As the years go by, the video game industry is changing and moving increasingly towards a digital future from which there seems to be no escape, which has become a concern for many gamers around the world, especially fans of old classic games.

The sale of “tangible” physical copies of games has become lower than ever, to the point where some game development companies and publishers, such as Epic Games and Sega, are seriously moving to not release any physical copies at all, and examples of this are the titles Alan Wake 2 and Like A Dragon: Gaiden and others.

According to a new study from the Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network, 87% of all classic titles in North America are considered “critically endangered” or “completely unavailable.”

If you wanted to get your hands on nine out of ten classic titles today, you'd have to preserve your own "physical" collections, visit libraries that still have many older titles, or resort to piracy, because most older titles are no longer commercially available. And they're easy to buy.

According to the study, conducted by the Video Game History Foundation, "classic" games were defined as those released before 2010. The study included three distinct ecosystems that were popular among users: Commodore 64, Game Boy, and PlayStation 2, and used the MobyGames network, a vast, community-run video game database.

The study confirmed that 87 percent of classic video games released in the United States have become officially unavailable, with only 4.5 percent of the Commodore 64 library discovered and only 5.6 percent of the Game Boy library, which fared no better, having disappeared. Half of the Game Boy library was discontinued when the 3DS and Wii U were discontinued from eShops earlier this year.

PlayStation 2 games were doing better, with only 12% still available, but the situation has only gotten worse as the years have gone by, and everything paints a dark and vague picture of what will become of the old classics we have fond memories of.