Preserving digital games: a challenge for rights and heritage
The transition to digital-only video games has accelerated, driven by convenience and by platform strategy. Immediate access, no box to store: the benefits are real. But this dematerialisation introduces a risk that physical media never knew, that of disappearance.
Access that hangs by a thread
Buying a digital game means acquiring an access licence, not a tangible copy. Two consequences follow:
- Removal from catalogues. A game can be pulled from a platform for licensing reasons (music, expired rights, litigation), and then becomes inaccessible, including to those who paid for it.
- Dependence on servers. Many games, even single-player ones, require a connection to publisher servers. The day those servers shut down, the game may cease to work. The Crew, rendered completely unplayable in 2024 after its servers were switched off, is the emblem of this.
A physical game from 1995 still runs today. Nothing guarantees that a digital game from 2025 will still run in 2045.
The European context
Several pieces of legislation address this question by implication:
- Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright in the Digital Single Market recognises exceptions for the benefit of cultural heritage institutions, which may copy works in their collections for preservation purposes.
- Directive (EU) 2019/770 on digital content imposes an obligation of conformity and of supply of the content, but does not settle the question of long-term preservation.
Today, none of these texts obliges a publisher to guarantee that a game will remain playable after its service is discontinued. That is precisely the gap the Stop Killing Games initiative seeks to fill.
What would be needed
Preservation is not a collector's luxury: it is a matter of rights (not losing what one has bought) and of culture (not erasing 60 years of creation). It calls for end-of-life obligations: an offline mode when servers close, deposit of works with heritage institutions, and transparency about the duration of access from the moment of purchase.
See also: the French law on preservation, a model to extend.
Official references
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