It’s not possible to expect software to be runnable forever.
We do not expect this for the desktop software (Microsoft Windows), so we cannot expect this from games. Hardware changes, Internet changes, integrations change (Steam may die on one day).
Just have “a minimum of X years” is simple and sufficient.
Software is in fact eternal. Maxwell’s Equations of Software (Lisp) is still a thing to this day [1]. Even for software designed for arcane architectures. You can simulate the Apollo Guidance Computer and its software today [2], which got people on the Moon. Technological progress must never come at the expense of people's rights.
WTF are you talking about? I played SimCity for DOS just the other day through an emulator. Easy as pie. It's only be going out of your way to make it hard to emulate by unnecessarily depending on an online infrastructure that you kill archivability.
This isn't aimed at MMOs. It's aimed at games like Super Mario Run on my phone, which is totally single player and refuses to start up half the time until it spends 10 minutes downloading hundreds more megabytes of "updates" that don't seem to change the game at all.
I am certain I won't be able to play Super Mario Run 20 years from now, despite having paid good money for it, unless Nintendo happens to in their benevolence allow me to re-buy a reissue of it again. Super Mario World from 1993 on the other hand, plays perfectly, and there is a cottage industry of nostalgic streamers competing for better and better times speedrunning it.
That's what this is about. Being able to play a classic game from 30 years ago with your grandkids, just as you can watch a classic movie.
We do not expect this for the desktop software (Microsoft Windows), so we cannot expect this from games. Hardware changes, Internet changes, integrations change (Steam may die on one day).
Just have “a minimum of X years” is simple and sufficient.