Note that this really only affects researchers/historians who were hoping to have a copyright exemption for controlled digital lending. This would let them virtually borrow a copyrighted retro game ROM file (from an archive such as the Internet Archive) and play it via emulation through the browser. I have actually played a few retro games on IA using their browser emulator and while it is playable it wouldn’t be my first choice.

For retro game enthusiasts who weren’t aware of these browser emulators not much will change. You still have the same exemptions covering abandonware for personal use and for playing multiplayer games where the publisher has shut down the servers. No, you’re not entitled to the publisher helping you run those games but you are protected if your goal is to reverse engineer the game code in order to create your own fan-made server. Several old multiplayer games have open source servers for this!

Also if you’re playing on original hardware then of course you’re still fully in the clear to buy used cartridges, make backups of them, play them all you want. Yes, some rare are super expensive but a lot of that stuff is due to people collecting sealed and graded games which really has nothing to with actually playing games. You’re not going to spend thousands on a sealed game and then crack it open to play it when you could just buy an open copy for far cheaper or even download a ROM for free.

Anyway, yes, these publishers are idiots pushing out crap games we don’t want to play. That’s fine. If their goal was to kill retro gaming to try to force us to buy new games then they’re still a thousand miles away from that!