Thread by @frankcifaldi

I have spent the last twenty years of my life trying to negotiate the line between video game collectors and video game archivists, so I'd like to consider myself an expert:

If this story is true, this is an idiotic, short-sighted move. Thread:

arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04…

There always has and always will be a rift between the ROM-dumping crowd and (some) of the game-collecting crowd. The dumpers want all data to be free, the collectors (sometimes) want to retain the value of their collectibles, financial or otherwise.

This causes the ROM-dumping crowd to start throwing words like "hoarder" around, a word I've seen multiple times today already, usually vitriolic in context. Fair enough! That's an opinion you can have. But let's consider the consequences:

Said collector, who might have been on the fence, is being met with nothing but hostility for having the gall to own a thing. Do you suppose this hostility is going to make them change their opinions? Or! Do you suppose it will make them double-down on the "hoarding"?

Let me be clear, this is not theoretical. This is real. This is the shit I have had to deal with all of my adult life, having to have sit-down conversations in person with collectors apologizing for your anonymous scene-kid asses going off the deep end.

Do I agree that we should be saving as much video game data as possible? Yeah, obviously. But to scream at and now outright STEAL from the people who literally dumpster-dived and made weird backchannel deals to save games from destruction? Do you really want to lose that ally?

I have turned collectors around! I have done this through patience and empathy. I have saved unreleased games from people we thought were impossible by understanding them as people and either convincing them of what's right or by finding a middle-ground.

I have also had to face the real world consequences of ROM dumper hostility. I have had to look people in the eye who were burned by people within my own community stealing data from them, people who could have been negotiated with and maybe eventually turned.

There's that old saying, "I don't shit where I eat," and it applies here. These collectors are the people who are out there hustling saving their stuff in their own way, which you should acknowledge even if you don't necessarily agree with it. This is where this stuff comes from!

Might there come a point where drastic actions are necessary? Where it's worth the ripple effect to save something? I don't know. Probably. But it's not for some random-ass Atari arcade game that didn't test well.