IFDB and IF Archive are completely different things
IFDB just contains information about the game, including the name, description, and links, and it’s a place where people can post reviews. Nobody submitting to ParserComp has ever had the option to opt out of having people talk about their game on IFDB. (That would be like having someone say that the game can’t be discussed on intfiction.org.)
IF Archive hosts the author’s actual game files. That’s only allowed with the author’s permission, because the author controls the copyright (the right to make copies of the game).
We should update the title of this thread and I think @fos1 should update the top post to make it clear that we’re talking about IF Archive and not IFDB.
All competitions should have an archival rule
IFComp’s rule says:
You retain the copyright to any games you enter, and may do whatever you wish with your work after the competition ends. That said, by entering IFComp, you grant the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFComp’s organizing body) the non-exclusive right to distribute, without limit, all material you submit to the competition.
Spring Thing’s rule says:
The festival version of your game must be freely available both during the festival and in perpetuity afterwards on the IF Archive. Thus, if your game is unable to be archived in perpetuity on the IF Archive, it is ineligible for the Main Festival.
Authors don’t need to lift a finger to put these games in the archive; they just need to give permission to host games in the archive. Volunteers can manually archive the games ourselves, but only if we have permission.
Most of last year’s ParserComp winners opted out of archival
Last year, there were three winners of ParserComp. Two out of the three winners checked the box to opt out of archival.
I don’t feel like I need to name names, but I can say that @Warrigal explained why he opted out of archival here:
This matters, because multiple people have decided to delete their games from Itch, and then asked us to delete reviews of their game on IFDB
Games hosted only on Itch can be deleted by the author at any time. If the author refuses to have their game archived, then the public can no longer play that game, period.
Multiple times this year, authors have written to IFDB and used our “Delete This Game” feature, saying that they’re the author and that they’ve deleted all copies of the game, and asked us to delete the IFDB listing, including its public reviews.
Each author has their own reasons for asking for deletion (for example, because the game contains personal details that they regret publicizing). Typically the author isn’t explicitly asking us to “delete the reviews,” but they’re just asking us to “delete their IFDB entry,” which just happens to include reviews.
As long as the game remains visible to the public on IF Archive, I think it doesn’t make sense to delete game listings from IFDB, but when the very last public copy of a game is deleted, it probably doesn’t make sense to host reviews of a game that effectively no longer exists.
It might not make sense to review games that are hosted only on Itch and deny permission to be archived
If you know that a game is hosted only on Itch, and that the author could delete it at any time, and that your review will then be useless (and perhaps even deleted), maybe it doesn’t make sense to post a review at all.
For ParserComp, as long as authors can opt out of archival, there’s no reason to think that any ParserComp game you review will be archived, especially the winners, since most of the winners opted out of archival.