Plus, every 20-30 years copyright statutes are reevaluated. Things like where and when the game was made and who owns it are all factors. You can see how much situations vary here. Determining exactly how long a video game copyright can last is complicated, though. Gregory Boyd, partner and co-chair of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit. But Kane could not immediately think of any examples of companies doing this over emulated video games.Īnd if you’re waiting for some of the oldest games to enter the public domain, you’ll be waiting for a while - “decades, and decades and decades,” according to S. Kane noted, however, that there are companies that take these things “very seriously,” and there have been cases where companies sued individuals for downloading something, even if it was for non-commercial use. “I think it’d be rare and approaching never that they go after individual downloaders,” he said.
