[JTBooth]

What if, in stead of a requirement, we created an opt-in obligation for companies? If you promise "EOL support guaranteed" you register a plan with whatever agency and pay some fee and they check in every couple years and make sure you remember. And if you don't, then you don't get the badge, and we find out if consumers actually care.

[thereddaikon]

Consumers don't always make decisions in their own best interest. They are also often under informed. Their buying habits can often follow less than rational psychology. Businesses know these things and devote a great deal of resources to exploit it. People shouldn't be punished for being imperfect and businesses shouldn't be able to weaponize human psychology to take advantage of people. If we made seatbelts and airbags optional they probably wouldn't have caught on either.

[JTBooth]

What level of justification do you think should be required to skip consumer preference and go with a law?

In the case of seatbelts I think the case is quite strong. Even beyond consumer preference, there's a burden on public healthcare, and a cost in safety to others (if you get knocked out of your seat you could lose control of the vehicle, belt keeps you by the wheel). Parents can injure their kids by not using seatbelts.

I don't see any of that in games. As a consumer and as a bystander I don't really know whether I want the marginal dollar of game development spent on long term support or on performance improvements or something else. It certainly varies game to game. For big AAA games that depend on mtx, but could be played entirely offline, the studios have a legitimate interest in making playing them offline hard!

I'd also note that having any laws at all about how games work is going to make it more expensive to develop games, purely because you'll make people check if they're following the laws. Imagine a teenager shipping their first game, or a small studio deciding whether to release a hackathon project, or a small team at a big company spinning out a mini game into a standalone. I dread "no, don't launch that, I don't know if breaking the mid battle save system counts as reasonably playable"

[thereddaikon]

That's a good question and I haven't thought long enough and deeply enough on this issue to have a fully formed opinion of it. I do think our current copyright system in the west is generally broken and over emphasizes short term business profits over the long term benefit of cultural works. But as to what level game publishers should be forced to make games available I can't say.

As far as how regulations work, I am generally in favor of reworking incentive structures to make companies want to behave in a prescribed manner rather than just outright banning deviant behavior. If something is illegal but still beneficial, they will find ways to dodge regulations and factor fines into cost projections. You have to make it worth their while to do as you want.

[johnnyanmac]

At some point, if you have an M rating on your box for GTA and you decide to buy it for little Timmy, you don't really get much ground to be disappointed that Timmy was exposed to all these 17+ rated content.

I'd rather at least test content awareness before we go to bans (e.g. explicitly list that a game has MTX on the front of the box).

>If we made seatbelts and airbags optional they probably wouldn't have caught on either.

Why are we comparing a life savinng hardware device for a multi thousand Kg car moving 100+ km/hr to a video game server not shutting down in 6 months? Despite the initiative name, games haven't directly killed anyone.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I do not like this line of argumentation even though I think it would likely generate the result I want in this instance. You mentioned seatbelts and airbags, but that train keeps on pushing and now we have calls for mandated kill switch[1] and automatically limit car speed[2]. It is so easy to keep pushing, because who would argue against safety.

The funny thing is, I agree with you, but in a narrow scope. I am adult. I can and do make decisions that are not fun long term, but could be considered stances on issues ( Doom whatever refund after DRM update ). I am not entirely certain 13-year old demographic playing current crop of always on games have the same perspective. There is a reason we try to protect kids from predatory behavior. They tend to not know any better.

But then, it unfortunately starts being about parents not doing their jobs.

<< People shouldn't be punished for being imperfect and businesses shouldn't be able to weaponize human psychology to take advantage of people.

tldr, i agree in general, but i hesitate on specifics

[1]https://mccaul.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/mccaul-... [2]https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/california-car-spee...

[thereddaikon]

Yeah I'm not a nanny state advocate. Moderation in all things, there is good regulation and bad regulation.

[Qwertious]

>What if, in stead of a requirement, we created an opt-in obligation for companies?

Yes, we could call it "copyright".

The purpose of copyright is to reward artists for the creation of works via a temporary monopoly. If they want to permanently hoard the ability to run the game they've sold, then they don't need, and shouldn't be given, any legal protections whatsoever.

That way, consumers can reverse-engineer the game, and companies don't have govt interfering with their business practices. It's a win/win! Unless the corporations need govt-enforced copyright.

[JTBooth]

Reasonable, but the level of copyright protection for games is actually really small! It only actually covers the art and text, not the game mechanics. I don't think I'd support that trade overall but it seems better than the unilateral requirement on game companies.

[Qwertious]

> It only actually covers the art and text, not the game mechanics.

Not quite true, there was a famous court case where someone knocked off tetris with different art, and lost the case because the game mechanics were identical. You can make something similar but you can't just clone.

https://www.pcgamer.com/court-declares-tetris-clone-a-breach...

[Perseids]

For IoT devices, the upcoming regulations will probably include a stipulation that vendors need to specify a guaranteed support period for the devices. I would prefer the same kind of commitment and dependability for games to a simple badge. It would combine free choice for how to build your business model with the ability for customers to make an informed choice ("they can pull the plug in 5 month? I'm not paying EUR 60 for that"). At least as long as there isn't a malicious compliance cartel, e.g. all big vendors only guaranteeing a month and "kindly" supporting it for longer…

(And my highest preference would be for vendors to be forced to publish both server and client code as free software, if they don't continue selling their service for reasonable prices. Not only for games, but for all services and connected devices. Getting political support for such regulations is, of course, extremely hard.)

[rawbot]

Because most users of games don't really care for this. They are either too young, or to busy with other facets of life that they just want to play the game.

It is only a small percentage that are dedicated enough to care, either because they really enjoy the game or because they want to support game preservation.

If you make it opt-in, companies won't care to add it and they will only lose a few percentage points (I would be surprised for anything higher than 1%) of people that will be put off by the lack of "EOL support" guarantee.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

<< Because most users of games don't really care for this.

Agreed, but surely there is money to be made on people like me, who clearly have money to drop on games without blinking too much if I am having fun without having to jump through hoops ( fwiw, DRM is a hoop for me ). As in, I was a kid once. My generation is all grown up, but we actually have money to spend on games. Is it just easier to sell to kids who don't know any better?

[JTBooth]

If you want a middleweight solution, between "ask about this on developer forums" and "try to get a law passed," you could create a consumer organization that publishes a list of games that are doing all the right things. Publish a newsletter, create free distribution for companies that don't use DRM and have sunset support plans.

[josalhor]

I have thought about this for a while. I think that a lot of labeling could be done with regards to promises of consumer products. Publishers (of any kind of digital product) cannot expect to transition to a model where we don't own anything and they make no assurances on the product they serve.

It would be great to have a badge of the sort "this product will not have ads, will not have microtransactions, will be able at least until 2030, etc.".

[account42]

Or we could just make copyright protection dependent on ensuring that the protected works actual enters the public domain. If you provide the source and neccesary documentation to the archival agency up front then you get copyright protection. And if you don't, then you don't get copyright protection, and we find out if companies actually care.

[beeboobaa3]

The non-indie market isn't saturated enough for that, and publishers will collude to never allow any of their games to promise this so gamers won't get the chance to get used to it.

[whywhywhywhy]

> and pay some fee

Why should the government make money from checking up on someone?

[JTBooth]

This is how a lot of regulation happens! It can actually work better than having central funding for inspections - if there's a sudden glut of people who need, like, meat processing facilities inspected, but it'll take a year to get the government to triple the meat processing inspection budget, then you get a huge backlog of plants that can't run. If the inspector is funded by fees, they can hire right away.