Comment by protimewaster

I guess I'm more focused on the "legal" part.

The separation of the license and the content, plus the inability to transfer the license, makes things legally muddy. I can copy the files, but I can't copy the license. So you eventually end up in a position where the data for the game itself has been preserved, but there's no one alive that's actually got a license to legally play it (unless new licenses are issued into perpetuity, which seems unlikely given a bunch of content already is in a position where new licenses aren't issued).

In contrast, every person that ever bought a new Atari 2600 game could be dead, but the license just transfers with the cartridge. So a museum could get some Atari 2600 cartridges and an Atari 2600 in the year 2100, and there wouldn't be any legal hurdles to playing the games.

If they just get the files to some Steam game, what do they do about the legal aspect of the fact that no one has a license for the game? The museum doesn't have a license to the games unless it purchased them new when licenses were still being issued. Should we just rely on the fact that, when push comes to shove, we can just use the software without a license? That just doesn't feel like a good solution to me.

I guess the limited lifetime of copyright does kinda solve this in a way, but it seems weird to just leave it so that games are in a state where they legally can't be played, and possibly the files can't be legally kept, for years on end until copyright expires.