The home-computer world is especially interesting for old games. If something made it to a Nintendo or Sega console, it's probably very well-preserved, but I'd be surprised if even 1% of all video games made were released on consoles.

There's an unfathomable number of games that were released on the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and most famously DOS that were made by one or two people, self-published, and have now completely fallen into obscurity to a point where it's not 100% clear who owns the copyright and who to give money even if you wanted to, which has led to the "probably-illegal-but-not-really-enforced" term of "Abandonware".

I honestly kind of think that Abandonware should be codified into law in the same way that trademarks are; if you're not actively giving me a legitimate way to buy your game then I don't think it should be illegal for me to get it illegitimately.

Not just that, but some fair use youtube channels like Digging the Greats:

https://www.youtube.com/@diggingthegreats/videos

He intentionally samples less than 5 seconds iirc, and they still ding him, take all profits from the video, which took many many hours to create, and he cannot afford a lawsuit. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Agreed, and it was already like this in the 2000's (when I got involved in the abandonware scene). I remember the owner of Home of the Underdogs getting constantly in battles with takedown notices for games she only intended to preserve. Not piracy in the sense of "losing tons of money", nobody but enthusiasts cared about these games anymore.

The old video games aren't illegal to own.

Isn't that one of the whole points of copyright? So the authors can print new copies and not have to compete with other people releasing copies they made?

Nothing is stopping people from keeping an archived copy until copyright expires.