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.
Cloud first is fine as long as there's a fallback. Photon has a fallback.
Can you name something that's stuck on the cloud on a technical level and also couldn't be substituted with a mild dev effort?
Right now I don't think it's a good money making opportunity. Becoming one would need Photon or some other significant service provider completely refusing to license their software in a way that's compatible with this law, and assurance that they'll continue to refuse while I build my entire product around supplementing/replacing them.
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.)