This isn't an unfixable issue. If it's a matter of rules, why not have the old rules in a database file, updated every patch, so that they may be referenced when dealing with an older replay? If it's a matter of format, include a small parser which will edit old replays into the new format. The game is 99.9% unchanged with each patch, so why must this make such a radical difference that 99.9% of replays become unviewable after a single patch? I'm obviously not up on what causes all of these replays to become obsolete with nearly every patch, but I do see that there are a lot of valuable replays which are now obsolete because of this nearly game breaking feature.
For strategy fans, this should be an obvious and concerning issue for the longevity of any game. Think of Go, which is by any definition a classic strategy game. If we were unable to replay games which took place thousands of years ago because there was no reliable system in place to replay them from, think of all the knowledge and ingenuity which would be lost with each generation of players. A similar (though granted much smaller) loss takes place with each patch, and ignoring it, when fixing it could bring a whole new aspect to the genre, is strange and concerning.
When Brian Reynolds himself has said that balance patches will occur often, and in fact a system was developed to make balance patches quick and easy, why has a system not also been developed to preserve the recorded games which will become obsolete with these numerous balance patches? Is BHG not concerned by the loss of their own games' history?
Does anyone else find this problem concerning?