Issues like that are part of why the law is only going to apply to new releases.
If you still choose to license something you can't release later, and it's critical to the game's operation, then that's a deliberate liability and you'll need to replace it.
That sounds like a bad incentive. Lots of games license software like Photon to run game servers. For many games, building something like that is a non-starter.
It's not like it specifically has to be open source. Photon can license their software in a way that allows for free servers that are still tied to the specific game. And then companies can buy that.
And it's not expensive for Photon to do that, so I don't see why they wouldn't add that feature for a modest price or even free. (And that's assuming the license doesn't already allow it.)
I’m not sure what you mean. Photon makes money running game servers as a service. It wouldn’t surprise me if their business wasn’t viable selling software alone.
As far as I can tell, you can have Photon run the servers or you can license them to run yourself. Though they clearly prefer the former.
Either way, there's not much revenue coming in to most games by the time the developer wants to abandon them, and Photon's not getting paid much either. There's a lot of ways to make this work out monetarily.
It’s not that simple. Many of the newer products are designed cloud-first.
I’d love to see you rise to the challenge. If you think there’s an opportunity to make money here, “lots of ways to make this work,” perhaps take it up yourself.
Simple: that contract would be illegal. It's that simple. You can't put yourself into a position where you would be violating the law. The licensor would be on the hook for violating the law. This is "you can’t outsource compliance". Either your contract makes sure that you are compliant or a judge would make you both.
If you still choose to license something you can't release later, and it's critical to the game's operation, then that's a deliberate liability and you'll need to replace it.