>The Japanese government contacted the GPS in July of 2025, stating it would be punishing the GPS by cancelling funding for that round, and would be freezing all future funding, due to two violations:>Images showing the covers of books, magazines, and game packaging breach regulations.>The GPS is not allowed to scan full pages of magazines for private archiving, and has to cease doing so immediately.>"In the end, we understood the exact issue, and when we corrected it in the middle of August, they told us, Okay, now you can get the next round of subsidies, but there will still be a 20% cut as a penalty, and we have to cover this cost ourselves. We discovered with the scans, big or small is not the problem, even super small thumbnails, the problem is that they cannot be provided alone. Every image has to be in context; it has to have a caption – copyright images can only be supplementary. So we had to cut access, and people contacted us, saying 'I don't have access anymore, what's happening?' So people were using it and were excited about those assets.">"We're not running away from Japan, but the stuff we cannot do here we can do outside, specifically in the USA. So we are creating a sister organisation in the USA. Currently we're in the administrative part, making papers, deciding the structure, etc. We still have some months before the organisation is finalised.">Redon went on to describe how they are currently working with a New York law firm to create this new entity. This would allow the GPS, or more accurately its sister organisation, to operate in a manner similar to the successful Video Game History Foundation, albeit focusing on Japanese history. This, in turn, would also address many of the issues surrounding supporters who currently do not see the benefits of their donations.https://www.timeextension.com/news/2026/01/it-has-to-happen-outside-of-japan-game-preservation-society-launches-patreon-and-opens-us-office-following-government-fund-freeze
Should’ve followed the rules dumb gaijin!
Nooooooooo the government has to pay me to collect toys!
>time extensionFuck off.
Decentralized uploading of game material to the internet is the best way to preserve them and always has been since its inception. Stop catering to the whims of corporations or governments.
>Game Preservation Societyisnt that a scam
>>12331660How'd they get the funding to open a new office after they lost their funding?
>>12331807It's just a storehouse of game related stuff. As long as it's in Japan there's no reason to support it because they can't dump ROMs/ISOs, nor scan anything. They don't claim to be anything more than what they are, it's people from the west that expect something different when they hear the word "preservation" when it comes to video games.
Hey y'all is this the thread where virgin losers get mad because they don't have literally everything to ever exist on their hard drive?
>>12331798>Stop catering to the whims of corporations or governments.What does this even MEAN? Who is "catering" to whom here? Can you elaborate on the thing that's apparently making you mad?
>>12331884You read it in an angry tone because you are angry, assumedly because you're illiterate.
>>12331797Explain what's wrong with it.
>>12331883>said the loser
The sad thing isn't what's happening to them, but how it's going to snowball to every Japanese fan site who are now going to be (even more) afraid of uploading scans of covers and manuals. I mean have you tried looking up manuals of Japanese games? I guess if you don't play games in Japanese, you probably haven't. If it's not uploaded on a western site, it basically doesn't exist. The site I'm using for Famicom manuals manually recreated them in text and screenshot format.So, thank you "game preservation society", you literally made things worse.
>>12331660>>The Japanese government contacted the GPS in July of 2025, stating it would be punishing the GPS by cancelling funding for that round, and would be freezing all future funding, due to two violations:This reads just like a manga about the Student Council cutting funding to the videogame club.Does the japanese government really function like their school system?
>>12332009https://gamemanual.midnightmeattrain.com/https://archive.org/details/@akane_akiyamahttps://psinstructionmanual.com/You’re welcome.
>>12332043Everyone in japan is autistic man children so yes
>>12332045Well, better archive all that before it's taken down. Thanks, "game preservation society".
>>12331660>an US
>>12331660This is to preserve the resale market in Japan. Japan is the only modern first-world nation left with a resale market for games, movies, books, and music that hasn't been ruined by piracy making it unprofitable, collectors/speculators ruining the market for the average consumer, and media companies colluding with government to prevent private ownership and resale (though Nintendo and the Gacha game companies are certainly trying.)It's basically still the 90s in Japan, all the major cities have hundreds and hundreds of resale stores, you can't go a few block in a shopping district without hitting one, and they aren't going to allow "archivists" (which look a lot like Chinese/Korean pirate types) to ruin the economy of 100,000 shop owners.
>>12331883Hi, Damian. Go back to >>>/pol/ post on Twitter.
>>12331837Good gaijin goys saved them.>We received around 400 new supporters, bringing in roughly ¥160,000 (£830 / $1100) per month. There were hundreds of new emails in our inbox, which we are still going through. The response was overwhelming and deeply heartwarming. In fact, we now have more supporters from outside Japan than from within.
>>12331660Where is it? I have a big group of lovely melanin filled friends who would love to visit.
>>12332043Looks like this is a job for beta MC-kun to store all the video games in his house and reject all the girls in the government.
>>12332276>designated winner is the student council president who is the school idol and her grandma is rich and the principal and hates retro games because she has some trauma with her grandpa who used to be an arcade game champion 50 years ago but he was denied his rightful title because reasons and died sad as fuck about it>council treasurer who is a massive tsundere cunt>videogame club president who has big tits but is more of a tertiary heroine and has a vocal fanbase>obligatory 30yo teacher that sponsors the club who can't find a boyfriend even though she's hot and likes playing games on her phone, not a heroine but gets a lot of porn>mc's younger sister who is also not a heroine, is a semen demon>other female club member because somehow this club is mostly girls who pushes MC to lead the resistance to the stuco>isekai into a videogame episode which introduces a one-off girl who is more liked than the main heroines>Opening of the show has MC playing Pac-man in an arcade in 1981 only to wake up because he was dreaming of a past he never lived
>>12331660>"We're not running away from Japan, but the stuff we cannot do here we can do outside, specifically in the USA. So we are creating a sister organisation in the USA.And so they finally admit that it's impossible to actually preserve shit in Japan due to their buttfucked laws. Took them long enough. Now we wait for the upcoming "So Japan is saying just because we also operate in the US doesn't mean we are shielded from Japan's laws..."
>>12332082>Japan is the only modern first-world nation left with a resale market for games, movies, books, and music that hasn't been ruinedLolIt's been ruined for years once sellers learned Westerner are willing to pay 10x the price if not more than local Japanese are. Tons of stores have eBay accounts specifically meant for international sales. Bookoff takes their valuable games and ships them to their US stores because they go for higher prices there. And even for domestic sales Japan has the same problem with zoomers buying retro games en masse and driving up the prices as a result.
>>12332009Isn't it just a problem because they used to get government money? As long as G-Men don't give you money, it shouldn't be an issue.
>>12331875That wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the fact they were crying everywhere asking people from overseas to fund their storehouse.
In addition to being hoarders, these guys are massive faggots.>Redon has shared tweets with Time Extension from a prominent member of the retro programming community, attacking the GPS and calling for its demise. They have many thousands of followers; you likely use their work already. We are not naming them. After their public outcry, the GPS servers suffered DDoS attacks.https://www.timeextension.com/features/we-might-be-about-to-lose-a-powerful-force-in-the-world-of-video-game-preservationThere's no way this is not a reference to David 'MameHaze' Haywood.He's a prominent retro programmer, has many thousands of followers (2,203, which is technically true, but especially deceiving,) and MAME is a very popular project.https://nitter.net/MameHaze/status/1774283879274172491To try and imply that a tweet with <600 views, 3 retweets, and 8 likes was somehow responsible for a DDoS attack is downright manipulative.
>>12332287I'd pirate it
>>12332009>The site I'm using for Famicom manuals manually recreated them in text and screenshot format.Those sites are pretty soulful desu
Any game worth a damn can be easily found on the internet, like shove all that plastic up your ass.
>>12335450Manuals and especially magazines are more interesting though.
SPOILER ALERT:This will almost assuredly still result in zero new public ROM dumps from them. They will continue to operate exactly as before, for better or worse.
>>12331798>Decentralized uploading of game material to the internet is the best way to preserve them and always has been since its inceptionThis is true, but it can't ever be taken for granted that once something is uploaded it'll be preserved forever. Stuff like archive.org risking getting shut down would be devastating. And ideally you also need to make sure that stuff is easy to find for whoever wants it, not just technically preserved somewhere.But yeah, I'm agreeing with you, just saying decentralized preservation requires some collective vigilance to maintain things. Ideally it exists alongside some more formal organizations, having both doesn't hurt.
>>12335462Hi, Frankie.
>>12335724>having both doesn't hurt.Did you miss the part when said formal organization pissed off corpos by its mere presence and lead to a new precedent that is negative for the whole thing
>>12336316It's so strange some guy I know from the retronauts podcast is going into the history books for game preservation Will people remember Chris Kohler of Wired.com for the same reasons?
>>12331660are they retarded japan has some of the strictest copyright laws
>>12331660>I don't have access anymoreloldownload and back up, idiots.
>>12336421>Will people remember Chris Kohler of Wired.com for the same reasons?Maybe?
>>12337981Yes, they are
>>12335592Duh? I hope this leads to them opening up their scans, though.
>>12340460lol
>>12335724He said decentralizedThat's why I have my own GPS on My Hard Drive
>>12340461Let me hope.
>>12332234So wait: these guys are basically hoarder game otaku with a pile of old shit in their collection which is now being subsidized by begging online? Why the fuck didn't I think of that, after all my collection is an "archive" as well in need of shekels so I can get a NEO GEO full AES set and realize the dream of being a BIG TYMER. This is absurd. Pile of crap will be sold off when someone kicks the bucket, needs a new car, etc and what has the donation done of use to the community? Paul Allens fucking computer collection and museum was sold off, shit's like burning money.
>>12342798Don't be ignorant. Sometimes they do the important preservation work of sharing photos of some of their prototypes spread out across a desk.
>>12331798But how do I monetize my hobby if I do that?
>>12331950Not him, but there's an obvious political bias, which shows especially when you follow their socials. Whoever is behind them is obsessed with anti-AI content even when it doesn't relate to video games. That said, retro gaming is a nerdy hobby, and nerdy hobbies are always left-leaning, so you'd be hard-pressed to find sources of information that are clean of this bullshit.
>>12343547I've been a fan of EWJ since I was a kid, and a lot of my politics are probably closer to Doug's than the typical leftist gamedev/artist, but the guy is a total engagement whore sellout. Even just a year or so ago he said something to the effect of not caring about AI because he cares more about human stories, but now he's digging his heels in and jerking off over low quality AI turds (which, unless his artistic sense has totally withered away, he should at least acknowledge as bad). Though given the fact that he seems to care more about his "trust le plan"-tier YouTube channel than drawing should've been enough of a clue.
>>12343547I'm not even a leftard, I stopped respecting Doug after it was clear he was an NFT shill, and now he's doing shitty AI slop, fitting fate for him honestly. Shame that someone who can draw just fine decides "Lol, I'll just make a computer somewhere else do it from a command prompt".
>>12343547now post where the cap is from
>>12343547>nerdy hobbies are always left-leaningExcept AI and cryptocurrency
>>12345227those aren't nerdy, that's dudebro snake oil rise n grind hustle shit
>>12345231>>12345231>dudebro snake oil rise n grind hustle shitMostly, yes. But the guys obsessing over zk-SNARKs and actually setting up or programming new AI stuff are genuinely nerdy. Plenty of them in it for the love of the game and not money.
>>12343547This seems fair and balanced, thoughbeit.
>>12343547I don't care what his politics are but shilling for shitcoins, NFTs and GenAI makes me lose all respect for someone.
>>12345227Most of the people into crypto don't know shit about it other than "Buy meme, maybe it's worth something", most people into AI don't know shit about it other than "I tell a website to make slop, and it outputs slop"... hell, most AI fags don't even really think anymore, they just say "Grok/ChatGPT, what do you think?".It's like thinking Taylor Swift is nerdy because there's some fags actually into over analyzing that shit.
>>12346098I agree, but I'm specifically talking about the people into the actual technology and theory behind it. It's basically a separate hobby though, there's a big gap between someone deeply into blockchains and cryptography, and someone who follows the latest dog coins.
>>12346139>chuds are into shitty things nowHow sad...
>>12343293The greatest heroes of video game preservation.
>>12344185>>12346013But when Osamu Sato does it, suddenly it's fine.
>>12348297I didn't even know he did that, that's pretty depressing.
>>12348297based
>>12340582He said some organisations not one
These guys are too autistic and aren't really doing anything of value. And Japan's laws are too retarded, made by a people who have no practical thinking.Basically, what they're doing is recovering some games and magazines that nobody gives a fuck about, and storing them in a vault that nobody has access to and that will only, in the long run, give a few more years of life to products that no one cares about and that were being duly forgotten..Cultures are built not only on accumulation, but on discarding things. Things that don't work or have no value are left behind. Having some historical record of the things that were discarded is useful, but having the things themselves preserved, ALL OF THEM, makes no sense at all.Imagine someone obsessed with old games who is trying to make physical backups of all the amateur RPG Maker games ever made, many of them made by teenagers who didn't give a fuck and were just experimenting with the tool. That's basically how these guys operate. It's pure retardation. It's neither practical nor useful.
>>12331660>pay me to hoard video games and magazinesThat's dumb. The only thing of historical value in magazines is developer interviews/beta screenshots, the rest is advertisements, reviews and fluff. For the actual games themselves, the only way to actually preserve them is to dump everything anonymously on the internet, putting a bunch of games in a warehouse is not preservation.
>>12351878According to the interview the guy gave in the book "The Untold Story of Japanese Game Developers", magazines are used to build databases.At that time, the softhouses had no control whatsoever, they would release the game and then throw everything away, including information about it, so the guys use magazine articles as historical evidence to find out the release date of games, among other concrete information that no longer exists anywhere.
>>12352132>>12351878Magazines can definitely include proto screenshots and mention or even coverage of unreleased games, so they do have value beyond just being time capsules. That said, these are the things least at risk of being lost, and are by far among the easiest and cheapest things to obtain, which is probably why preservation societies jerk off to them so much, an easy and relatively inexpensive way to pad out their archive and resume of completed preservation tasks.
>>12350812Hey man. We have to do our best to fight entropy. It's mankind's greatest enemy. That being said, IP shouldn't exist for more than 5 years, max; and source code should have to be made public by law after that 5 years.
>>12343547Woke enemies or not, the Intellivision Amico grift and everything surrounding the Earthworm Jim 4 project and Tommy Tallarico was objectively an unmitigated disaster and they kind of had it coming.Even for the most passive developers, these animated series revivals (like Netflix' Castlevania) nine times out of ten desecreate the original legacy of the work, any moral messages it might have had, and stops short of cancelling the original creators for their sins against modern mainstream media american ideology, and this happens even on a sunny day. When game developers accept that help and influence back into their projects that rarely goes well so even if he converted and had a vasetectomy or put on multiple hair dyes and pronouns and alternate personalities like a mad hatter to fit in with that art team homegrown through Hollywood-approved HR, he wouldn't make use of them for his dream multi-million multimedia franchise.That's unrelated to that EWJ4 videogame project, or his ability to produce comics for it. His struggles are more like Keiji Inafune's, and his picking war with those same artists by stealing their plagiarized scraps with AIGen instead of doing his old thing and producing anything soulful is why he's a lolcow. He's not unfamiliar with commissioning sweat shop cartoonists from East Asia that will accept him and his money and any creative mandates even as his country threatens an economic world war on them. Unless this grifting is the whole point, or that he's as brainrotted as his enemies.
>>12352407He's pretty much alienated everybody who would financially support his art at this point, outside of literal Facebook babyboomers. His politics were one thing, as I'm sure even many a lib were willing to look past it for his artistic output, and of course he still had his conservative artist/art appreciator fans, but I'd wager that many of them were alienated by this recent nonsense. It's even worse because he seems to be actively shitting on/whining about the output of actual artists in favor of AI. It makes more sense when you realize that his political YouTube channel is his main concern nowadays, and he probably thinks that embracing AI, because his most braindead of "do anything to own the libs" fans also embrace AI, will bolster his reputation among said fanbase:https://m.youtube.com/@douginexile/It's one thing to be indifferent to AI, or even to use it yourself, but the way he talks about it is so incongruous with him being a presumably serious artist is quite jarring. Maybe he also gets some pleasure out of the belief that it's fucking over the industry that he views fucked him over.
>>12331660You just know the retard in charge of this "organization" is just some loser pocketing the government money he gets.
>>12351878>>12352145I'll disagree and say that there's a lot of value in preserving video game magazines.
>>12350812>some games and magazines that nobody gives a fuck aboutI'd like to see as many as them preserved and made easily accessible as possible. You never know when you'll find some significant info in an old magazine that people ignored. Sometimes you dig up some important historical context that got forgotten.>storing them in a vault that nobody has access to This is the real problem, hard to call it preserved if it's only in a form that could easily be lost again.>Imagine someone obsessed with old games who is trying to make physical backups of all the amateur RPG Maker games ever made, many of them made by teenagers who didn't give a fuck and were just experimenting with the tool. That's basically how these guys operate. It's pure retardation. It's neither practical nor useful.You say that, but it would actually be awesome to have those. Understandably impossible, and most of those teenagers probably wouldn't even want them shared, but cool and historically interesting. Maybe not to you now, but in 100, 1000 years it'll be nice seeing what kids were making, which RPGs they were ripping off, what shows they were taking quotes from, etc.>Having some historical record of the things that were discarded is useful, but having the things themselves preserved, ALL OF THEM, makes no sense at all.Yeah you're right there, it makes no sense because, again, it's impossible, and societies like privacy and forgetting some things. But if you're into history, you're also happy to see more preserved rather than less. Everything is so ephemeral now that it's completely hopeless trying to preserve it all anyway, but trying to keep smaller and hopefully representative samples of things circulating will still be valuable.Speaking of which, here's a link to the Shaq Fu Alliance RPG, made in RPG Maker 2000 by a teenager in the 2000s with a bunch of GameFAQs Shaq Fu board inside jokes:https://www.mediafire.com/download/q9db13t8dw0aizz/Shaq_Fu_RPG_1.21.zip
>>12343547there are only 2 genders of /vr/ and i hope they create AI /vr/ for preservativation, anons!do i winrar?
>>12343293wow i hate /jaypee/ taxes paying for this "preservation" now. i hope they replace it with binary AI!
>>12331660whats the point of an archive that nobody can access? once the people running it die itll all be taken by the government and destroyed
There's tons of gaming strategy guides at a local used bookstore near me, they're actually really entertaining to read.
>>12352824They are not concerned with access to the games, but only with ensuring that they will not be lost forever, since many of them exist only in a few copies on physical media that have already passed their expiration date.It's like rescuing an endangered animal in the wild but not exposing it to visitors at a zoo, but keeping it in a safe area or something like that.
>>12352528I agree they're worth preserving. Just that the overwhelming majority of them are plentiful, relatively cheap, and easily obtainable, so it isn't too impressive when these preservation societies tout how much of such things they're preserving and even sharing, especially when they flaunt rare prototypes sourced from industry vets that they refuse to ever share (for good legitimate reasons or otherwise)
>>12352462Damn his channel is rly popular. Wouldn't watch any of that bullshit personally but good on him
>>12354671>especially when they flaunt rare prototypes sourced from industry vets that they refuse to ever share (for good legitimate reasons or otherwise)1. To be fair, The Video Game History Foundation looks out for protos all the time.2. They do share them. https://hiddenpalace.org/Video_Game_History_Foundation (see also https://hiddenpalace.org/Lost_Levels https://hiddenpalace.org/Frank_Cifaldi)3. Frank Cifaldi actually encourages people to NOT donate protos to formal preservation groups.https://youtu.be/_00AjQNjgDk?t=1608
>>12354785I wouldn't call that "popular" but alrighty.
>>12352462>Maybe he also gets some pleasure out of the belief that it's fucking over the industry that he views fucked him over.Both are correct, tho.
>>12350812>Imagine someone obsessed with old games who is trying to make physical backups of all the amateur RPG Maker games ever made, many of them made by teenagers who didn't give a fuck and were just experimenting with the tool. That's basically how these guys operate. It's pure retardation. It's neither practical nor useful.Good."Practical" and "useful" are terms for soulless faggots who think in terms of shareholder value.Go die in a fire with the trannies, immigration-humpers and feminists.
not a single dumped rom im reporting them to the IRS for tax evasion
>>12354289These guys are literally locking the shit away in a hoard/pile somewhere with no accountability, sharing with others, or plans for long term archiving. As I said fucking PAUL ALLEN had an entire museum full of rare computer stuff and it was all scattered to the winds, auctioned off and some stuff even thrown out! If that can happen to shit bequeathed by the guy who co founded Microsoft, throwing money to hoarding game otaku is simply insanity. One person dies and all this shit in the JP game hoard could be ebayed or worse and gone just like that with no benefit to the community whatsoever.
>>12352462Internet brainrotted everyone, and it only got worse with 2016 election bullshit that never went away and only got worse.
>>12331660The whole thing is retarded. They should donate their printed materiels collection to the National Diet Library in Japan and then "sell" their physical collection to some "random" collector who can dump it and put it online.
>>12354289>but only with ensuring that they will not be lost forever, since many of them exist only in a few copies on physical media that have already passed their expiration dateI thought they weren't even allowed to dump them?
>>12356776They have specialized hardware for cloning media. They talk about it in the interview in that book about Japanese game developers.
>>12356173how could you
