much traffic or interest whatsoever. The quality of the content is not the problem, but the method by which it is made available.
How many people want to download a PDF to read articles they don't even know the headlines of? People also can't share specific articles from a PDF. PDFs are also bandwidth-intensive.
The only reason I always read every Time Extension article is because there is an RSS feed. The PDF push and no RSS feed I can find is why I and many others I know miss that content.
If people who know of the project can't even successfully follow the content due to the distribution method then does that not tell us exactly why it isn't growing in terms of new people discovering it and hanging around in the long-term?
Comments 31
Re: ModRetro Version Of Tetris Gets Updated With Battle Mode It Really Should Have Shipped With
@Coalescence —yes, Pokémon is what made the link cable explode in popularity—at least in the UK, in my experience. To the point that official cables were very difficult to find in UK shops and third-party cables met the demand. It was a "ooo! You've got a link cable!" and guaranteed you popularity in the playground.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@avcrypt —see my above comment about when a game I worked on for both Steam and Nintendo Switch ending up being pirated, and also note that I do interviews on cryptography, so you may want to rein in the attitude.
When you said
"I'm not sure you understand what copy protection exists to do."
followed by
"they might have well not included any at all given how trivially they implemented it."
it is quite literally making my point that it's inevitable whilst also invalidating your incorrect assertion that I somehow don't understand the purpose of DRM.
By your same flawed logic, because every game on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch gets pirated, that must thus mean that the publisher and also Sony and Nintendo are somehow not trustworthy? Bizarre take.
Keep in mind that the likes of Denuovo cost USD $25,000 per month with an additional $0.50 per license activation. Do you really think the economic reality of an indie game like this makes that viable? There's a reason that even larger titles remove their Denuvo after a while—it stops making economic sense even for them.
Maybe indies just aren't shaking the magical money tree hard enough. "Why do indie films not have all-star ensemble casts, Spielberg, Zimmer, Arri Alexa cameras et al? If your hard work gets pirated then that's your fault because you didn't spend enough of your infinite pot of money on preventing the inevitable. It's only money and all creatives are loaded because it's movies/music/video games/books/art" is the kind of energy this comment gives.
Seems to me that you just wanted to use a stranger as an emotional punching bag and it didn't work out for you—all the same, I hope you got whatever it is that's up out of your system. Maybe go play a game or something next time.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Exerion76 —we are just feeding a troll at this point. He would argue that black was white if he thought it would get him some attention. Of course the game has bugs and isn't ready for a physical edition, otherwise it would have been there day one.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@FR4M3 —that's not how business works. There are contractual obligations to meet, and delays kill hype. You have to play the hand you're dealt.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@AllieKitsune —game is a few megabytes—I'm sure you can make it fit on your laptop if you delete a few screenshots or bloatware that comes with the laptop.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@SlangWon —release notes/changelog by the time the physical edition ships will tell us both if that was the case.
Oh look, a quick glance at Steam shows that there's bugs:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/3597580/discussions/0/597408128295830108/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/3597580/discussions/0/597407749214894881/
Tell me again how this is ready to ship a physical edition of. Better to delay and make sure it's as good as it can be than manufacture buggy physical editions that won't sell because they're flawed.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@SteveFox —there's plenty of options, including PC right now, current-gen consoles, a future physical edition for MegaDrive/Genesis, even arcades. The unjustified sense of entitlement and lack of respect towards the studio is ludicrous.
The topic isn't about playing pirated copies of games, it's about rugpulling a small studio's release arrangement with their publisher and potentially jeopardizing their finances following years of dev on a niche title.
Being able to play the ROM on MegaDrive/Genesis before it's even considered finished for the target original hardware for the studio and publisher to even be able to manufacture the physical copies is a consequence of the above—not difficult to understand. It not being ready yet is exactly why there isn't a physical version yet, and if a ROM was a consideration, also why there would be no ROM at this stage.
Big "hurrdurr, I pirated this unfinished movie and it's not good, it's a bad movie, you should not buy this movie or go to see it" energy. He who pays the least complains the most.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@avcrypt —if it exists, the DRM will inevitably be cracked on it (online functionality notwithstanding). Doesn't matter what the publisher could have done, it was inevitably going to happen. The higher the profile, the shorter the time it takes for it to happen.
If Nintendo with their enormous war chest can't protect their updated ROMs from being extracted and ran on retro hardware or emulators, why would this be any different? If it could be done, it would be done. This is why AAA pushes online functionality so hard, because if someone pirates it, they miss out on the crux of the experience. Apples and oranges though. Hurts the little guy more than it hurts the faceless corp with a legion of shareholders—employees cop for commercial failures though.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@cawley1 —I'm not privy to numbers or circumstances, but when any trustworthy major figure publicly pleads for support of their latest offering due to circumstances outside of their control, I wouldn't be so quick to assume anything when the likes of this can harm confidence with the publisher.
These things very niche, but they seldom ever feel it.
Take Revolution Software—despite Broken Sword having a seemingly huge cult following, working on game adaptations for major IP et al, the studio has closed its doors repeatedly. Being indie is difficult. Quality games are seldom ever enough, and the business aspect is complex and ever-changing with totally weird mixed revenue streams that are different for every game and studio.
The Road to Revolution book is pretty enlightening about the economics of indie studios BTW (amidst many other things), it's worth a read if you're genuinely interested in how someone can make something amazing, yet due to whatever agreement the studio had to settle for, it's not necessarily easy to survive long-term, but they took it because that's what there was and they had to accept something to actually have some hope of staying afloat with a project and assumed future revenue stream.
However, Revolution also reopened its doors repeatedly and is still making games, but it is sincerely passion for the the art that keeps these things viable—both from the team and the audience. They've done crowdfunding too. I've also been a part of a few games that have crashed-and-burned in crowdfunding despite having known talents attached to it. Tis a fickle ol' thing. Nothing is certain with this stuff, and over-budget and behind schedule is the norm in indie.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Ristar24 —Evercade was mentioned on Twitter/X earlier, but with legal agreements in place, it is what it is in terms of the upcoming physical release as it stands, and no further comment can be given at this moment in time.
Evercade also much more niche than the many MegaDrive/Genesis consoles already out there. I've known some folks to do well with an Evercade release, but others not so much (old well-known classic games being re-released tend to do well).
Think it depends on where/who your existing fanbase is. I notice many more Brits into Evercade in my own experiences (got a real surprise with how many Brits talked about Soul Reaver on Evercade on Bluesky et al), but I've yet to encounter a Brit who had heard about Earthion, whereas I was surprised by the difference in US folks knowing about it when talking about upcoming games I was excited for.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@cawley1 —ZPF ROM is available. ZPF is lower profile than a new Yuzo Koshiro game though. They're also apples and oranges as ZPF successfully crowd-funded the project for $204,670—they stand a better chance of riding it out, just like we didn't flinch when All Walls Must Fall got pirated on PC and Switch as the whole thing was paid for between Kickstarter and a creative grant in Berlin.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@gingerbeardman —then you do you—doesn't mean others won't. Regardless of however you feel about LRG, they remain in business, and they also understand the market demographic that's relevant to them or they wouldn't continue to do business. LRG is really non sequitur to the topic at hand about people pirating a game that isn't ready to be released on MegaDrive/Genesis whilst people try to justify the "why" despite the pages of indie history being cluttered with studios that deserved better than what the public gave them. The meaningful topics are really that of respect, trust and consent.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Fiyz —media in any medium is easily pirated—even pre-release not uncommonly. Rate of piracy is higher on current-gen consoles because that's where the overwhelming majority of players are, and enabling piracy on modern consoles is cheaper than on retro ones, plus most current game-playing demographics want to play modern games on modern consoles. If it wasn't the case, AAA would be focusing on old games for old consoles too, and console manufacturers would be selling you upgrades for your old hardware. New games for old consoles are a labour of love.
Volume and revenue of modern versus yesteryear hardware for indie titles that are high quality? Now that's a whole other thing and totally relative. It's like music—most people will listen to the digital version of something, but it'll be the short run of vinyl, tapes and t-shirts that meant the most in terms of the bottom-line and viability of further projects.
On the one hand, I am the first to tell people that digitally-recorded music sounds worse on vinyl. On the other hand, whilst it might be a gimmick/novelty, it is actually something people will buy (despite offering them DSD source quality et al digitally), even if they never actually play the record as they not uncommonly don't even own a turntable—but the customers generally understand that they're funding the next project one way or another. Physical editions of games aren't any different. Anyone disagrees? Well, perhaps it simply isn't aimed at you.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Scollurio —LRG specialize in physical editions—the market is flooded with unlicensed counterfeits/reproductions (whatever you want to call them) of both classic and contemporary games for old consoles—even fan-made ROM-hacks of classic games get unlicensed physical editions.
I imagine the same is going to end up being true for Earthion, and with what the average repro/fake costs, complete with box and manual, from various online marketplaces—that's a very serious potential problem for LRG and makes the whole thing more of a risk.
Sure, some people would buy a ROM, but LRG obviously knows whether or not this approach works (this is literally what their entire business model lives and dies on after all), just like I know whether you can give away records that are pay-what-you-want in a sustainable way—even Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails couldn't make that model work, despite the best of intentions for the audience. The audience doesn't understand that these models place a lot of trust in the public to do the right thing and support what they enjoy if they want more of what they enjoy—if they can afford to support it. Ergo, not all pirates can afford to pay, thus they aren't lost sales, but not every pirate is broke, and would have otherwise bought the thing if they couldn't play it any other way.
If it comes down to a physical edition being possible versus not being possible, the potential of it being possible is something that's going to be pursued (makes the whole thing feel more satisfying from the dev perspective), but it represents a calculated risk for the publisher that ultimately has to make sense. Choosing to do a physical edition doesn't have to make sense to anyone but ANCIENT—it's their baby. Likewise, following through on the physical version is also the prerogative of LRG, agreements not withstanding.
IMO, the "best" solution for enthusiast players would be the contemporary equivalent to MegaNet, Satellaview et al—an official cartridge with WiFi for a proper online storefront. But from a dev perspective, it's just selling via another digital store that you get 70% of and have to price low to compete with everything else distributed digitally, and another opportunity to be told to eff yourself if you aren't ticking whatever boxes they want ticking in terms of content, regional censorship et al.
You're not really any better off as an indie studio for that being an option as the potential market for that is a fraction of the one who would buy a new, straight-forward, physical version of a game as they don't need a non-existent hypothetical future WiFi-enabled cart with a digital storefront, because physical copies are a thing here in the present. Only advantage would be in being able to patch your game, but then we're back at the problem of modern gaming where lots of things ship when they're meant to, but they don't ship in a good state and need a lot of post-release updates to get them to where they should be. When indie gets a physical release, it's usually because someone believes it's as good as it is going to be.
You usually can't fix socioeconomic problems with technological solutions—you also can't fix greed. The only way humanity will ever make sense of all this in terms of sustaining art without trusting the public to not be stupid about it is with UBI, IMO—chances of that happening? Not in my lifetime, but good luck to the future generations who try to figure it out, I'm rooting for you.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@SlangWon —as for me being pretentious about art, sure, if that's how you would prefer to view it (I don't care).
However, there's a reason I get to work on scores as a composer and re-recording mixer for journalism award-winning docs, games et al, and why I continually get to create stuff with people I respect. It's because I am passionate about the artistic value of something, and know not to listen to armchair commentators who just consume the output rather than contribute something to the culture.
But, you know, that's just my perspective, just like me being "pretentious" about art is yours. Indie isn't AAA. Indie doesn't usually have a safety net. Yuzo has been indie for quite literally decades—ANCIENT knows what they're doing. They know how to balance art and business just fine.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Razieluigi —I respect, appreciate and agree with a lot of where you're coming from to a great extent.
However, they are not the publisher and thus not the manufacturer of the physical edition. Nobody wants to be left sitting on physical copies that haven't sold, or worse, may never sell.
ANCIENT has sold out recent physical releases before, e.g., NES physical version of Amazon's Training Road (USD $59.99). ANCIENT has also offered a free ROM (Amazon's Running Diet) before that. Amazon's Training Road is an enhanced version of Amazon's Running Diet. If there's anyone who would know what they're doing over this, it's ANCIENT, IMO. They understand their market, and there's a reason they're doing it this way. I am certain LRG also understands it too, they also published Amazon's Training Road.
Earthion isn't a novelty created in a month, it represents years of hard work from a veteran. A new high-quality game from Yuzo Koshiro is a good opportunity for a physical release and to encourage more interest in this area (and in arcades, which I'm also deeply passionate about—if you haven't got arcades in your area, perhaps this is what's attempted to be avoided for those who still have them), but the ROM getting pirated and the discourse surrounding it inevitably undermines the confidence of the publisher with a physical release. It's already a risk to do a physical MegaDrive/Genesis cartridge, but what folks don't realize is that by this being pirated, they're potentially risking screwing themselves out of a physical release and out of further new games for old consoles.
It's clear ANCIENT isn't happy with how the MegaDrive/Genesis version is at present, hence the desire to be able to get it perfect as they can't patch physical copies. A problem like that is significant for small biz in both trust and cost. I respect the decision. It might not make sense to others, but it doesn't have to be understood, it just has to be respected.
I say let ANCIENT do what they want to do and give them the space to breathe and make the thing happen in the way they want it to rather than lambast and complain that it isn't how you would do it. If you want to do it your way then start making games (I did).
A friend I ran a record label with in Berlin now runs his own label, and they do vinyl-only releases, and yes, of course, it gets pirated in the end. But the next project gets funded via the physical edition, because digital isn't paying for anything with music.
Games are a different story—I composed music for All Walls Must Fall on both Steam and Nintendo Switch—now we give the game away for free to whoever wants it so that it's preserved into the future and it can stand as testament to who we were, where we were and how we felt. Unlike ANCIENT, we had a successful Kickstarter (€36,576 and we only asked for €15,000), funding was also matched by a local scheme in Berlin. ANCIENT and LRG don't have leeway for problems and to not get compensated for what they've created. The level of risk is appreciable.
In the spirit of openness, Yuzo and I are mutuals. We haven't had a conversation regarding any of this (that's intentional on my behalf as I have very strong opinions on balancing making art and staying afloat, having both succeeded and crashed-and-burned in equal measure over the years), but it's easy to understand the above, IMO.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@SlangWon —then perhaps you aren't the primary or prioritized target demographic. What an outlier consumer wants versus the wishes of an indie creator with a market they have an understanding of and clear intent towards? The wishes come first every time. There's a very specific goal in mind with it.
Not everything is for everyone. To demand otherwise is to to disrespect the intent of the creator with their art. There's a reason AAA doesn't do stuff like this, and there's a reason why this is being done how it is.
Even folks in the comments saying they bought it on Steam then ripped the ROM to play it elsewhere—have some self-respect, patience and respect towards the creators. If it isn't as good as they would like it to be on MegaDrive/Genesis yet, then perhaps it's worth waiting to enjoy it as they intend for it to be.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@Razieluigi —by selling the ROM first, it would significantly undermine the viability of the physical release.
There are no plans to sell a ROM directly.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@SlangWon —arcade players are paying customers too. The goal is to bring renewed interest to the concept of arcades, which are really struggling currently post-COVID.
If you want to play what you feel is the best version then go to the arcade and play that version.
Re: "Please Support Us" Pleads Yuzo Koshiro As Pirated Earthion ROM Appears Online
@gingerbeardman —if you want to support the devs then simply buy the game. It helps it rank on digital storefronts in terms of algorithmic discovery, and if you do decide to play it and enjoy it, post a positive review on the product page. People would be surprised how impactful this can be to smaller titles.
Re: Despite Its Recent "Rebirth", All Is Not Well In The World Of Commodore
I'll be honest, it's just a brand. The thing that made Commodore what it was—the people and the zeitgeist—are long gone.
I love the history of Commodore, but we shouldn't pretend that the value was the brand, because that misrepresents the historic and ongoing relevance of what was achieved.
Re: Random: AI Taking Game Industry Jobs Is OK Because Of Pac-Man, Says The New York Times
@BBL —LLMs don't learn either. They're static models.
Re: Random: AI Taking Game Industry Jobs Is OK Because Of Pac-Man, Says The New York Times
Ten bucks says the NYT journo used an LLM to outsource their thinking and writing.
Re: Talking Point: If You Think AI Can Make SNES Games, We Have Some Magic Beans We'd Love To Sell You
@jamess —why would it "get good enough"? This inevitablism is bizarre.
The stats are showing that if this isn't a technological dead-end then smaller models with as few tokens as you can get away with will yield far better 'capabilities' as more tokens means worse output. Yet for 99% of what people are trying to throw this "technology" (lol) at, it's never going to be appropriate or reliable.
You can't own the copyright on the output of gen AI, thus you can't prevent your work from people ripping it off, abusing it, pirating it et al.
The only thing gen AI can spit out is what's already in its training data. If anything, AI represents a stagnation in creativity. Anybody who says otherwise doesn't understand what it does. The hype is breathless and bordering on cult-like magical thinking. Dangerous.
Re: Talking Point: If You Think AI Can Make SNES Games, We Have Some Magic Beans We'd Love To Sell You
@1040STF —and yet LLMs show time and time again that they're bad at mathematics. E.g., asking it how many `r` are in the word `strawberry`.
I argue that cleaning up the audio will strip it of what makes it appealing. The imperfections are what makes it aesthetically complete.
I spend a large amount of time cleaning up audio for TV, film and video games, and we don't need AI to clean up something as simple as a hiss. You can literally set-and-forget a notch EQ to filter out hiss on GB (though why you'd want to, I've no idea). If you need AI to do that then you should look for another job. Takes seconds, costs nothing, doesn't guzzle electricity and destroy the planet, and even an idiot could do it (they do). We've been able to do it for decades, into the previous century.
You're also missing the obvious—if you want "pure" then you record the output of an emulator—or if you're smart, you just use on-console DSP on the output of your remastered version, thus killing the need to even mess around with PCM files, and players can toggle it on and off.
I can tell you don't know anything about this yet feel the need to be an armchair commentator. It's unhelpful and muddies the water massively on an important topic. Perhaps let the experts discuss it, otherwise we are going to end up going down a bad path.
Re: "They Told Me To Destroy It" - Fallout Creator Explains Why He's "Mad" About Game Preservation Being Ignored
Absolutely outrageous.
Re: Writers Of 'Did You Know Gaming' Book Published By Unbound "Received £79 Each For Over 7 Years Of Work"
Whilst I don't know what terms rights licensing or purchase agreements have been made with the authors, in scenarios like this, if it is the case that the publisher owns the IP, it should be forfeit and returned to the author(s) so they can distribute it themselves. Hopefully their agreement has some kind of clause to facilitate that if necessary, but I doubt it.
Whilst it isn't going to fill their coffers overnight, authors being able to go direct to consumers with digital and print-on-demand would go some way to putting things right. Not what backers wants to read I'm sure as they already paid for a copy, but as someone who wasn't a backer, but wants a book (some excellent looking stuff that has me intrigued) but would rather pay the author(s) directly, it's tragic to say the least.
To any authors reading, I want your books, as do friends—there is a demand for them. The market exists.
Re: Barcode Battler, The Early '90s Classic That's So Crap, It's Almost Cool
@VITIMan —your link didn't work: https://cards.bimbiribase.xyz/
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
@Robotoboy, "old doofuses"?
Whilst I agree with the sentiment and said similarly in another comment, these projects run on the efforts of volunteers.
Yes, some people will be old and will only have knowledge of old methodologies for things beyond their area of expertise. They don't have the financial obligations of the youth with families, mortgages et al to worry them. Likewise, some people will be old because they are experts and helped create the hardware itself or the cultural works themselves.
In typical FOSS style, I'll tell you "pull requests welcome", or ask "will you be volunteering?".
These projects work with who and what they've got. Without these "old doofuses", I'm quite certain that neither you nor most of the youth would be creating floppy drive emulators for decades-old Japanese computers in their place. It isn't like ripping CDs or DVDs. Have some respect.
We all have a part to play in the preservation of our cultural heritage as a species.
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
@Crabbitsteve, it isn't about what you personally do or do not need. This is about preserving the cultural record for the species as a whole. Our history is being lost at an alarming rate because of attitudes like yours.
I am glad that what you care about has been "preserved" (if it lasts long enough, I bet most of it will likely go to landfill when you die—yes, that sucks, absolutely), but for many, myself included, a lot of lost media will never be recovered and is gone forever.
It represents a huge loss culturally and historically—we understand ourselves less as a species, as communities, and as people due to it. We even understand other cultural works less due to the loss of context.
You only need to look at how many losses of manga, or books that were translated into Japanese that contained mistakes or intentional censorship. There is now so much context that we lack.
Games? You surely can't be serious in saying that everything that matters to you has been preserved by you if you don't know it even exists until you or someone else wants it. No one individual can possibly have that level of insight into the cultural output of an entire country in any single given medium. Not possible. This is why there are multiple experts that are consulted with on these matters and not just one.
I've run several archivism projects, both in terms of finding the physical or digital source, copies of it, restoring or helping understand what was discovered, and helping with the re-release ultimately.
I am passionate about archivism, hence there are volunteers for these projects in the first place. Ripping some analog or digital media to a NAS at home for your own use is not archivism or preservation in any meaningful capacity. It doesn't mean it doesn't matter, of course it does, it is individual efforts that frequently save the day in terms of eventually tracking things down to be properly archived in the long-term. Absolutely not knocking what you do for yourself—keep that up.
There's a reason game devs are honorary members of this project and not armchair commentators with a NAS. That's not me knocking you either, but that's me drawing the line to distinguish between someone who contributed to creating these cultural works versus someone who consumes them and thus has no vested interest or understanding of their importance.
You preserving something for yourself is comparing apples to oranges. They are not the same thing whatsoever.
Re: We Might Be About To Lose A Powerful Force In The World Of Video Game Preservation
I'm absolutely all for making sure this isn't lost, but if we are going to ask the question of "why is this failing?" then we really should be looking at the obvious.
We should be prepared to say these things with the context of helping rather than hurting. The survival of efforts like these is of utmost importance.
The lack of downloads for a PDF newsletter is not difficult to grasp. Even when the project began, this was an archaic method of distributing information, let alone having it crawled and rank well on search engines.
If you were to follow the same model with Time Extension, it would not see much traffic or interest whatsoever. The quality of the content is not the problem, but the method by which it is made available.
How many people want to download a PDF to read articles they don't even know the headlines of? People also can't share specific articles from a PDF. PDFs are also bandwidth-intensive.
The only reason I always read every Time Extension article is because there is an RSS feed. The PDF push and no RSS feed I can find is why I and many others I know miss that content.
If people who know of the project can't even successfully follow the content due to the distribution method then does that not tell us exactly why it isn't growing in terms of new people discovering it and hanging around in the long-term?