Regarding the preservation of Angry Birds digital history.

[IronAvenger]

Hello everyone!

Lately i have been thinking about the ever expanding variety of Angry Birds content that has been made available over the years, and how at least some of it should be preserved. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the importance of preserving digital video games and wish to know more about this, i recommend the following article: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/the-quest-to-save-todays-gaming-history-from-being-lost-forever/

Take for example the promotional game “Angry Birds in The Hunt For The Golden Pistachio”, and how it has been unavailable for years ever since the partnership between Rovio and the food brand has ended, or how Angry Birds Friends levels vanish after one week.

While the series (and mobile gaming in general) may be chastisied by the gaming community, it is absolutely undeniable that it has been a part of the gaming history and the smartphone era in general, and as such i believe there should be some effort to preserve games and levels that would be otherwise unplayable. Has there ever been similar concerns within the community or Rovio itself?

Topic

[Mp127]

There’s nothing to worry about. With ever-improving technology, bigger impact of recent years on history and emulators capable to simulate any Android system, anyone should be able to open any game, unless they require online connection – those will be lost as soon as Rovio will close servers.

Offline games will live long after Rovio will be closed, because even when any Angry Birds will have become incompatible with new devices (ABSW1 and ABSt are already going through it), you’ll be able to get an older device, either through some old smartphone or emulator and just download a clean apk from the Internet. Even better as these sites still have many older versions of the games.

Online games are rather huge problem to deal with, because Rovio won’t keep the servers forever and the chance that it’ll survive the time is, honestly, very low. Unless someone will be able to bypass the Internet connection (that’s what Rovio maybe could do).

AB Friends is a separate topic, because Rovio for sure has stored old levels in the database to reuse them and they could be able to release these levels (obviously it’s not gonna happen, but it’d be nice).

Promotional games are very likely unrecoverable if they weren’t on CDs, because they weren’t created to persist through the time and very likely they were done just after the promotion has finished.

To end the post in humorous-but-sadly-true way, maybe in the future we will finally be able to play without IAPs and ads everywhere.

[IronAvenger]

Thank you for your answer! I guess we can only hope for the best in cases like the AB Friends levels.

[gladvold]

@mp127 I’m deviating from the topic, but since you mentioned ABSW1: It is now updated. No new levels, but compatible with newer devices again!