Back in 2015, an exception was made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow for archival of aging video games that were otherwise inaccessible. This sort of exception needs to be periodically reviewed, it got a review, and no changes were made yet. That’s all very normal. But here’s the part that’s very relevant for fans of MMOs: the government is also considering whether or not that exception applies to online games that have been shut down.
Previously, it was ruled that the exception did not apply to games for which the majority of the data was stored on the hosting company’s servers, but the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment has put forth an argument that archiving these games and making them playable is an important preservation measure. It’s very important stuff if you’d like to hope for some of these older games to be kept around in some form for the future.
