It doesn’t need to be always for sale to be preserved my copy is still there and it’s still playable. It’s only lost of those that paid for it can’t play it.
And when you die and your next of kin tries to recover your password and gets told by Valve that it’s not within the TOS, your copy will be just as gone and the game will be just as unperserved.
If it’s not made freely available, and is only held by previous purchasers with no transferable rights, it is not preserved.
What you are describing is the debate over content ownership, and if that were the topic at hand, you would he spot on. But preservation is something different. Preservation is about the long game.
It doesn’t need to be always for sale to be preserved my copy is still there and it’s still playable. It’s only lost of those that paid for it can’t play it.
That’s the first and biggest step in it being lost to history.
And when you die and your next of kin tries to recover your password and gets told by Valve that it’s not within the TOS, your copy will be just as gone and the game will be just as unperserved.
That’s not how preservation works.
If it’s not made freely available, and is only held by previous purchasers with no transferable rights, it is not preserved.
What you are describing is the debate over content ownership, and if that were the topic at hand, you would he spot on. But preservation is something different. Preservation is about the long game.
The high seas still has it’s copy as well. Heck many times I find the copy on the Internet Archive ready to go.