Only if the publisher has placed themselves into a position where labor is required to keep the game running...
The obvious and clearest response is simply this: If you as a publisher are so convinced that your game is obsolete... make the remote server source available under a permissive license to your existing license holders. Better yet - plan for releasing a copy of it at development time.
You don't even need to make the license permissive to everyone, or for everything (open source). You just need to make it possible for those who have purchased your product to continue to use the product, and there are MANY ways to do that which don't involve your consistent labor.
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Basically - To directly address your point: If the alternative is that the publisher does crap like completely disable single player experiences because they've shut down remote licensing servers... fuck them.
That's not a company I think should be allowed to exist. If we can't limit them this way... them I'd be fully in favor of mandating they return the full purchase price of the item to every purchaser.
That purchase price represent your customer's labor.
You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)
And again - there's no reason to allow commercial use by competitors...
> You yourself as the publisher are stating that you don't believe that those exact same trade secrets are valuable enough to continue selling (soooooo which is it????)
Code doesn't get thrown away because a game isn't being used anymore. The networking code for one game will not be completely different for the next game.
Simple, they use that tech in their next game that they hope brings more steady revenue. if you think about it as opportunity cost instead of absolute valuee the logic lines up.
Get real. ID Software showed the way to do this in the 90s and early 00s when they released the source code to their early Doom and Quake games, sometimes only 3-5 years after they came out. They didn't give up rights to ip and they didn't give up trade secrets either. Not only have those games enjoyed a high level of support ever since, but it's also enabled new creative works to be created even to present day. (ie Selaco)
Just say you'd prefer it to be legal for these corporations to defraud customers as a regular business practice rather than it be mandated that they can't do that and move on.
Scapegoating is always how these laws are justified. It's always "billionaires this or that" but the laws always include small to medium sized businesses and high income professionals that are not billionaires or mega corporations.
These laws hurt mega corporations but they are fatal to everything smaller.
we're in 2024, not 1994. ID Soft made almost all the tech themselves. That doesn't really happen today with all the servies and 3rd party tools needed to keep up with consumer demand. If people were fine with Doom 1994 graphics, we'd still be playing Doom.
Shocker but most people don't want to give all their IP away. Most others literally cannot because most tool licenses don't give you permission to distribute.
>Just say you'd prefer it to be legal for these corporations to defraud customers as a regular business practice rather than it be mandated that they can't do that and move on.
rules:
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
This initiative is not asking for source code. It’s asking to leave games in a playable state by any means possible. Company can release closed source binary and that would perfectly suffice.
> Giving away the source does not protect the game creator and actively harms them since they are giving up trade secrets.
Then maybe they shouldn't have published the game in the first place. If you can't do the bare minimum that the market demands/requires by regulation then you can't engage with it. Simple as.
Is this not how most regulation (and law in general) works? You make a rule to stop someone from doing some undesirable thing, often without compensating them for whatever they've lost as part of doing it. These things are (ideally) done because we see the benefit outweighing the burden.
This law is not stopping anything, it's mandating something be done. And yes, many laws are like this and that's why Europe's startup ecosystem does not exist. Laws like this are a pain for large companies but they are fatal for small ones.
Stopping someone from doing something necessarily requires them to change their behavior. E.g. creating a rule saying you can't dispose of waste in a river forces people who were doing that to find another method of disposal.
Please stop with the analogies to life saving medical devices or polluting the planet with toxic chemicals. Not all situations are equivalent. It's obviously good to mandate that other people shouldn't be poisoned. That doesn't mean all mandates are good.
Okay, then consider implied warranty laws. If you buy an item and it breaks, there are laws concerning the implied warranty of merchantability, and the implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose.
The government might require that certain classes of products, like a washing machine, or laptop, work for at least a given period of time.
If it fails, it must be fixed or replaced.
This is a legal mandate for the seller or manufacturer to provide labor, the cost of which is factored into the purchase price.
That sort of warranty mandate is close to the goal of this effort, and shows that the labor costs can be handled similarly.
That doesn't mean all mandates are good, just like how implied warranties are not unlimited.
Warranty laws are not fatal for small companies. They are fatal for companies that cut corners and abuse their customers.
here's the difference, if a game shuts down in 6 months clearly no one cares. If a game shuts down in 6 years (past most typical warranties), clearly you got more than enough enjoyment out of it.
Digital warranties don't make much sense since popularity is generally proportional to lifetime. If it was a good game it wouldn't shut down quick enough for people to complain.
Your response was to me and yet I hadn't made any analogies to life saving medical devices.
I wasn't using the example of dumping waste in rivers to illustrate an equivalence in severity with the video game issue. I was trying to show that drawing a distinction between forcing someone to stop doing something and forcing someone to do something is nonsensical in this context.
> drawing a distinction between forcing someone to stop doing something and forcing someone to do something is nonsensical in this context
My interpretation of your argument is as follows:
"Because we already have laws to mandate people to do things, saying it's bad to mandate people to do things is nonsensical."
I disagree, I think it's bad we have to mandate people to do things ever but in certain situations we should do it because the alternative is terrible. ie like preventing people from polluting the entire environment. Also keep in mind, we are talking about video games
No, it doesn't. Programs need to be designed to rely on specific servers, with specific DNS host names, checking valid TLS certificates. They can just as easily (and trivially, I should add) be designed to allow for configuration with other servers.
If that's not desirable for a product because of the desire to make money, then allowing end user configuration should be something that comes with a fixed date (this product will require our servers for the first five years, then it's open to any servers, for example) or with an update when the company decides to stop running their servers.
Saying it "mandates labor" is inaccurate insofar as requiring that software not be used to facilitate illegal harassment, DoS, distribution of child porn, et cetera isn't considered "mandating labor". It's the cost of doing business, and suggesting that the cost is high is wildly inaccurate.
It isn't? Who doesn't consider that mandating labor? It literally is mandating labor. Also, why do you use the word facilitate? Obviously that's illegal, what you mean to say is actively preventing the use of for that purpose, which btw is not mandated, companies do it to cover their own ass when they have the resources to.
We "mandate labor" all the time, that's how the countless laws & regulations work.
- Providing warranty service is mandated labor.
- Going through workplace safety inspections is mandated labor.
- Getting your product certified by the relevant authorities is mandated labor.
- Following cybersecurity compliance regulations is mandated labor.
- Following proper food safety guidelines in a professional kitchen is mandated labor.
- Ensuring that your premises are accessible to the disabled is mandated labor.
There's nothing special about this case of "mandated labor". You don't get compensated for being "nice enough" not to defraud your customers. That's just your half of the social contract that allows you to participate in society in the first place.
Imagine going to a car dealer, the entire transaction, the word "rent" or "lease" are never used. And you have to sign a 30 page agreement where hidden on page 18 there's a clause saying you're purchasing a license to use the car and it can be revoked at any time.
6 years later, the manufacturer decides they want to shut down the factories producing replacement parts, and won't license anyone else to make them, so they push an update out and now your car won't start anymore despite functioning just fine.
The entirety of this debate is whether companies should be allowed to treat game sales that way. Most people don't see buying a game like an artist licensing their song to a TV show. They see it like buying a toy.
They should probably allow companies to keep doing what they are doing now as long as they call it "rent" instead of "buy" in their marketing materials.
Normally this honesty would cost them money because their competitors would have better (more persuasive) marketing, but a law could force every company to be honest at the same time so that the relative ranking of each company does not change.
> This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
> Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.
> The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
Perhaps there is a disconnect between the policy intent and the understanding?
Who will pay devs to convert World of Warcraft into a single-player game?
This is probably covered by "reasonable means to continue functioning" and the answer will be "there are no reasonable means".. but the comment parent's point somewhat stands.
Even moving a DLC check can be complicated. When you game is done, do you disable all DLC since you can't verify someone purchased it, or do you make it freely available? Who will pay for that additional data streaming (assuming it's not on something like Steam) ?
I am not disagreeing with the wish of the initiative, just providing some food for thought on the potential costs to a company.
Cost of business that was previously avoided, to the detriment of consumers. Who pays for required warranty reserves? It is built into the cost of good sold model (EU requires warranties of no shorter than 2 years).
If you sell something, it should continue to be usable after you as a business are gone. A game producer can always not make games if you find the regulation to be overly burdensome, that is a choice. It is unlikely this stops games from being made. This policy encourages the feature as part of requirements gathering and roadmap planning.
warranty reserves are incremental and predictable. Development is unpredictable. I'd hope people on HN would understand not comparing tech to an assembly line.
It doesn't necessarily mean to turn WoW in a simgle player game. Just being able to setup servers in a reasonable way (i.e. not reverse engineering and emulating how they work, like people have done for WoW).
> Perhaps there is a disconnect between the policy intent and the understanding?
Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.
> Yes, I don't think they understand that running these games isn't free, modifying the games to be self hostable is not free, and giving away the code for other people to run it is ip suicide.
And none of that would be an issue if not for the fact that so many companies are creating games that become paperweights when they shut down the servers.
It used to be very commonplace to include server binaries with multiplayer games, before dedicated servers for every game was the norm. Also before that, modding games, including multiplayer games, was also highly normalized. If anything, the era of live service titles that are completely 100% locked down and only work with the developer's servers, punish modding, what have you is the aberration, not the norm. And those games once the developers want to move on, become paperweights when they do. All the achievements made, all the items unlocked, all the currency invested, instantly becomes worthless.
So like, I dunno, if you as a developer are not in this for the long haul and don't want to have to comply with this regulation at great expense at the end tail of development, then develop it like it used to be done? Include server binaries for people to use at launch? Maybe plan on making your money back on purchases of the game, and not on long-tail monetization that demands more security and locked-down-ness in the software to be viable?
The oldest server binary I've used recently was for Freelancer, which was released in 2003. It required some elevated permissions but otherwise, both the server and the game itself ran fine on newer hardware and versions of Windows.
Failing that, there's always hardware emulation but to be honest, unless you're for whatever odd reason trying to run your server on AMD64, I don't think there's too much to be concerned about. And, if source code is released by the developer, the community that remains could see to continuing support.
Worth noting here that the self-hosting mod for Titanfall 2, called Northstar, already did all of that with nothing but reverse-engineering involved because Respawns servers were basically unusable for years.
That you own what you buy? Sounds reasonable. Perhaps they should rent the software instead of selling it if they don't want to support the owning part of buying while still supporting the getting paid part.
The core problem is government granting businesses copyright, which prevents players from doing what they want with the material they buy. This is for apparently reasonable reasons, but there is some downsides to it. So it is less that we are adding another right, but more that we are specifying the right given to the business to begin with to ensure they aren't being given something that shouldn't be a right.
Ending copyright would also solve this, but with many other side effects that we probably don't want to invoke.
I would say it's fairly well established concept that there is a doctrine of sale, and that the purchaser gains rights to the item in exchange for the sale price - notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner.
Publishers are playing with fire by trying to undermine that doctrine for digital goods.
So if your question is in good faith (and I very much doubt it is...) then at least this has a long history of established rights.
Thing is you don't have a physical product, you have a license to run this software or acces this server. There is no "item" to own. It's like asking to own a spot in an amusement park. you pay for the experience, not the literal land or coasters or slides.
If made into laws collectively agreed upon through a political process? Yes, of course. Participation in the marketplace is voluntary. If you don't like the rules, don't sell into the marketplace, it's as simple as that. Consumers are entitled to protections, businesses are not entitled to revenue nor profits. Policy implementation timelines allows time for business to adapt to the new landscape, but they can also opt out of this market if they don't believe they can pass this cost along to their customers.
Many people (myself included) argue that this is a part of consumer rights ...hence the legislation we're discussing. You might disagree with it, but you can't pretend that a lot of people don't believe a company shouldn't be able to disable a game they already "sold" to you.
A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument. Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game. Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played.
Right now when you play games online you don't pay for dedicated servers (which are very expensive), with this law expect that to change. Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.
The way I'm reading it is regarding single player titles. I've seen many single player games with an online mechanic stop being playable in single player after the online servers are taken down.
This is a software architecture issue. It doesn't necessarily mean there's more work, just different goals when starting out.
Look at the case of Massive Entertainment and World in Conflict [1]. All reasons for not doing something similar boil down to decisions made early on in development.
I’m compensating you with my money to buy a game and you want to retain a kill switch to turn it off anytime you want? Imagine if I did that to your pacemaker.
You probably pay a lot more for a pacemaker. Also, these kinds of analogies are not good arguments, pacemakers and video games are not in any way comparable.
Pass this law, fine. Just expect to pay $100 for a game + a monthly fee to play it online
I am surprised this reply gets down voted because it is pretty accurate. Video game makers/publishers (I am one!) design and distribute games based on what they can make money on. People tend to be cheap about entertainment, particularly the biggest consumers who have more time than money. So they complain about free to play but probably download 20 free to play games for every premium one they pay for. It's their right to do so. But they do tend to pick whatever is cheapest to them up front.
It's being downvoted because it's baseless fearmongering.
We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it! In my experience, the tide started turning around 15 years ago, every big release started getting infested with in-game payments, always-online components, and most titles took away our ability to self-host servers.
With those changes, their profits skyrocketed - but greedy bastards running the show never seem to have enough, so they kill unprofitable games to get everyone to move to their new product.
Personally I don't buy AAA games anymore - partially due to these hostile practices, partially because their creators have lost any semblance of taste. Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.
We seem to be falling to mob mentality. Someone upstream compared a video game to a pacemaker, this is a horrible analogy and frankly just shows how entitled the gaming audience is.
>We used to buy games and get a server.exe alongside it!
And you still can. If you want real change vote with your wallet instead of saying "but no, I want THIS game to be playable for free forever!". But clearly others have already voted. It's not going away.
Nothing is forever. I see a game I may want to play X years later, I don't play if if it looks like it'll shut down <X years later. I don't bother clinging to keep other games open, I just move on to what's new. Or you know, not worry because I play mostly single player games.
>Indie games and smaller studios are still pumping out real gems that don't implement any of these predatory practices at the cost of $20-50.
yup. And look what the most profitable games are. Again, wallets have voted. We are the niche, the minority. And that's okay, that's just my life as a nutshell.
It's being downvoted because there are plenty of DRM-free, no server-required games in existence today and they don't cost $100 + a monthly fee. AAA games back in the days when they were distributed by CD-ROM or disk didn't charge a monthly fee either.
The obvious and clearest response is simply this: If you as a publisher are so convinced that your game is obsolete... make the remote server source available under a permissive license to your existing license holders. Better yet - plan for releasing a copy of it at development time.
You don't even need to make the license permissive to everyone, or for everything (open source). You just need to make it possible for those who have purchased your product to continue to use the product, and there are MANY ways to do that which don't involve your consistent labor.
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Basically - To directly address your point: If the alternative is that the publisher does crap like completely disable single player experiences because they've shut down remote licensing servers... fuck them.
That's not a company I think should be allowed to exist. If we can't limit them this way... them I'd be fully in favor of mandating they return the full purchase price of the item to every purchaser.
That purchase price represent your customer's labor.