The companies won

it's almost like video games aren't a recreational activity

They’re worried about people playing their old games “recreationally.” Like deadass, they specifically said they’ll only archive games that are not sold or made anymore so you don’t have to somehow find both a working disc/cartridge and a working console for the game (for Nintendo this is especially hard) and every company went “f**k you” and lobbied against them.

so what, i can't play wii sports "recreationally" if i ever get a wii
what about my 3ds is that old enough

Hopefully

what's wrong with playing a game
isn't that the purpose of video games
to
to be played

Companies want you to buy their newer games and rereleases of old games, not go to a website and just download it. Usually theirs no differences to the games besides graphics unless you’re f**king Nintendo and pull “this has 2-3 games in one cartridge/adds some mini games to your game” or “lets add mega Pokémon to this game/make certain fights a lot more difficult and change/add some content.” Most of the time, companies will just port the game to a new system with updated graphics (Nintendo does this too).

Fun fact
I own a 3DS with pre-owned f**kin games
Nintendo has no rule over my physical game hoarding ass

Eventually that 3DS breaks and you’re forced to emulate. What this game archive was gonna do was allow a proper source free of viruses to download from instead of the usual piracy sources of games. That way, anyone can enjoy the games they physically cannot play anymore without needing the hard to find hardware and cartridges. Furthermore, it would allow them to preserve the games better instead of losing everything about a game when all of the cartridges/disks finally fail or the game is pulled from the stores (which then gets referred to as “lost media”). Several games have already been lost this way.