That wasn't my argument here - the older games, at the time they came out, were often a mess. Some bugs were patched out, some weren't, but the quality at the time they were relevant wasn't any greater, it was often worse.
But yeah, we're in a new phase where publishers kill games and then they are gone forever and that's a real shame. I think there needs to be some sort of legislation around abandonware so that people can host live services and MMOs after the publishers give up on them.
I agree. I think a lot of copyright/patent laws have gotten in the way of game preservation. What bothers me is many people in the industry have held onto old code/assets over the years, but have no legal way of sharing that with others. It's odd, sheet music can be documented and distributed, but with games being more complex and tangled it's almost an impossibility to have clean-room REs/decompilations. And yet distribution of source code while maintaining copyright is pretty darn easy. Release the source, protect the assets behind copyright.
But yeah, we're in a new phase where publishers kill games and then they are gone forever and that's a real shame. I think there needs to be some sort of legislation around abandonware so that people can host live services and MMOs after the publishers give up on them.