Is the cow level there, too ?
Based on the fact that the old saves work with the remake, I would say yes. It looks like the same old game with a modern graphical layer on top of it.
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Is the cow level there, too ?
Tbh, I'm not a big fan of the remaster craze. There are already too many of them being done for a quick cash grab. D2:R is obviously an example of a remaster that had a significant amount of work put into it, but most of them aren't on that level.
That said, there are a few games I wouldn't mind if they were done right. M&M VI-VIII come to mind.
There's also a serious problem with game preservation. Plenty of games, when they become either unprofitable or when the company that handled it goes under, remain unplayable either due to DRM that never gets patched out, or because the company decides to retire the servers and offers no ability for players to host the servers themselves.
There really should be legislation to force company to offer an end-of-life plan for most games and software. They don't get to cut off your product just because it's no longer profitable, or because they decide to cut off activation servers. Adobe did something like this recently, but plenty of ther game studios to it pretty regularly.
Also, let's not forget about the monopoly of companies that use software to force people into buying new hardware when only parts of that need replacing/fixing. I'm reminded of the recent "right to repair" movement, that involves plenty of IT companies also. But in this case in particular, people that own John Deer farming equipment are forced into official repairs that usually gouge them for more money than is actually required. And the company also refuses to offer diagnostics software to find out which part needs fixing/replacing. So farmers have to resort to pirated software for that.
So yeah, in these cases pirated software is mandatory until they get resolved some other way.
Piracy:
I think it's important to make a distinction between pirated software and abandonware. The latter being necessary for archival purposes, and in most cases if working copies are being provided, abandonware sites will remove the software and offer a link of where to buy the retail version.
Legislation:
Not a great idea. First of all, too hard to enforce globally when local laws differ to a great extent. But second, imagine trying to push legislation on tiny indie companies that now have to deal with all this massive legal red tape of just simply making a fun game. Some things are way beyond their control too. You can't plan for obsolescence based on an outdated OS when you have no idea what the new OS will be 20 years from now. And yes, they do get to cut off a product if it's no longer profitable. If Netflix decides to shut down completely, we don't all of a sudden have a right to their offline content.
Right to repair:
This doesn't quite fall under the same category of right to repair (which I fully support). It sucks, but the software industry is highly capitalist. We vote with our wallets. It's also how our Polish friends at CD Projekt came to life. It's not the same as an iPhone or laptop or a combine where these are required for people to survive and make a living, as video games are (with some exceptions) limited mainly to entertainment.
All that aside, I definitely would welcome companies with open arms and sing praises to them if they were able to provide the ability to host private servers of long gone MMOs and/or patched their software to no longer require activation servers, and think it's shitty if they decide not to just because.
And there's no need to confuse the issue even more with requring indies to support their game on some old OS. That's not what this is about.