[maccard]

Why does this only apply to video games? Why doesn't this apply to apps in general?

I don't want to suggest that I'm in favour of sunsetting every game once a publisher or developer is done with it, but there's got to be a middle ground between "you must ensure that your game can have all online components replaced" and what we have right now. And I think the sheer amount of work involved in the former for every game combined with perverse incentives from a very small subset of users that cause a disproportionate amount of hassle makes this not a good idea. It's a great example of a change that greatly favours existing companies who could meet the legislation, and will negatively effect smaller games and studios.

[Sakos]

> perverse incentives from a very small subset of users

This is to the benefit of everybody now and in the future. It doesn't matter if only an insignificant fraction of people recognize the importance.

[johnnyanmac]

I'm not so optimistic. These are just games at the end of the day, and much bigger issues have had friction even if it's for the benefit of everyone.

>It doesn't matter if only an insignificant fraction of people recognize the importance.

that's literally how petitions work. If not enough people care, it doesn't even get looked at by Parliment. The first pass of this didn't look too hot.

[Sakos]

I have no idea how you misinterpreted my comment so badly.

[maccard]

The perverse incentives are people who cheat in multiplayer games. Like it or not, multiplayer games live and breathe on how well they handle this problem. A single cheater in a BR game can ruin the game for 100 people.

[throwaway48476]

Cheating is a social signaling problem disguised as a technical problem.

[maccard]

The problem is that the desired outcome of the cheater in a multiplayer game is to ruin the experience for others. It's a game of cat and mouse, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't mean that because it's technically impossible to stop all cheating that no efforts should be made. Distilling everything down to "open good closed bad" doesn't help anything, as the reality is it's far more nuanced than that.

[throwaway48476]

Lately successful anti cheating programs have separate matchmaking for cheaters instead of using technical measures to try to stop cheating which will always be bypassed.

[maccard]

By your own measure that's a technical measure that can be bypassed. It also doesn't work, to the best of my knowledge. Here's [0] a thread from a game that tried this, and ultimately went back to using anticheat.

> instead of using technical measures to try to stop cheating which will always be bypassed.

The word "stop" implies that it can be completely eliminated - it can't. But the impact of the cheaters on the rest of the game can be reduced. If you have client side hit detection and no server validation, your game will be unplayable pretty much immediately. If you only offer your game over streaming services, people will use external input devices to give them an advantage. But, the number of people who are willing to buy a Cronus Zen is significantly smaller than the number of people who are willing to download a dll and put it in the folder next to their game.

[0] https://x.com/FallGuysGame/status/1305486783858302976

[exe34]

release the source and people will maintain it for you for free. you can't say it's not profitable anymore to keep maintaining something that people paid for and at the same time say it'd hurt your profit if you release it.

[maccard]

Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?

[NekkoDroid]

This is intentionally kept to only games as expanding the scope would include software by a lot of big name businesses which would then try everything in their power to stop this from passing.

If it's only limited to games it has less companies trying to shut this down and would set a precidence that this can be expanded or just straight up applied to other types of software.

[user_7832]

Curious, is there an option to buy and download Figma's software? AFAIK it's only an online server you connect to, right?

[maccard]

Unsure. So if a company only offered game streaming they would be exempt from this?

[throwaway48476]

Xbox yes, stadia no. Depends whether the expiration date is communicated at time of transaction.

[maccard]

While I disagree with your criteria, I agree with you in principal - it's not black and white, and we could do better as an industry (speaking as an online game developer) to set clearer expectations around what will happen and when it will happen.

I would happily and whole-heartedly support a bill that requires some sort of SLA/minimum guaranteed availability for licensed content to be presented along with the payment terms in plain english. Something like "By making this purchase, XCORP agrees to provide you with an ongoing and updated YGAME until at least DD-MMM-YYYY and after that point makes no guarantee for availability. This date may change but may not be moved earlier without your agreement".

Which is pretty much what we as developers negotiate with cloud providers, third party technology, etc. Note I'm not a lawyer, so please don't critique my wording here.

[exe34]

you got to start somewhere. plus I don't actually use any proprietary software outside of Nvidia' drivers and cuda (and binary blobs in my phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in my cpus and a bunch of stuff I can't remember), so I don't know much about that.

[drcongo]

Yes, but apart from the Nvidia drivers, cuda, binary blobs in your phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in your cpus, and the stuff you can't remember, what have the Romans ever done for us?

[maccard]

If you don't use any proprietary software at all then surely you don't play any closed source online games?

[RHSeeger]

> release the source and people will maintain it for you for free

What about cases where just having the source code isn't enough. Things that use paid third party libraries are a good example.

[Moldoteck]

it's up to the ppl. Without server code you can do nothing, with it & third parties it's up to you/volunteers to decide if it's worth it or not to keep alive

[johnnyanmac]

If this does miraculously pass, I think people will be severely disappointed by how much goodwill there is to spread. Lots of games and not a lot of reverse engineers.