[wsve]

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk.

Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a company may use or release. What popular libraries are we concerned about no longer being usable because of this? Remember, this is server architecture. Networking libraries? ENet is distributable, so is Valve's GameNetworkingSockets.

Yes, it'd ask developers to write their servers with this possible/inevitable transition in mind. Developers will plan ahead for that, and I have a very hard time imagining the server architecture would change much at all. A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden.

This is great news!

[pibaker]

What is irrational in pointing out that this particular law, as it is written, gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services? The technical implementation is irrelevant. It is the business side of things that you should actually worry about.

If anything, some people seem to have this weird faith in regulation that makes them think if some politician is promising to fix something via legislation, then it will get fixed, regardless of how the law is actually written or how it will work out in practice. California in particular is full of regulations that feel good but are either ineffective or has unintended consequences. See prop 65 which litters the state with vaguely worded warning messages that provide next to zero useful information, or prop 13 which massively disincentivizes home building and effectively makes new homeowners subsidize the property taxes of those who bought before them.

You can be supportive of regulations. I am supportive of many regulations. But I don't just support a regulation because it is great news that makes me feel warm and fluffy. I want well thought out regulations that don't neuter themselves with exemptions and don't easily lead to undesirable consequences. If this makes me an irrational anti regulation crusader, then off to Antioch, CA I shall go.

[wsve]

> gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services?

This is what I fail to see an explanation of anywhere in these comments. WHY would this law make a subscriber-based revenue model so much more enticing? WHY would this law make single-purchase games with multiplayer servers suddenly so non-viable from a business perspective?

The latent assumption I keep seeing is that the mere existence of a regulation in an area will drive people away from that model, but that's simply not how businesses operate. It's a cost/benefit analysis. So what is the cost?

[ang_cire]

Yep, this is the "higher taxes will drive new yorkers to florida!" fear-mongering (sometime, sadly, even by people who don't actually know better but automatically shill for companies).

There are so many games (like Hitman: WoA, which I love btw) that "require" online access in order to provide the same functions that previous games by the same devs provided fully offline (e.g. keeping track of your weapon unlocks).

This is just clawing back some of the consumer protections that the "we're not selling you a product, we're selling you a temporary and arbitrary license that we reserve all rights over" BS snuck around.

[rafram]

In both cases, it’s true. Higher taxes will drive some New Yorkers to Florida! That’s why the state government has to research the impact of a tax increase and set the brackets at a point where the amount they bring in, after subtracting lost revenue from people who move away, is maximized. A sensible tax increase won’t drive many New Yorkers to Florida, and it’ll make up for the few who do leave.

In this case, studios will need to do the same calculation with the cost to package and release server software / the income they’ll lose from going to a subscription model.

[ang_cire]

'Some' is a meaningless non-metric. Some people do anything.

Actual studies [1] show that the rich are not moving in response to wealth taxes, and in fact when they do move, it's almost never due to taxes.

> As we get more data on the post-pandemic period, we increase our knowledge of the major upheavals that took place in New York between 2020 and 2022. Despite the state suffering a deep recession and massive out-migration during the pandemic, data show that New York’s tax base remains resilient. When taxes on millionaire earners were raised in 2021, tax revenue to the state increased by an estimated $3.6 billion and there was no detectable increase in high earner out-migration.

1: https://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251009...

[rafram]

I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue against the idea that people tend to gravitate toward the cheapest option.

[Vaslo]

Your example about New York and Florida is a terrible one because it’s true statement. Why would you use that example? Are you saying it’s not true (demonstrably true with residential data)? Or are you saying it’s happening but not to the extent that the fear-mongerers express it?

[ang_cire]

You're wrong. There is no wealth-tax based mass migration of the wealthy from NYC to Florida.

1) https://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251009...

> As we get more data on the post-pandemic period, we increase our knowledge of the major upheavals that took place in New York between 2020 and 2022. Despite the state suffering a deep recession and massive out-migration during the pandemic, data show that New York’s tax base remains resilient. When taxes on millionaire earners were raised in 2021, tax revenue to the state increased by an estimated $3.6 billion and there was no detectable increase in high earner out-migration.

[rafram]

Because the law specifically exempts subscription-based revenue models, so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.

[wsve]

> so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.

Please reread my comment. You're doing the exact same thing. You're saying this like it's a given, but it is not. WHY would it be more attractive?

[jcranmer]

Because doing so gets them out of obligations to release tools that may be difficult-to-impossible to release to comply with the law.

[Rohansi]

Sure, but it's not actually easy to just change your pricing model. Most gamers do not want to pay subscriptions even though they would pay for DLC and battlepasses. Free-to-play needs microtransactions that people actually buy so they tend to be pay-to-win or convenience items (inventory/bank space) that punish free players.

[wsve]

Why would releasing your server executable as a standalone be difficult to impossible to comply with the law? Many games already do this

[rafram]

Because the alternative now costs more.

That is just a basic function of human decision-making. If there are two options, and one becomes more expensive, it will become more common to pick the other. It very slightly tips the balance toward the option that hasn’t become more expensive.

[wsve]

Please reread my initial comment. That's the assumption everyone is making, but WHY would it actually cost so much more? What's so much more expensive? Some games already do this, why would it be so much more expensive for others?

[customguy]

Subscription models and micro-transactions are already infinitely attractive for those who are solely out for profit and rent-seeking, so it changes nothing material there. It doesn't make subscription models more attractive to gamers either. But it makes non-subscription games vastly more attractive:

Previously, non-subscription games were a gamble, even if the company had the best track record in the world, even if you know the whole team personally. They still could get bought or something like that, and then all of that is moot.

Now, you can be somewhat sure that the multiplayer game you buy today will be playable for as long as there are people who want to play it enough to put in the time and resources to host the infrastructure for it.

So yeah, this just seems like F.U.D. to me.

[tactlesscamel]

I'd like to see current regulations enforced for everyone before adding more. "Great news guys, millionaires can now sue billionaires for breaking their kid's toy," is all this ammounts to. They dont have enough bodies (physical or virtual) to uphold what's currently in place. Nor, do governing bodies care.

- It causes cancer? Make sure you add a warning label.

- they lost PII? Make sure we collect the fine. What's that; they can't afford it? Don't waste the resources, then. There's other opportunities out there.

[maccard]

Here’s a few, as someone who has worked in games for 12 years.

Most games have code and design decisions that hark back 25+ years. Every single unreal engine game for example is based code written in the mid 2000s and some parts of the engine really feel like it. Online components are developed the same way. If you made a multiplayer game 10 years ago and it was successful, your next game is going to be built on top of that. I’ve seen places that use stored procedures in Oracle DB for gameplay logic, others that rely on any number of SQL server specific tricks. Closed source dotnet frameworks, proprietary AWS services, if you can think of it there’s probably a game shipped on it. You’re also making the assumption that the server is a neatly coupled thing.

Am I responsible for providing a fallback to EOS, or Steam, or playfab in case their services are decommissioned?

What about the licenses for the code that affects other areas - we have a GPL’ed library here that we can use but now all of a sudden the vitality of the license means we have to replace it?

Who defines “ordinary use of the game”?. If the game has a multiplayer component, to some large number of users that can construe “ordinary use”. call of Duty is the best example of this (although COD is probably one of the games with the best track record here).

This is going to result in games moving more towards the Hollywood studio model - start up a company, launch a game and wind down the company for the next project. People who rely on that already unstable industry will be given even less stability due to this.

> I have a hard time imagining the server architecture would change much

That’s great - I’m sure if it’s that little work you’re willing to do it for all of those games companies.

> A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden

Game backends are just like Other backends. Some use event queues, microservices, third party APIs, licensed components. This adds a burden that no other software is expected to carry - it’s perfectly fine for Google to drop support for their devices but a 25 person company needs to go back and fix all their old games if they want to keep selling them?

[RandomGerm4n]

> Am I responsible for providing a fallback to EOS, or Steam, or playfab in case their services are decommissioned?

In this case, the company offering this service should be responsible for making it possible to host the service independently before discontinuing it. However, games that use such standardized services are actually less problematic in practice. For Steam, for example, there is the Goldberg Steam Emulator, which emulates Steam’s online features. Games that do not have additional DRM or any extra features but simply use the standard Steamworks SDK for multiplayer can be played entirely without the Steam client or server using this emulator. Even for services that had already been shut down, like Gamespy back then, Openspy quickly emerged as an alternative. Not all games worked right away, but the community fixed most of the issues very quickly. So, in the end, the games that use some kind of custom solution built by the developer themselves are much more important.

[maccard]

> In this case, the company offering this service should be responsible for making it possible to host the service independently before discontinuing it

So AWS are now contractually required to offer all of their managed services to be self hostable or they can’t be used in games?

> For Steam, for example, there is the Goldberg Steam Emulator

So open source reverse engineered solutions are ok? Why aren’t they acceptable for games instead of the underlying platform? Why is it ok for a game that uses steam for online services but not epic (as there’s presumably no equivalent emulator), or an in house tech?

> Games that do not have additional DRM or any extra features but simply use the standard Steamworks SDK for multiplayer can be played entirely without the Steam client or server using this emulator

And those games are unaffected by anything that will come from this law.

[wsve]

The law isn't requiring that all online features of the game be available. Just a minimal viable product to play the base game online. No storefronts, no news prompts, no matchmaking servers, just server lists. You don't need AWS for that.

[kmeisthax]

All of this is valid and none of it is a good reason to oppose legislation to keep games from being destroyed.

35 years ago, in 1991, the vast majority of games were programmed in assembly, directly fiddling with the hardware registers. If you wanted to port your game to a new system, you were basically making a new game. There were some exceptions where systems shared enough internal components to make code reuse viable; these almost universally resulted in worse experiences for the players. Think like ZX Spectrum ports to Amstrad or MSX; or Atari ST ports to Amiga.

If someone in that development context suggested writing all games in a high-level portable language, using common development frameworks licensed by multiple companies, and calling exclusively into standards-defined graphics and audio APIs, they'd be laughed out of the room. And yet, within a decade, basically all games were written in C/C++, using third-party engine code like RenderWare, which had abstracted versions of all the major rendering APIs developers needed to touch. Game porting went from "rewrite your game for each console" to "replace these SDK functions here, make sure it builds, and add another entry onto the QA matrix". And as a result, near-identical multi-platform releases became the norm rather than the exception.

The vibes I'm getting from your post are the same as how a game developer might react to someone in 1991 demanding all games sim-ship on every economically viable platform[0]. It's easy to get lost in the chaos of existing development and assume that because we currently build game servers like shit today, that they have to be built like shit.

The reality is that the state of affairs being mandated by the law is what game developers originally shipped. The original Unreal's multiplayer architecture included dedicated server binaries that shipped with the game itself and could be run by any interested party who wanted to play with people. This is a server architecture that is proven and works; everything from Quake to Team Fortress to Minecraft shipped server binaries you can just run. Likewise, on console, multiplayer services were hosted on one of the consoles playing the game, which, while not providing the best experience, made third-party revivals of those services fairly straightforward.

It is specifically MMOs and "live service" games that moved away from these proven server architectures to the cowboy-coded spaghetti code messes that you are referencing. The California law referenced here is specifically a forcing function for good development practice. All the gameplay-critical server-server components of a particular game should be able to fit in a single binary you can just ship to anyone who should have access to them.

You posed some more specific questions about how a game should fall back. I am not a lawyer and I am not involved with California's law, but I suspect a fallback to the online services of the platform the user bought the game from would be "good enough". Adding that fallback to your QA matrix during major development would probably be the most effective way to make sure it actually works. The ability to point the game binary at a specific IP would be preferred, especially on PC, but I doubt you'll get Nintendo to cert that.

As for Google, I actually do think the current state of affairs regarding software support for smartphones is unsustainable and stupid. It's only even a thing because of toxic max-security[1] in the smartphone market. On PC, we can just install whatever OS we want; it's specifically the tying between OS vendor and phone hardware that we are at the mercy of the vendor's release schedule.

[0] At the time that would include SNES, Mega Drive, IBM PC-compatibles, Macs, Amigas, Atari STs, X68000, PC-98...

[1] https://tom7.org/httpv/httpv.pdf

[jcranmer]

One of my first lessons in open source was just because I could imagine an architecture where a feature was easy did not mean that the software had an architecture where said feature was easy. And I don't see any reason to doubt GP's assertion that existing server architectures are not in a position to comply with the law.

The problem in this instance is not that the legislation effectively mandates that companies move away from particular server architectures (I mean, there's room to debate the wisdom of that, but it is a pretty explicit goal of many proponents of this law). But if you want to seriously push companies to do that move, you also have to recognize the ways to actually entice them to do that. And you know what is a very good way to ensure noncompliance with your regulation? Tell companies they have 6 months to make core architectural rewrites of not only to-be-released games, but games that they are currently selling and expect to continue selling. That kind of timeframe is just not possible.

[bigfishrunning]

> we have a GPL’ed library here that we can use but now all of a sudden the vitality of the license means we have to replace it?

The "we're not distributing it" loophole is why the AGPL exists. So yeah, even though you can technically not violate the gpl by not distributing the server, don't do that, it's scummy. Better to just not use gpl code at all.

[Filligree]

Respectfully disagree. The AGPL exists for that use case, and the difference is exactly that you need to distribute the changes.

If you license something under GPL, that necessarily means you’re okay with people making local changes and not sharing them. If you aren’t okay with that, then don’t use the GPL.

For me, that means I use a mix of AGPL and MIT depending on project.

[Dylan16807]

> If you license something under GPL, that necessarily means you’re okay with people making local changes and not sharing them. If you aren’t okay with that, then don’t use the GPL.

GPL has always meant you're okay with someone making local changes for their own internal use.

When it comes to servers, someone making a project this decade that uses GPL might be signalling they're okay with server code staying closed source. Or it might be other reasons, like the uncertainty over what code is covered by AGPL. And if a project is older, there's an increasing chance they didn't expect the current ecosystem and hate that the code is being used this way.

[ApolloFortyNine]

There's so many renditions of these style bills that it's hard to keep track what's in this specific one.

From what I can tell this one doesn't include provisions to protect indie shops/solo devs. The entire time spent developing a game is a net loss until release (and probability wise, probably still a loss then). So this is adding more upfront cost to devs.

The bill text I found is also one of the more generic versions I've seen. Specifically this line

>the ordinary use of the game

This is quite broad. I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement. For instance, an mmo raid may require 20 players. If after the death of the game getting 20 players is impossible, I have seen people push for ai (just the game version) so it would be possible, or a patch to make the content possible for 1. Each of which are development time that serves no benefit to making money.

There's also the likelihood of the server architecture requiring many moving pieces. Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

Now the day 1 proponents would probably focus on the obvious provide the server exe cases, but these are concerns down the line.

Also at least this one doesn't do the 'development bond' idea I've seen to protect against the entity going bankrupt, essentially requiring every dev to pay for some sort of insurance before releasing the game (more costs for indie devs).

[wsve]

> I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement.

That seems a bit silly to my eyes, self-hosting a server seems sufficient. But not included in this bill, so not an issue here

> Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

In this specific case, it's not so hard to imagine a single home computer handling the traffic of 100 connected users for a game of battle royale, the server compute for those kinds (baked-in world, low physics) games can be cheaper than running an instance of the game. Just some physics calculations, networking, and game state.

The main point would be if you start development from the premise that your server executable will be released to the users, the architecture/performance considerations are not that different at all.

[ApolloFortyNine]

>The main point would be if you start development from the premise that your server executable will be released to the users, the architecture/performance considerations are not that different at all.

Except devs aren't, and shouldn't, be developing under that assumption, they should be developing under the assumption their game will be successful. You don't want to be giving your pitch to investors and have to go "we aren't using AWS services because when we fail we'll provide the exes to the users".

And if you think they need to change, your just admitting this will cost devs more (and when it costs devs more, it raises the barrier of entry, in an industry where failure is already the norm).

The most obvious example is pretty much any form of inviting a player/having idenities. The storage of users and inviting them is what brings in the scaling complexities in your average online game, and that's when you'd use a service harder to have a self hosting equivalent of.

[wsve]

> The most obvious example is pretty much any form of inviting a player/having idenities. The storage of users and inviting them is what brings in the scaling complexities in your average online game, and that's when you'd use a service harder to have a self hosting equivalent of.

A bill like this isn't asking for a 1-to-1 level of service once the company servers are turned off, it's a minimal product to make multiplayer play at all possible. The assumption is that, like with most fanbases for a product, you'll have to form a community of people to engage with it on your own.

The solution is to do what so many older games like Quake or Minecraft or TF2 have done since day 1: Release the server executable, and allow direct LAN connections (and disable login requirements).

[RandomGerm4n]

> There's also the likelihood of the server architecture requiring many moving pieces. Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

There are already several Fortnite servers available for self-hosting. Fans have created these on their own without access to the official code, and they run on a standard PC or a custom-built server using off-the-shelf hardware. One example of this is Project Reboot, which is publicly available on GitHub. People use it to play older Fortnite seasons or to play the game with friends on unsupported platforms like Linux.

[stubish]

It adds costs if you built it that way. I don't think many games are built that way. Developers need to be able to test their games in isolation, and it takes effort to remove that scaffolding from release versions (so people can't use it and bypass your monetization).

The real reasons to not just toss your backend over to the community and make it their problem are business reasons like 'it will dilute our brand' or 'it is a violation of licensed IP'. Or embarrassing reasons like 'we have lost the source code' or 'we can no longer build new executables'.

[phyzix5761]

Now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features. This is a huge win for big studios who will suck up all that market share.

Handing over a standalone server to the public is a massive engineering, financial, and legal headache. Modern multiplayer games rarely run on a single isolated program. They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud micro services.

A single match might require separate proprietary systems for matchmaking, player inventories, anti cheat, metrics tracking, and database management. Many of those come with licenses that don't allow you to just give away the code for free.

Disentangling the actual game logic from these third party platforms like AWS or Epic Online Services requires months of rewriting code. At that point you're basically re-inventing the wheel on so many technologies that your costs go up exponentially.

Games are rarely built entirely from scratch by a single company and are usually packed with licensed proprietary third party software. Because the studio doesn't own the rights to distribute these proprietary tools to the public for free then releasing a standalone server forces them to spend extensive legal and development hours stripping out the restricted code and replacing it with open source alternatives.

Releasing server code also exposes the inner workings of the company's technology. If a studio uses the same proprietary engine or backend framework for their active money making games then releasing the server code for a dead game essentially hands hackers and competitors a roadmap to exploit their current profitable titles.

[wsve]

> A single match might require separate proprietary systems for matchmaking, player inventories, anti cheat, metrics tracking, and database management. Many of those come with licenses that don't allow you to just give away the code for free.

None of those things are required to be supported by this law. It's the minimum viable product to enable multiplayer play.

- Ditch the matchmaking, players can build their own communities and use server lists for discovery - Ditch the anti-cheat if you can't distribute it, it's not necessary for online play - Ditch the metrics, of course - Let the player download their inventory save file or something, idc

[tancop]

i mean its perfectly valid to create a new exception to copyright laws. in fact it might already exist because if you are legally required to release something that beats all the contracts you signed in any reasonable jurisdiction. weaker ip means giving a head start to new devs and bankrupting commercial engine vendors. and im all for making epic and unity go out of business

[lostlogin]

> I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is.

If you wanted to trigger a HN rant, topics should always include regulation, particularly in regard to nuclear power, guns, freedom of speech or taxation.

[dtdynasty]

I would describe them as pessimistic rather than irrational. They just believe that instead of going with an option like you proposed, companies will push toward unregulated options.

Since I don't know their backgrounds and don't have any background working with video game company executives it's hard to tell which options are more likely.

[f33d5173]

Companies tend to comply with laws in the dumbest possible way just to be jackasses. If you want a company to release the server, write a law that says that. Otherwise, companies will find a way to comply with the law in the worst way possible. An easy one here is to make the game subscription based, but only for californians. When you go to shut down the server, just don't renew the subscriptions. And if anyone complains? "Nothing we can do, california made us do it!" (nevermind that an alternative form of compliance existed)

[ai_fry_ur_brain]

Its because people are brainwashed by techno capitalists propganada and think they're going be in the "startup" founder position one day and thus defend the people currently in those positions no matter what, thinking their protecting their own interests (and its almost always the opposite).

There's nothing wrong with having an ambitious attitude, but why not be ambitious seek to build a better tech-biz ecosystem that is actually pro consumer and pro human..

People seem to think there's only one way, and that way is letting capital owners behave however they want incase they're also in that position one day.

[ApolloFortyNine]

>think they're going be in the "startup" founder position

Can't wait for the posts 10 years from now asking what happened to indie devs.

This bill alone won't do it, but as you pass regulations it gets harder and harder for a regular person to participate.

The worst rendition I've seen of this bill for Europe requires basically a development bond/retainer to 'ensure' there's dev time available to develop offline features. I.e, extra costs for devs who already by the numbers lose money releasing a game.

[hananova]

This is absolute fearmongering. Indie devs aren’t the ones releasing this always-online quadruple A garbage in the first place. They will be affected the least, since their games already would work just fine if the company ever goes belly up.

[Dig1t]

It’s not irrational, the comments literally explain in great detail the downsides of the regulation.

For example one commenter in this thread said:

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

This is an objectively true and prove-able statement. What is irrational about that?

WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it creates.

>If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only.

This is a valid concern and a real incentive if that’s how the law works. What is irrational about this argument?

[Telaneo]

Bad regulation should't be reperesentaive or regulation as a whole. If you don't get it right the first time, you're allowed to try again, and that's what should be done with regulations providing bad incentives.

Gaming has already gone though a period of pushing subscription games, and most died, since people generally didn't want to pay a fee per game they played. That only left the big players in that space, while everybkdy else went back to releasing games the normal way. I fail to see why things would go a different way this time around.

[infinite_spin]

The legal system is kind of like an evolutionary process. We try things, see if they work, and adjust over time. So far I think this has indeed led to a better legal system, but I can see why the set backs and injustices of the world make that difficult to assess.

Regulation also creates jobs, even bad regulation, so there's almost a Keynesian argument to be had about its relationship to our economic system.

[Ferret7446]

Bad regulation is representative of regulation as a whole, because most of it is bad, or at least ineffectual, particularly in California.

[wsve]

Blanket dismissal of regulations is about as silly as a blanket dismissal of laws. Some laws are "bad", some are "good", but the point is who do they hurt, and who do they serve? Regulations are tools, like laws, and can be written to serve the needs of the people, for good things.

[Dig1t]

I'm not even saying this should be dismissed with a blanket dismissal.

First example is a reminder that regulation can be bad.

Second is an actual concern about this specific regulation. This is a concrete concern about the incentives it creates. There wasn't a single response to this comment about exactly WHY questioning effectiveness of it is irrational.

[wsve]

> Second is an actual concern about this specific regulation. This is a concrete concern about the incentives it creates.

Like I said in my OP comment, the problem with saying "this regulation will push devs to subscription-based game models" is that it does not explain why that would happen. It just assumes it would.

This argument to me is like saying "forcing people to wear seatbelts will push them to take the bus instead". Why would this be such a problem that people ditch their whole mode of transit? I see it that way because I can't think of a single case where designing your game server architecture with decommissioning and redistributing to your users in mind would be difficult or costly at all, and I have seen no convincing explanations

[infinite_spin]

I think a study of regulatory capture would definitely support your views

[Telaneo]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[crooked-v]

The "in favor of SUVs" part only exists because light trucks were specifically exempted from regulations to pander to specific subsets of voters.

[etiennebausson]

It's not voting policy, it's protectionism.

It's all about limiting foreign build vehicle encroachment on US market.

[wsve]

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

All this says is that it's possible for regulations to have negative, unintended consequences. It's about as relevant as reminding your friends that some restaurants are not very good when you're picking a place to eat. It's not relevant when we're talking about something specific and the field of things is varied.

> WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it creates.

Sure. What are the negative incentives?

>If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only.

Why? What is the incentive away from one-time purchases? Is it cost? Where is that cost coming from?

[zdragnar]

> It's about as relevant as reminding your friends that some restaurants are not very good when you're picking a place to eat

Interestingly, restaurant food is typically less healthy, more expensive and less tasty than what you can make at home. Eating out should be the exception, not the rule, which plays directly plays into the anti regulation argument.

[wsve]

That is very far from the point, not only because what I meant was that some restaurants are not as good compared to others, but also because the connection between eating out vs eating at home and regulations is basically non-existent? I don't really understand what you're saying.

The point is saying "some regulations have downsides" is meaningless in conversation about a particular regulation, just like saying "some restaurants don't serve very tasty food" is meaningless in a conversation about "should we try that new Thai place on 3rd street?"

[zdragnar]

I suspect that's because you wrongly assume the other side is saying "some regulations have downsides". It's more likely they're saying "all regulations have unintended consequences" and thus deserve extra scrutiny when considering them.

If that is the case, then the analogy is fitting again; even "good" restaurants are often a poor substitute for eating at home, and so shouldn't be a first line of consideration.

[wsve]

Agreed that's what they were likely trying to do with that comment, and I'd argue the problem with it is that it fear-mongers about regulations while failing to actually scrutinize what the negative effects are.

Also, we should really drop this restaurant analogy, it's ill-fitting and clearly distracting from the main point.

[Dylan16807]

In what way is "see also" objectively true?

I mean in a literal sense I guess it's true but only in a way that has zero connection to the post. They might as well have told me a fun fact about crickets. If it's supposed to argue against this regulation then their actual point stops being objectively true and it probably is irrational to bring up those car standards without way more justification.