[brigadier132]

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.

[rimunroe]

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.

[brigadier132]

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.

[eesmith]

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.

[johnnyanmac]

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.

[eesmith]

My point isn't that this a "digital warranty", but to 1) provide another example of how the government has placed mandates on businesses (beyond "life saving medical devices or polluting the planet with toxic chemicals") , and 2) highlight a mandate which has clearly not been "fatal" for small businesses.

For a third example, consider right-to-repair laws which mandate that a company must provide usable manuals and parts at a reasonable cost.

The lifetime of the game depends on profitability to the company, which is only somewhat correlated with popularity. Companies even stop products which are profitable, but not profitable enough.

When does the timer start? Minecraft has been around for well over 6 years, yet it gets new players every year.

[rimunroe]

> here's the difference, if a game shuts down in 6 months clearly no one cares.

Plenty of games come out, don't do well overall and then get shutdown despite a loyal fanbase. Just because something didn't meet its sales forecast doesn't mean the people who bought it don't want to play it. A game being popular doesn't mean it's a good game, and a game being unpopular doesn't mean it's a bad game.

> If a game shuts down in 6 years (past most typical warranties), clearly you got more than enough enjoyment out of it.

First: that's not a given. Plenty of people buy games well past the launch date. If I buy a game five years, eleven months, and two weeks after launch and the auth servers are shut down two weeks later should I lose access to 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.

Studios close, and companies don't make decisions based on what's popular, they do it based on what makes them money. A game might have a long tail where people keep playing and buying it but substantial numbers of new customers aren't coming in anymore.

[rimunroe]

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.

[brigadier132]

> 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

[rimunroe]

> "Because we already have laws to mandate people to do things, saying it's bad to mandate people to do things is nonsensical."

That's not my argument. My argument is that it's wrong to claim this law is different from any other type of law in that it requires people to do additional labor. Unless a law literally has no requirements (is that even a law?), it has to require some people to do additional work.

> 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.

Many of us do think it's terrible for people to have a product they paid for become inoperable because a company decided they would take their authentication servers offline without releasing a patch first. This erodes consumer trust and can lead to a market of lemons.

> Also keep in mind, we are talking about video games

We're talking about laws, which are serious things and deserve serious discussions. The proposed legislation is likely a test balloon for other consumer protections, so reasoning through the effects is a good exercise.