[phreack]

> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.

I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions. I think the previous cases where this act would apply are few but good thing they wouldn't increase under this act.

[pibaker]

California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven!

If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.

[gwerbin]

It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

[jnovek]

What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?

[Sharlin]

It incentivizes subscription-based games.

[slg]

The natural incentives had already pointed to subscription based games, these companies attempted it, and consumers mostly rejected it. I'm extremely dubious that this regulation would be enough to reverse that. It's a much easier decision for a company to put a small development team on readying the server tools for public release than brute forcing a new business model on a resistant consumer base and all the associated risks that come along with it.

[pibaker]

If by subscription you mean World of Warcraft style continuous subscription then yes, it doesn't work for most games. But I'd argue the modern battle pass model is just another flavor of subscription. And according to the article, free to play games with battle passes and micro transactions also get an exemption from the proposed bill, so companies will just move to that instead.

[sowbug]

Not exactly the same thing, but a few years ago the law changed to require a sesame-allergen notice on foods that had sesame. Some manufacturers starting adding sesame to foods that didn't need it, because they concluded that including the notice was easier than guaranteeing that their product was sesame-free. The intent of the law was to protect people with sesame allergies, but the result was fewer choices for them.

Sometimes laws have unintended consequences.

https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc...

[setr]

If a manufacturer is unwilling to guarantee/monitor the lack of sesame in their food, and you having a presumably severe sesame allergy… isn’t it correct not to be eating that food?

Like previously you trusted their lack of sesame based on vibes, which you probably shouldn’t have been doing, and now they’re explicitly telling you not to trust them on this; this seems to me strictly better. You’ve lost a choice that never really existed in the first place

An actually unintended consequence would be if they introduced sesame because they were going to have to put the label on it anyways

[watwut]

The result was same choices as before, but more information about it.

Per manufacturers, these were unsafe to eat things - they just wanted to kinda preted there is no danger in them.

[gs17]

If people dislike subscription-based games, companies will adapt by making non-subscription games designed with end-of-service in mind. It only creates an incentive as much as people are willing to pay for the subscription.

[throwaway85825]

The market for subscription games is vastly smaller than the market for offline games. The industry learned that when everyone tried to make a wow killer.

[agoodusername63]

> However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely.

Live service games overwhelmingly fall into exactly this category. If anything they're being incentivized over making a game that has an online multiplayer but focus being singleplayer or anything intended to be released and moved on from.

[wilg]

No it will make everything a live service game

[bayarearefugee]

Good luck with that.

The industry already tried to make everything a live service game in the 2020-2022 period and it was financially disastrous because gamers rejected it.

Gamers have made it clear that they don't want a market full of live service games unless they are free to play (and even then, very few will survive).

They'll make rare exceptions for things like GTA6, but these will be unicorns.

[xingped]

That certainly won't stop out of touch CEOs from choosing to do just that anyways. CEOs and making the stupidest possible decisions are also a match made in heaven.

[NooneAtAll3]

> See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?

[cosmojg]

I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).

[Akronymus]

Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think.

Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.

[RobotToaster]

I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.

[meatmanek]

At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)

[ddtaylor]

It seems similar to operating an arcade or a movie theater and saying that you can have thousands of people enter but then only having space for a couple while still taking everyone's money.

[paradox460]

Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available

[hadlock]

After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years.

With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of the server code, can't host truly private servers, and when the sequel MW4, BF4 comes out, those private servers won't survive and it forces everyone to move to the sequel regardless of the quality of the game. You can technically still hire a private server for games like BF3 (circa 2012) but very few people are going to pay the $70/month to host an official one via whatever terms EA has come up with, and you absolutely can't run it with plugins, mods, and especially custom maps or game modes, you have to play it "vanilla".

Quake 3 the server is included with the game, anyone can run it, modify it and it's very plugin friendly, which is largely why it is still around today. Closed servers you can't directly access is a deliberate decision to kill the game when the sequel is released, by not allowing users to extend what they "bought". Otherwise we would still all be playing Battlefield 3 on custom maps with CTF and 128 v 128 player servers and everything else. You can modify a handful of things on the paid private servers but it's extremely limited and there's no community feedback on any of this.

[RandomGerm4n]

> After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years.

That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.

[tadfisher]

Quake 3 can also be played fully offline, for various measures of "play" and "fully".

[fragmede]

Why not $0?

[greenavocado]

$1 refundable subscription

[nine_k]

incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions

Yes, please, produce more "games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely".

[agoodusername63]

> However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely.

How is that incentivizing offline games? Half of the service game focused industry would be exempt

[acters]

They will also prefer subscription or free-to-play than actual offline gaming. This is going to be a disaster

[agoodusername63]

I don't think it's going to be a disaster, doing nothing is not quite a disaster when the AAA games sector has been ticking over like this for the past 10 years or so.

The law is worded so that this does extremely little even if fully passed by CA's legal system due to the very broad exceptions. Exactly as lobbyists want it.

Makes great headlines for SKG while doing pretty much nothing material for them though.

[MadnessASAP]

Of course its an incentive, however the disincentives to purchasing (subscribing/spending), and thus producing, such games still exist.

[lucb1e]

>> It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.

Does anyone know how this should be interpreted?

Maybe to have a concrete example, let's take Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2), with OpenRCT2 as a sort-of mod for it, but imagine that RCT2 was originally a subscription game where you paid per month to play it and that it terminated before OpenRCT2 started. Existing copyright laws already prohibit continued distribution, which OpenRCT2 doesn't do, so does this change anything? Does this law move what used to be civil (copyright) cases into criminal law (so there needs not exist a rights-holder to file suit; the state can just push cases as they see fit)? Could the OpenRCT2 devs still (as I believe they hitherto can) release a 'donation version' with bonus gimmicks if they so wanted, or would that be classified as a sale of something that enables playing the original RCT2 and so illegal?

[jayd16]

You'll just get subscription games with a free year subscription code in the box. If anything I bet it will accelerate the death of free multiplayer.

[ocdtrekkie]

So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)

[Paracompact]

I assume you're actually a gamer, and not just an economist speculating on a market you're not exposed to? Because I don't know how to reconcile your comment with my reality. There are tons of live-service single-purchase games, I would even say they the overwhelmingly default model in 2026 compared to WoW-style subscription games.

If you want an answer to your "continuous cost without continuous revenue" riddle, the answer is in-game purchases, DLC, attracting new accounts over time, and the unspoken unadvertised promise "we can cut our losses at any time and shut down servers." This lattermost incentive is what is unhealthy for the market and what should be regulated to no longer be an incentive (short of having peer- or community-hosted servers, at least).

[thewebguyd]

See Diablo 4. One time purchase, live service game. I'm almost certain blizzard makes most of its revenue from it on the cosmetics shop.

[NooneAtAll3]

also pretty much all first person shooters are in this category

[ocdtrekkie]

There are a bunch of these, and they are silly/unviable. I see a lot more free-to-play than single-purchase live service games, but the latter is a fun additional exploit in that they get you to pay up front for something that they never have any intention to survive long-term.

Currently I'm heavily playing both a free-to-play with microtransactions title (Heroes of the Storm) and a subscription title (EVE Online), both of which are live service games which would be exempt from this bill by definition, but are both games I would meaningfully like to play even if the companies decided they didn't want to run them anymore. (Yes, I'm aware both games I am playing regularly are old as time itself.)

Meanwhile, yes, there are single purchase games with an online model, and they fail and get shut down because they were never sustainable to begin with. The bill would arguably cover something like the FPS-of-the-years which are intended to grab everyone's attention for a few months and then die off when the company needs you to buy the next version of the title because they get no recurring revenue from you continuing to play the current one. (See Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc.)

[Paracompact]

Ah, I see your point better now. I agree that free-to-play and single-purchase live service games are essentially the same breed, that free-to-plays are similarly widespread, and would indeed like microtransaction-funded titles to be subjected to the same stipulations in the bill.

> there are single purchase games with an online model, and they fail and get shut down because they were never sustainable to begin with

I still don't think I agree with this (it's the exact same business model, just with an onboarding cost to e.g. be less dependent on MTX, or to cultivate a smaller but more dedicated fanbase, or to shut out bots), but that's beside the above points.

[Akronymus]

> Currently I'm heavily playing both a free-to-play with microtransactions title (Heroes of the Storm) and a subscription title (EVE Online), both of which are live service games which would be exempt from this bill by definition, but are both games I would meaningfully like to play even if the companies decided they didn't want to run them anymore. (Yes, I'm aware both games I am playing regularly are old as time itself.)

[emphasis mine]

AFAICT, the MTX would make HOTS not be eligible for the "no monetary considerations" carveout.

Edit, didn't realize you were the same person I replied to on another comment, sorry for repeating myself.

[ocdtrekkie]

No worries, I disagree with your read on the text of the bill there, but I can appreciate there being reason for debate. ;)

[Akronymus]

I can absolutely see how you came to your interpretation. Thanks for being so cordial.

This definitely has to be ruled on to know one way or another for sure.

[numpad0]

This is really about Ubisoft's The Crew, a one-time-paid mostly-singleplayer car race game about infights and revenges in an illegal street racing group, that required Internet connection, which server got shut down. So yeah.

The required connection and authentication was likely an anti-piracy measure, so kind of doubly yeah.

[jayd16]

Diablo 3 and 4 would be massive examples? Hell Divers. Monster Hunter, perhaps?

Online head to head games like Street fighter? Maybe RTS games like Dawn of War?

Pay Day.

Seems like all of these would be hit and will move to freemium or subscription.

[idle_zealot]

> Continuous cost without continuous revenue

That would be the case if the publisher had any intent to actually keep the service online. Empirically they do not, hence the law.

[wavemode]

> That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)

Eh, it sounds unintuitive, but in practice it's extremely common. Almost every first-person shooter (well, you could really expand that to "almost every competitive multiplayer game") made by major studios is either a one-time purchase or entirely free. The ongoing revenue comes from cosmetics and other in-game goodies.

This sort of economy makes sense when you consider consoles (especially back in the day), where it's easy to get people to buy a disc but hard to get people to sign up for a subscription.

[Akronymus]

It also covers games with any form of MTX, even if the base game is free. So most live service games.

[ocdtrekkie]

I don't read it that way. "Free-to-play" games generally include games with microtransactions, and the bill text does nothing to disagree with that:

> (b) This section does not apply to any of the following:

> (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.

This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.

[Akronymus]

> > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.

I'd argue buying any form of MTX creates a monetary consideration. Though, I guess it is kind of a gray area that's gonna have to be ruled on.

> This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.

I didn't intend to mean additional stuff being free. I meant additional stuff you can buy, resulting in the no monetary considerations carveout not applying.

[throwaway85825]

This is absolutely not a gray area. MTX are monetary consideration. Free games in this case are more likely advergames.

[Akronymus]

Gray area, as in it has to be ruled on in court because that's 100% gonna be an avenue for some companies to try and weasel out of obligations.

[irishcoffee]

We shall call it the Diablo 4 law.

[jnovek]

Don’t a bunch of shooters also follow this model?