You can blame the copyright, trademark and possibly patent if it's not that old for that.
The problem is, a game is not owned by single entity. There were multiple persons and organizations own the game.
Some persons are now deceased, some organizations are now bankrupted.
It's almost impossible to find all entities who own the rights, negotiate the share. It costs more than the potential profit of the old games.
What we need is a copyright exemption law(or recognized as a fair use if you're living in US common law system) which allows unlimited use of copyrighted works(including commercial use) if the copy of the work cannot be obtained from the author.
Some may argues that they want the right to not distributed, but the very reason copyright exist is to give temporally exclusive rights the the author for... you know what? distribution. If the author don't want to distribute their works, it's shall not be copyright protected in the first place.
The problem is, a game is not owned by single entity. There were multiple persons and organizations own the game.
Some persons are now deceased, some organizations are now bankrupted.
It's almost impossible to find all entities who own the rights, negotiate the share. It costs more than the potential profit of the old games.
What we need is a copyright exemption law(or recognized as a fair use if you're living in US common law system) which allows unlimited use of copyrighted works(including commercial use) if the copy of the work cannot be obtained from the author.
Some may argues that they want the right to not distributed, but the very reason copyright exist is to give temporally exclusive rights the the author for... you know what? distribution. If the author don't want to distribute their works, it's shall not be copyright protected in the first place.