Have we crossed the event horizon into the digital games abyss? I think we might be there. I’ve been buying digital games since the Xbox 360 era—about 20 years now—and a recent story about SNK delisting its Neo Geo games from the Google Play Store made me reflect on just how fragile digital ownership has become. Some of these games were paid titles, and now, even if you bought them, you can’t download them again. They’re just gone.
I take a look at this issue in my latest analysis video.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Ubisoft shut down the servers for the original The Crew game—even for single-player—which rendered both the physical and digital versions unusable. In court filings, Ubisoft even argued that consumers shouldn’t expect to own games forever. That statement alone raises serious concerns about what digital ownership really means.
There’s been some pushback. A petition effort in the EU called “Stop Killing Games” has collected over 1.2 million signatures. It calls for publishers to make games playable in perpetuity if they’re sold as stand-alone purchases. It also pushes for upfront disclosure of how long server-dependent features will be supported. Some developers are fighting it, but it’s encouraging to see gamers so fiercely defending their rights. I only wish more consumers in other markets showed this level of passion and persistence.
I spent the weekend looking through my digital game purchases across various platforms to see what I still have access to. On Xbox 360, I was able to retrieve my very first digital purchase from 2005—Zuma—and get it running again. But the process was clunky. You can’t view purchases on the web, only on the original console, and it’s not clear how long Microsoft will keep those old servers running. My console frequently errored out if I scrolled my past purchases list too quickly.
Not all Xbox 360 games made the jump to modern Xbox consoles through their backwards compatibility efforts. A favorite of mine, Afterburner Climax, never made it to modern devices due to licensing complications over the aircraft featured in the game. Microsoft has stopped porting more titles over for now, citing legal and technical challenges.
On Steam, things look better. My early purchases, including Half-Life 2, are still accessible. I haven’t lost any games there yet. GOG, formerly Good Old Games, also continues to offer access to titles I bought as far back as 2011, like Wing Commander and Castles. They’ve even improved some of those games to work better on newer hardware. The best part about GOG is that the games are DRM free – so you can download them in full and archive them.
Nintendo’s 3DS platform is a mixed bag. I couldn’t test mine because of a swollen battery, but Nintendo has said 3DS downloads are still available—for the “foreseeable future.” Whatever that means.. That wording isn’t exactly reassuring.
The worst offender in my experience has been the Apple App Store. When Apple transitioned to 64-bit apps, many older 32-bit games stopped working. If developers didn’t update them, they disappeared. Big publishers like EA were among the culprits. I had purchased a $10 version of SimCity that ran great on iPhone, but it’s now gone. In its place? A freemium replacement with in-app purchases. Even if I kept an old iPhone with the app installed, it’s tough to get back in due to outdated App Store compatibility.
Other games I lost include THQ’s Star Wars Trench Run, Amateur Surgeon from Adult Swim, and a bunch of others that aren’t even visible in my purchase history anymore. I probably lost at least $30 worth of games, and I can only guess how much other gamers have lost over the years.
There is a workaround for some of these lost iOS games. The Internet Archive hosts an extensive collection of .IPA files, but to install them, you’ll need an old iPhone running iOS 10 or earlier—and you’ll need to jailbreak it. It’s not simple, but it’s one way to reclaim what was lost. I found almost all of my missing games there.
All of this underscores how important digital preservation efforts are. It’s not just about nostalgia. It’s about protecting access to things we’ve paid for and preserving digital history. There’s no consistent law guaranteeing our rights to these digital purchases, and that needs to change. Even worse, gamers looking to preserve DRM protected works could be opening themselves up to legal issues as the DMCA criminalizes DRM circumvention.
If you’ve lost access to games or apps you paid for, I’d be curious to hear your story in the comment section of my video. Whether it was a suspended account or a platform shift beyond your control, you’re not alone. We may not fully realize the scale of this digital abyss until it’s too late.