I can tell you one thing for sure:

Game developers never keep their shit archived or saved as studiously as we all think they do, or should.

I am 100% sure that large swathes of concept art for my own company's games are gone forever.

I want a job flying around the world and yelling at the people who could be saving that art and aren't. Now... I just need someone who will pay me to do that. ...LoS! Make a lot of money in game development and then pay me to do that.

I'm kind of hoping that Nintendo is more like Louisa was saying. (Well, obviously I want to hope that.) I mean, every now and then they release something that makes me think they still have the stuff. At the very least, I hope there's a few defunct Nintendo artists that have horded their work, and that of their co-workers... being artists and all.... /one can only hope they would want to do that, even if just for themselves. As long as it's not "gone," ...I've waited 25 years, I can wait another 25. ...I guess.

Most companies are like this. This is why I am sad. We just threw out tons of shit at my work. I salvaged like 1% of it because of space and time issues.

Some people hoard in productive ways, like Melora said, and you hope those people are floating around. But most people and companies just throw it all out. A lot is not properly archived and destroyed due to age. We have also lost a large majority of silent films in the world because of this. I think like the majority of films pre-1930 are considered lost.

Oh the tears I'd cry if the art from the original NES Zelda games was thrown away. Its shocking how little people value their own hard work sometimes.