As a longtime gamer (but old fart like ColecoVision, Atari, NES, and things like that) I wonder if in 20 years we’ll see YouTube videos about gaming today.

Only in the museum part is all gameplay erased due to copyright claims.

How can something like this be preserved for the future?

No, even the industry considers it an advantage that they can sell old games over and over again. With very little effort, you can repaint an old game and then resell it for higher prices than when the game was new.

In that respect, it reminds us of how the music industry has been able to sell us the same music over and over again. If you’re old enough, you have the same song on single, on LP, on tape, on cassette tape, on CD, as MP3 with DRM and you also pay monthly for some streaming. (Not to mention videotapes (of various types), CD-i discs, DVDs, Bluerays, and other forms of video).

Now this new media also brings improvements in quality and sometimes the new releases are really better, but that doesn’t change the fact that you always have to buy new licenses for the same material. Fortunately, simulation and virtualization are getting better and better, but this also has its limits, especially if it involves network components.