> The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../
The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes.
I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive. This feels like a one-way transaction - society puts games in, society gets nothing back.
This is how most archives work. You can't just have a stroll around for the craic. And there's no point really, because it's not a museum – most people would be bored quite fast, unless you have a specific reason.
Exactly, and you shouldn't have to visit the archive to play its games in the first place. That's why I mentioned IA and GOG.com in particular - both let you download games remotely.
An archive of physical media serves a very different purpose from a bunch of computers loaded with the games from those media that are available to be played. It's kind of like a film vault that stores original movie film, vs. a place like YouTube that lets you play copies of those movies. And playing the game is not the same as examining and handling the original media (CD/tape/cartridge/manual/inserts/box).
Sure, archives often permit you to actually view their original media in person, but that's not always part of their mission. Sometimes the best they'll do is give you copies for a fee. Other times they may lend their original media (or sometimes copies) to qualified entities (spoiler alert: not everybody qualifies). There really is no single "right" way for this to work.
It is. I have very little respect for artists with sentimentality over such trivial bullshit. Speaking as someone who makes games. The jewel case doesn't matter.
It detracts from the thing-itself, like a showroom car that travels everywhere in a hermetically sealed container. That's not a car anymore, it's waste. Just because it gets driven 5 miles a year doesn't change shit. If someones spending money to preserve my games, I'd rather it'd just be a tarball in a well maintained magnetic tape vault available on-line than some aristocratic funko pop collection for a tiny amount of people to pog at in person.
The issue here is that a picture of a book is not a book, a copy of a game is the same game. Barring people with excellent and well-adjusted monitors looking at uncompressed images, the pics we see are (potentially excellent, but still) approximations of the original.
With software the notion of an original is meaningless though.
GoG makes games available for purchase, but on multiple occasions they've sold games where functionality has been stripped out, or they sell something that straight up doesn't work.
> The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes.
That's a lie. That's not at all what the FAQ says. You wouldn't like it if someone did that to you, would you?
> I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive.
So you hate game archives, and want to see games destroyed? Yikes.
> We aim to assist and grant access to people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions. While the archive is not open to the public, we hope our website and social media channels will offer insight into the work being done by our team. [1]
Then maybe people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions can provide those needed contributions. Very poor form to be coming to the public, hat in hand, asking them to help finance your private vidya collection.
Yes, they're also currently $2 billion dollars in debt and are attempting to split into 3 separate companies.
"Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends" - The legal successor to Embracer. For their triple A studios and major ip rights (they currently own the rights to LOTR-based games)
"Coffee Stain & Friends" - For their indie studios. (Named after their most successful indie studio, the people behind Goat Simulator and Satisfactory)
Asmodee - Their board and card game group. They took out a 900 million euro "financial agreement" with Embracer to pay back part of their debts. Officially a separate entity as of February.
Embracer group has been around for a while but, in recent years, they acquired far more companies than they could realistically do anything with because they thought they could flip them for a profit. They failed and had to take a hatchet to much of what they acquired, pissing off fans of companies that were either completely obliterated or hollowed out and outsourced.
>* Our mission is to have an archive of physical games as extensive as possible. With the purpose of contributing to the joint preservation of video game culture and history.
Now they're looking for donations to a private collection that will not be open to the public. They likely plan to sell the collection the highest bidder at some point. If they can't find a buyer, they'll bin the lot of it rather than continue to pay storage costs. The employees working for them may believe in what they're doing, but Embracer group now has a history of pulling the rug out from under such people.
--------------
Edit: The archive is based in Sweden, which has a really hopping museum scene. They could make a for-profit museum with these materials and a few talented museologists and it would likely do well. They mention no such plans and that's very odd.
For-profit museums aren't really a thing in Sweden either, because you won't be making a profit, unless you're the Vasa Museum, but even that is struggling.
Museums are sort of like farms in that you can lose money every year for entire lifetimes and still have a tremendously valuable farm. Like land, the past is an appreciating asset. That's big, traditional museums. I suppose it should be no surprise that the smaller museums are still struggling in the post-covid era. I based my opinion on visits prior to the pandemic, so I'm out of date. Hopefully the popularity of museums in Sweden will rebound.
The contributions they're looking for are apparently games and not monetary donations.
What exactly they're doing with the archive isn't stated. The FAQ doesn't explain, other than vague intentions to have the ability to do research and possibly some sort of museum (I think?)
What other archives or museums are there for video games that are accepting donations of physical game media? There are probably a lot of HN readers with old games in the attic that are bound for the landfill once they get around to it.
Their Library Director Phil Salvador is a serious historian, who extensively researched, interviewed people, and wrote a comprehensive deep dive into the history of Maxis's serious games division, Maxis Business Simulations, John Hiles, and SimRefinery.
It was such an widely read, well received investigation, that it led to the recovery of SimRefinery when a reader discovered an old floppy disk of it that had been sitting in a drawer for decades!
We'll miss it, now that it's moved from Baltimore to a larger space in Pittsburg. I have donated to it, and hope it continues on well past my lifetime.
It’s like the seed bank, except all the seeds are effectively dead, because no one can use them. But, they have the seeds’ pretty shells and can imagine what plants they once were.
Personally, I think there should be a non-profit that works with non-profits like this, computer and console equipment museums, Internet Archive, and a spacefaring company to ensure that history is protected in a logical way.
They do state that researchers are welcome to visit and use the material. I think that makes the collection not-entirely-useless to the public. Presumably any research they enable will be published.
> Embracer Games Archive is a part of Embracer Group - the parent company of businesses led by entrepreneurs in PC, console and mobile games, as well as other related media.
They ran around buying and gutting every IP they could get their hands on. Nordic became THQ Nordic, whilst continuing to eat everyone around them, whilst also nearly going bankrupt multiple times, before eventually ditching the name because investors didn't like people noticing just who they were.
They are the group that ate Dark Horse, CoffeeStain, Gearbox, Square Enix, Saber Interactive and so many more.
Today, they are majority-owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
this talk with acquisition manager there illuminates a lot of things, including how it started. Back of the envelope calc it looks like to be anywhere between 5-10m euro swing to get it where it is at right now (including space and people). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKXEUG_tKks
now, I have a full SNES collection (without boxes since cardboard is hard to keep up), almost full N64 collection, and on my way to complete Mega Drive and Master System (with boxes) and probably more than halfway through NES games.. bunch of amigas, commodores, spectrums, SGIs, monitors, some exotics like Sam Coupe, Tatung Einstein, Schneider CPCs, etc. but this is on another level.
Future collectors beware though, even though I collected a whole bunch as you can see, at the end of the day I still play either on Analogue's with Everdrive or original machines (RGB of course) with Everdrives. Sometimes even, yes, emulators. If anything, I'd honestly donate to a digital archive and emulator development. Only thing right now that really can't be emulated are CRTs - but I am honestly convinced we're soon close enough if not already 98% there with great 4k OLEDs (like sony A95L series) and some pre-processing. I can tell by the pixels when I'm looking at both A95L and BVM20 and/or B&O TV which I also have, to my wife's disapproval.
It looks more like they're just hoarding a massive personal collection of games... No mention of if this is open to public.
Or if they're even digitizing the games for some use of preservation. I always feel like when you hoard things in one location like this, one fire or other natural disaster and the entire collection is gone!
The long and short of it is Embracer has spent its entire existence as a consumption entity, buying every IP and studio it could get its hands on, with the intention of being a gaming publisher juggernaut. This was all done on ZIRP-era credit.
They then proceeded to run it into the ground. Waves of layoffs and studio closures, mismanagement, and a credit crunch that ultimately debilitated the company.
In other words, from the outside anyway, it looks like a classic Private Equity layup and cashout.
At least part of the collection, preferedly a rotating part, should be a public exhibit. They can charge an entrance fee, and they will get way more support if there is public awareness compared to a 100% closed shop.
No, only cataloguing. I asked them this when I was there January last year. They didn't do this then and if I remember correctly it was because of licensing concerns and also not wanting to open boxes. I know Royal Library in Stockholm digitally archive various media, not sure what Embracer would need to be allowed to do that.
I think you’re right, they would need some kind of copyright exemption in order to properly preserve the games by migrating them to new media regularly. I’m not sure it’s possible to get such an exemption for a private corporation under Swedish law?
this will be demolished before 5 years time. physical archives dont work, theyre inefficient and costly. people get bored. the best archive is torrent seeding.
Physical archives have literally worked for thousands of years.
You do have a point in that commercial ventures like Embracer don’t tend to last for very long. Presumably the collection would not be auctioned off piecemeal if the company goes under, but rather sold as a unit to some other entity.
From their FAQ
> Can I visit the archive?
> The archive is for everyone, and we welcome all inquiries. However, we prioritize requests that support gaming culture, gaming history, and the games industry. /../ While the archive is not open to the public, we hope /../
The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes.
I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive. This feels like a one-way transaction - society puts games in, society gets nothing back.
Better off going to 'myabandonware' which provides games you simply cannot buy anywhere. No nonsense, just games.
This is how most archives work. You can't just have a stroll around for the craic. And there's no point really, because it's not a museum – most people would be bored quite fast, unless you have a specific reason.
Exactly, and you shouldn't have to visit the archive to play its games in the first place. That's why I mentioned IA and GOG.com in particular - both let you download games remotely.
An archive of physical media serves a very different purpose from a bunch of computers loaded with the games from those media that are available to be played. It's kind of like a film vault that stores original movie film, vs. a place like YouTube that lets you play copies of those movies. And playing the game is not the same as examining and handling the original media (CD/tape/cartridge/manual/inserts/box).
Sure, archives often permit you to actually view their original media in person, but that's not always part of their mission. Sometimes the best they'll do is give you copies for a fee. Other times they may lend their original media (or sometimes copies) to qualified entities (spoiler alert: not everybody qualifies). There really is no single "right" way for this to work.
why not process digital backups and allow anyone donating to the archive to request those digitally?
That takes time and effort, and has legal implications that the archive might not want to deal with.
That's like saying that a digital scan of the book of Kells is identical to the authentic object.
It is. I have very little respect for artists with sentimentality over such trivial bullshit. Speaking as someone who makes games. The jewel case doesn't matter.
It detracts from the thing-itself, like a showroom car that travels everywhere in a hermetically sealed container. That's not a car anymore, it's waste. Just because it gets driven 5 miles a year doesn't change shit. If someones spending money to preserve my games, I'd rather it'd just be a tarball in a well maintained magnetic tape vault available on-line than some aristocratic funko pop collection for a tiny amount of people to pog at in person.
The issue here is that a picture of a book is not a book, a copy of a game is the same game. Barring people with excellent and well-adjusted monitors looking at uncompressed images, the pics we see are (potentially excellent, but still) approximations of the original.
With software the notion of an original is meaningless though.
Here is an actual video game archive worth donating to
https://library.gamehistory.org
Archive, library, and museum are three different things.
GoG makes games available for purchase, but on multiple occasions they've sold games where functionality has been stripped out, or they sell something that straight up doesn't work.
> The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public... Yikes.
That's a lie. That's not at all what the FAQ says. You wouldn't like it if someone did that to you, would you?
> I'd much rather support initiatives that actually make the games and software required to run them open to the public, like GOG.com and Internet Archive.
So you hate game archives, and want to see games destroyed? Yikes.
>The archive is for everyone, but it's only for these groups of people, and it's also not open to the public...
Its Lars Wingefors private collection.
Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors: "I'm sure I deserve a lot of criticism":
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1cb93xy/embracer_ceo...
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/embracer-ceo-lars-wingefors-im...
> We aim to assist and grant access to people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions. While the archive is not open to the public, we hope our website and social media channels will offer insight into the work being done by our team. [1]
Then maybe people within the games industry, researchers, schools, and other institutions can provide those needed contributions. Very poor form to be coming to the public, hat in hand, asking them to help finance your private vidya collection.
1: https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq
Isn't that the company that bought the IP to a bunch of games franchises just to kill all ongoing development? Ironic.
Yes, they're also currently $2 billion dollars in debt and are attempting to split into 3 separate companies.
"Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends" - The legal successor to Embracer. For their triple A studios and major ip rights (they currently own the rights to LOTR-based games)
"Coffee Stain & Friends" - For their indie studios. (Named after their most successful indie studio, the people behind Goat Simulator and Satisfactory)
Asmodee - Their board and card game group. They took out a 900 million euro "financial agreement" with Embracer to pay back part of their debts. Officially a separate entity as of February.
[0] https://embracer.com/releases/embracer-group-announces-its-i...
Embracer group has been around for a while but, in recent years, they acquired far more companies than they could realistically do anything with because they thought they could flip them for a profit. They failed and had to take a hatchet to much of what they acquired, pissing off fans of companies that were either completely obliterated or hollowed out and outsourced.
>* Our mission is to have an archive of physical games as extensive as possible. With the purpose of contributing to the joint preservation of video game culture and history.
Now they're looking for donations to a private collection that will not be open to the public. They likely plan to sell the collection the highest bidder at some point. If they can't find a buyer, they'll bin the lot of it rather than continue to pay storage costs. The employees working for them may believe in what they're doing, but Embracer group now has a history of pulling the rug out from under such people.
--------------
Edit: The archive is based in Sweden, which has a really hopping museum scene. They could make a for-profit museum with these materials and a few talented museologists and it would likely do well. They mention no such plans and that's very odd.
> Sweden, which has a really hopping museum scene
Citation needed. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/09/25/s...
https://swedenherald.com/article/tough-economic-situation-fo...
For-profit museums aren't really a thing in Sweden either, because you won't be making a profit, unless you're the Vasa Museum, but even that is struggling.
Museums are sort of like farms in that you can lose money every year for entire lifetimes and still have a tremendously valuable farm. Like land, the past is an appreciating asset. That's big, traditional museums. I suppose it should be no surprise that the smaller museums are still struggling in the post-covid era. I based my opinion on visits prior to the pandemic, so I'm out of date. Hopefully the popularity of museums in Sweden will rebound.
They killed Deus Ex :(
The contributions they're looking for are apparently games and not monetary donations.
What exactly they're doing with the archive isn't stated. The FAQ doesn't explain, other than vague intentions to have the ability to do research and possibly some sort of museum (I think?)
https://embracergamesarchive.com/#faq
The archive isn't even open to the public, why should the public donate games then?
What other archives or museums are there for video games that are accepting donations of physical game media? There are probably a lot of HN readers with old games in the attic that are bound for the landfill once they get around to it.
Not a museum or archive as such but in the UK there is this https://www.rmcretro.com/
Has a large collection of old systems and games, magazines and anything else they can get hold of. It's also open to visitors.
The Video Game History Foundation is the real deal.
https://gamehistory.org/
Their Library Director Phil Salvador is a serious historian, who extensively researched, interviewed people, and wrote a comprehensive deep dive into the history of Maxis's serious games division, Maxis Business Simulations, John Hiles, and SimRefinery.
It was such an widely read, well received investigation, that it led to the recovery of SimRefinery when a reader discovered an old floppy disk of it that had been sitting in a drawer for decades!
https://archive.org/details/sim-refinery
https://gamehistory.org/library-director-phil-salvador/
https://gamehistory.org/ep-11-simrefinery-simulated-by-a-ref...
https://obscuritory.com/
https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/
https://obscuritory.com/sim/simrefinery-recovered/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ6Cqn5rTfs
I know of one in my small country, I thus assume there's many especially in the US
Embracer Games is Swedish, not American.
https://www.themade.org/
> "To donate items to the MADE, bring your donation to the front desk during open hours."
Quite a long trip for many. That seems to signify that they're not a large enough organization to be an archive.
https://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum
We'll miss it, now that it's moved from Baltimore to a larger space in Pittsburg. I have donated to it, and hope it continues on well past my lifetime.
It’s like the seed bank, except all the seeds are effectively dead, because no one can use them. But, they have the seeds’ pretty shells and can imagine what plants they once were.
Personally, I think there should be a non-profit that works with non-profits like this, computer and console equipment museums, Internet Archive, and a spacefaring company to ensure that history is protected in a logical way.
They do state that researchers are welcome to visit and use the material. I think that makes the collection not-entirely-useless to the public. Presumably any research they enable will be published.
> Embracer Games Archive is a part of Embracer Group - the parent company of businesses led by entrepreneurs in PC, console and mobile games, as well as other related media.
very unclear who these people actually are
Embracer started out as Nordic Games.
They ran around buying and gutting every IP they could get their hands on. Nordic became THQ Nordic, whilst continuing to eat everyone around them, whilst also nearly going bankrupt multiple times, before eventually ditching the name because investors didn't like people noticing just who they were.
They are the group that ate Dark Horse, CoffeeStain, Gearbox, Square Enix, Saber Interactive and so many more.
Today, they are majority-owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Square Enix is still independent. They've got their fingers in so many pies, they're almost in the "too big to fail" category.
The SE-Embracer connection is that SE spun off Crystal Dynamics and its properties like Tomb Raider, selling them to Embracer Group.
this talk with acquisition manager there illuminates a lot of things, including how it started. Back of the envelope calc it looks like to be anywhere between 5-10m euro swing to get it where it is at right now (including space and people). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKXEUG_tKks
now, I have a full SNES collection (without boxes since cardboard is hard to keep up), almost full N64 collection, and on my way to complete Mega Drive and Master System (with boxes) and probably more than halfway through NES games.. bunch of amigas, commodores, spectrums, SGIs, monitors, some exotics like Sam Coupe, Tatung Einstein, Schneider CPCs, etc. but this is on another level.
Future collectors beware though, even though I collected a whole bunch as you can see, at the end of the day I still play either on Analogue's with Everdrive or original machines (RGB of course) with Everdrives. Sometimes even, yes, emulators. If anything, I'd honestly donate to a digital archive and emulator development. Only thing right now that really can't be emulated are CRTs - but I am honestly convinced we're soon close enough if not already 98% there with great 4k OLEDs (like sony A95L series) and some pre-processing. I can tell by the pixels when I'm looking at both A95L and BVM20 and/or B&O TV which I also have, to my wife's disapproval.
Is it too cynical to think they’re just building this to train AI against your donated games?
It looks more like they're just hoarding a massive personal collection of games... No mention of if this is open to public.
Or if they're even digitizing the games for some use of preservation. I always feel like when you hoard things in one location like this, one fire or other natural disaster and the entire collection is gone!
You don't need a physical archive to do that; a torrent of a bunch of SNES games would be good enough.
They would be violating Swedish copyright law if they did, so they better not!
Much easier to get away with such things in the US (it seems).
Sorry, but I don't trust Embracer with being a good steward of games in any capacity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group#History
Is there something specific in that corporate saga you're referring to?
I'm not inclined to trust corporate do-gooding either, but it would be nice to have some detail.
The long and short of it is Embracer has spent its entire existence as a consumption entity, buying every IP and studio it could get its hands on, with the intention of being a gaming publisher juggernaut. This was all done on ZIRP-era credit.
They then proceeded to run it into the ground. Waves of layoffs and studio closures, mismanagement, and a credit crunch that ultimately debilitated the company.
In other words, from the outside anyway, it looks like a classic Private Equity layup and cashout.
Do not trust the Embracer Group.
So their name is a hint at “ Embrace, (extend), and extinguish”?
...damn, that's a good one!
Well, for starters, partially owned by the Saudi state. It might be common to take a lot of money from them, but I personally think it’s morally wrong
So they embrace game developers, then cut them up into small pieces with a bone saw?
Then they disposed of the Pieces Interactive by feeding them to Piranha Bytes!
what does the public gain from them?
At least part of the collection, preferedly a rotating part, should be a public exhibit. They can charge an entrance fee, and they will get way more support if there is public awareness compared to a 100% closed shop.
Doesn't seem like they are digitising the media.
No, only cataloguing. I asked them this when I was there January last year. They didn't do this then and if I remember correctly it was because of licensing concerns and also not wanting to open boxes. I know Royal Library in Stockholm digitally archive various media, not sure what Embracer would need to be allowed to do that.
I think you’re right, they would need some kind of copyright exemption in order to properly preserve the games by migrating them to new media regularly. I’m not sure it’s possible to get such an exemption for a private corporation under Swedish law?
Ah, found it. Only some government and municipal archives have such an exemption.
https://riksarkivet.se/utforska-och-bestall/vad-du-har-ratt-...
also not wanting to open boxes
What?!? How can one preserve games without opening boxes? Physical media don't last forever.
Unless they're interested in preserving the boxes themselves? (or other goodies inside)
Reads like they're looking for donations to enlarge a private collection. Or perhaps obtain some physical copies for stuff in their IP portfolio?
this will be demolished before 5 years time. physical archives dont work, theyre inefficient and costly. people get bored. the best archive is torrent seeding.
Physical archives have literally worked for thousands of years.
You do have a point in that commercial ventures like Embracer don’t tend to last for very long. Presumably the collection would not be auctioned off piecemeal if the company goes under, but rather sold as a unit to some other entity.