The tragedy element of this story is totally overblown, imho.
First of all, people will still be able to download ROMs and play them for free. Torrenting a big bundle of ROMs, vs. downloading them from a nicely organized website, is more of an inconvenience than anything.
Second, even though ROMs were such a formative part of these developers' lives, there are lots and lots of innovative, inexpensive and free games out there today. There are oodles of free-to-play and super cheap indie games available on Steam, for instance, and frequent Steam sales where penny-pinching gamers can pick up the mid-priced titles for a reasonable price. Even with these ROM sites shuttering, the barriers to making and playing games are probably lower now than they've ever been.
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The tragedy element of this story is totally overblown, imho. First of all, people will still be able to download ROMs and play them for free. Torrenting a big bundle of ROMs, vs. downloading them from a nicely organized website, is more of an inconvenience than anything. Second, even though ROMs were such a formative part of these developers' lives, there are lots and lots of innovative, inexpensive and free games out there today. There are oodles of free-to-play and super cheap indie games available on Steam, for instance, and frequent Steam sales where penny-pinching gamers can pick up the mid-priced titles for a reasonable price. Even with these ROM sites shuttering, the barriers to making and playing games are probably lower now than they've ever been.