Another speck of dust settles
We lived through the end of Flash, missing out on thousands of our favorite games and videos in the early days of the Internet. The only reason we can still reference them is thanks to a team that helped upload them to the Internet Archive. Gamespy’s failure may have killed all the old multiplayer games it relied on, but thankfully at least some were saved by other platforms like Steam. This latest may seem like a small loss, but Warner Bros.’s cancellation of small radio, big TV is likely just the beginning of the end for the old Adult Swim game.
The original developer of Small Radios Big Televisions will offer the game as a free download; hopefully not angering the Warner Bros. legal department, which is the problem. We have plenty of evidence that companies still believe that abandoned software games still belong to them, and will sue those who try to restore them and charge them for any time and effort. Thankfully we have GoG and they are able to find ways to license old games so that they can sell them, but if they have a hard time running that will be it for games that are only legally available through their platform.
Another solution is an emulator, and in most cases if you own the physical game you’re good to go. However, if you don’t own the game and you have nowhere to buy it unless you get lucky on eBay or an estate sale, you’re going to have a problem. Yuzu discovered this recently. They might have gotten away with it if they didn’t seek a little financial compensation for their time and effort, but Nintendo’s simultaneous cancellation of 3DS emulator Citra suggests otherwise. The 3DS Store no longer exists, which means these games are essentially gone entirely.
As the article mentions, games and games historian Holly Nielsen “had access to board games from the 1800s as part of her research, and some games from a few years ago are harder to come by.” This isn’t about lost revenue; it’s about losing ’s history and any current attempts to save it are illegal.