The video game history foundation has posted an article, which is not about Civ1 or Civ2, but still in the current context very relevant. The article describes that 87% of historic video games (range 1960-2009) are currently not available at all. While many games can be bought on online platforms like Steam or GoG, the vast majority, nearly 9 out of 10, are actually not on these platforms. According to the study this is comparable to the survival of American silent-era movies (14%). This means for many old games the only possibility to preserve them right now is to preserve the legacy systems which run these games, and hope that the floppies or other media they are stored on don’t degrade.
These facts are very relevant for the Civ community. While the series from Civ3 to Civ6, and also including Alpha Centauri, is available on online platforms, the first 2 games of the series are still not legally downloadable.
Let’s hope that these classics will be preserved for the future.
A summary of the study, including further links, can be found here, and you can discuss this study with us here.