> What is needed is laws that classify games in situations such as this as abandonware
This will never happen as long as they can milk games and keep on making money on 40 years old games. Mario 1 is still not abandon-ware. Its Disney's Mickey Mouse all over again.
That's not totally accurate, is it? The US LoC has made administrative exemptions [1] to things like the 'circumvention' teeth of the DMCA for the sake of archive/curation of historical works. While not a total reclamation of the copyright or a mandate for companies to support preservation, it's also not a complete denial of some games' abandonwarw status.
This will never happen as long as they can milk games and keep on making money on 40 years old games. Mario 1 is still not abandon-ware. Its Disney's Mickey Mouse all over again.