Open‑source Games as Cultural Archives

Long‑lived open‑source games can function as living archives: community maintainers keep code runnable on vintage hardware, adopt modern toolchains for portability, and publish server instances so the work remains playable and discoverable. Those maintenance choices — cross‑compile support, modernized standards (C99), scripting (Lua), and distributed servers — are preservation practices that other cultural software projects could adopt. — Recognizing open‑source games as cultural archives reframes software maintenance as heritage policy and highlights where public support, funding, or standards could help preserve digital culture.