[toomuchtodo]

> 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?

[ldoughty]

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.

[toomuchtodo]

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.

[johnnyanmac]

warranty reserves are incremental and predictable. Development is unpredictable. I'd hope people on HN would understand not comparing tech to an assembly line.

[spookie]

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).

Look into World in Conflict, its a great example of what to do: https://github.com/ubisoft/massgate

[brigadier132]

> 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.

[ToucanLoucan]

> 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?

[brigadier132]

And when the binaries inevitably stop working 50 years after release what should be done?

[ToucanLoucan]

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.

[triceratops]

Why would they stop working?

[brigadier132]

Another commenter mentioned mobile devices getting constant security patches that make old software obsolete.

Also, software is not static. Do you really expect programs written today will work in 100 years?

[triceratops]

I don't expect programs written today to run on the latest hardware and operating systems 100 years from now. But a machine from today, or its equivalent emulated in software, running the same OS should always be able to run the same programs.

[babypuncher]

It's not free if you weren't considering this when designing your game.

It's 100% free if you keep this requirement in mind when making your game in the first place.

Some publishers having to spend money today because they played with fire by eroding consumer rights seems like a worthwhile price to pay.

[brigadier132]

Is everything a right now?

[SkyBelow]

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.

[horsawlarway]

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.

[johnnyanmac]

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.

[rimunroe]

> 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.

Again, this is the literal thing that's being debated. Companies are currently allowed to treat game sales as such and this group is arguing the law should stop them from doing so.

[toomuchtodo]

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.

[rimunroe]

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.

[brigadier132]

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.

[rimunroe]

> A lot of people thinking something isn't a good argument.

I don't think you can get to a much more foundational definition of democracy than "decisions are made because a lot of people agree they should". You might disagree with the results, but it's an excellent argument for something becoming law.

> Unless stated by the law your rights are what you agreed to when signing the terms of service for the game.

Laws make contract provisions unenforceable all the time. This is not a new thing, and I have a hard time imagining the effect of laws if you couldn't invalidate agreements with them.

> Stop acting like people were duped when servers were shut off for a game that doesn't get played.

But people do feel like they got duped when that happens. That's why people get upset. You might disagree with it, but just saying "don't feel that way" isn't a good argument. Why shouldn't I feel that way? It's how games worked in the past. Games that have been shut down in the past and rendered unplayable have been made playable by fans before. Why shouldn't we expect companies the companies who made them to make an effort to do so as well?

> 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.

I'm not entirely clear why you're taking this as a given, but I trust you'll elaborate. But humoring your (I suspect flawed) premise: personally I think it would be great if we went back to player-run dedicated servers. Some of the games I've played the most lately (Valheim, Minecraft, V Rising) are ones I've rented dedicated servers for. Hosting dedicated servers these days is extremely easy and quite cheap. Further on this tangent: I think we've lost a lot of online community because most games pour everyone into the same matchmaking buckets. This means you don't get as many small communities centered around specific servers popping up like you did back in the late 90s or early 2000s.

> Expect to also have to pay for a team of software engineers to manage the games into eternity.

Could you explain which part of the legislation requires this?

[triceratops]

Property ownership has been a right for quite a while now, actually.

[johnnyanmac]

we don't buy property when we buy a multiplayer game. Not unless you are fine going back to couch co-op.

[triceratops]

Why can't the single player functionality continue working indefinitely?

And maybe we can also mandate that companies release detailed server specifications when they turn down a game. Everything that might be needed for someone to rewrite the server. Then someone else might step into a breach - a different company, an open source project - and continue providing the service.

[rimunroe]

> we don't buy property when we buy a multiplayer game. Not unless you are fine going back to couch co-op.

Again, you're taking as a given one of the things which some people want to change. Why shouldn't the developers of the newest matchmaking-based shooter be required to release the binary for a dedicated server when they shut the game down? Obviously this won't be feasible for some games, but I can imagine plenty of games where it seems like it should be reasonable to factor it into development costs.

[conradludgate]

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.