The not-for-profits had been campaigning to give researchers of vintage video games the same rights as researchers in other fields of media.
Video game preservationists have lost a campaign to get the right to study the vintage video games stored in US libraries remotely, in a blow by the US Copyright Office.
Enthusiasts in other fields are free to order rare films or vintage manuscripts from the library to work on them remotely, under certain conditions. But fans and researchers of gaming history might be forced to deal with hours of traffic every time they want to access these in person, The Verge reports.
The decision comes after two non-profits, the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network (SPN), spent three years campaigning for the US Copyright Office to grant an exemption to its rules governing old video games.
Under the Foundation’s proposals, researchers would have been able to access emulated copies of their chosen games remotely, just like how libraries can sometimes grant members e-book access from home.
