If I were a game dev, I would want my work to be preserved past the life of the specific hardware it was written for. It's sad that so much culture is lost due to proprietary hardware and software.
I recently "bought" Titanfall 2, on DVD. I put "bought" in quotes because I wonder how much I actually own it, if at all.
It wouldn't run at all without first connecting to the internet and downloading multiple gigabytes of updates.
I wonder what would happen in the future when EA decides to shut up shop or change their DRM platform. Will I ever be able to play it again?
This is why I often feel like pirates "own" the content more than legitimate buyers.
Will that be true of FTL, Bastion, Shadow of Mordor, Limbo, or Assassin's Creed?
I get the point, though. I've got dozens and dozens of games from the 90s and 2000s, and the earlier ones are much less likely to have a reliance on some external authentication server, or something.
For really old games, I usually just buy the disks outright.