You have probably noticed by now that we here at Massively OP are proponents of game emulators for MMOs that have been decommissioned. Rogue servers such as Star Wars Galaxies Legends and Return of Reckoning help to keep games alive that would otherwise fade into distant history.
And while support for emulation grows in the gaming community, there’s at least one studio exec who is advocating for it as well. Microsoft Vice President of Gaming Phil Spencer would love to see emulators brought into a fully supported and legal state, though of course he’s talking about games in general, not necessarily MMOs.
“My hope (and I think I have to present it that way as of now) is as an industry we’d work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game,” Spencer said. “I think in the end, if we said, ‘Hey, anybody should be able to buy any game, or own any game and continue to play,’ that seems like a great North Star for us as an industry.”
More articles on game preservation from the last few years:
