[MattBearman]

This won’t require companies to keep servers running, just that they have an end of life plan, eg: releasing a version of the server that can be self hosted for multiplayer games

[baggy_trough]

That's quite some "just".

[OkayPhysicist]

Dumping your server binaries onto a FTP server is a quite negligible "just"

[baggy_trough]

Perhaps from a technical perspective, but rarely from a legal / IP perspective.

[LightHugger]

Oh so releasing the game client is easy but releasing the game server is a legal/IP problem suddenly? I think you are concern trolling.

[OkayPhysicist]

It is a valid concern as to why companies don't do this already. In the face of the legal requirements the initiative is attempting to establish, however, the IP problem would be pretty easily resolved, as companies that sold their server libraries/services with a prohibition on redistribution would either need to change those licenses, or lose customers who want to be able to sell in Europe.

[baggy_trough]

There are some enormous unwarranted assumptions behind the assertions of "just" or "pretty easily" in this thread.

The consequence of this kind of regulation are easy to predict:

- fewer games will be released

- games will be more expensive

- larger game studios will extend their advantage over smaller

[msgodel]

That does happen a lot. They get licenses to use but not distribute software for example. Servers are hard so it makes sense they'd want to buy rather than build.

It's the same reason most games aren't open sourced when their commercial viability ends: lots of third party software with no public source.