[john_strinlai]

this was written (or 'output') by someone (or something) that clearly has not thought of the knock-on effects of those freedoms.

they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again".

by all means i 100% agree that an ostensibly single player game should not be locked behind a login or telemetry, and that platforms like steam should not be able to lock you out of playing games you paid for. but i dont think forcing the whole free software thing would work out how the author is imagining it.

[singpolyma3]

We have decades of real world experience which shows this is not true. People buy things they could otherwise get for free with a bit of work all the time.

[john_strinlai]

you aren't getting a company to build baldurs gate 3 and hope they recoup the costs from ko-fi donations.

real world experience is that most companies do not offer their software for free, and open source developers either have to get sponsored or have to constantly solicit donations.

donations do not typically cover multi-million dollar, multi-year development cycles.

[ben-schaaf]

BG3 is actually a perfect counterexample here. It doesn't have DRM, doesn't require an online account to play and uses direct connections for multiplayer. Nothing needs to be done to preserve it.

[john_strinlai]

right, but if BG3 had to be free as in FSF free, it would not have been made.

[singpolyma3]

This is almost certainly untrue. it would have cost the same amount and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons.

[john_strinlai]

>and all the same people would have bought it for all the same reasons.

you have to be trolling, right?

if people can get the game for free, because freedom 2 demands the game be freely redistributable by anyone with no restrictions, people are not going to pay for it. they are going to get it for free.

[trinsic2]

Everything you are talking about appears to me as AAA. There will be many game companies that dont think it's worth the time to do this for the reasons you describe, but IMHO they shouldn't exist in the first place. The way online only games are made right now is destroying the game industry so im glad to see them go. We will see better iterations of games once the bloat is removed.

[singpolyma3]

Obviously not. No one is talking about donations

[john_strinlai]

if the games are free, and we aren't talking about donations, how are the studios being paid?

[singpolyma3]

Same way as now. Selling the game.

Free as in freedom not as in price

[john_strinlai]

>Free as in freedom not as in price

free as in freedom = i give away the game to everyone i know for free, and the studio loses out on those sales.

edit: oops, just noticed you are the same person i suspect is trolling. so, probably best for us both to end the conversation here.

[luqtas]

you don't need to liberate your project to GPL or whatever OSS to let users distribute them via torrent or at least being able to backup the DRM-free installer... i bet most if not all AAA games have their crack into the pirate land in less than a week after or even before release

[F3nd0]

> […] in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again".

This is exactly what has been happening for years, only illegally. If it became legal, I imagine far less people would end up buying the game, though probably still more than just one.

But again, games are more than just software, so the four freedoms do not enable this.

[figmert]

As the article mentions, these arguments are basically all the arguments of the FSF, and everything Richard Stallman pushed for since the 80s. So yes, there has been plenty of thought, scrutiny, improvements, etc. 40 years of it in fact.

[john_strinlai]

>So yes, there has been plenty of thought, scrutiny, improvements, etc. 40 years of it in fact.

what percent of businesses follow the FSF freedoms and turn a profit?

i would love it if i could get all my games for free, and legally give additional copies to all my students, family, and friends. but the developers pumping out those games probably want to see some sort of return more substantial than whatever trickles into their ko-fi account. they'll just stop developing games and go into CRM software or whatever.

[singpolyma3]

I don't see how "what percent" is the right metric. There are hundreds of such companies (I work for one) but it's a small percentage due to other factors (mainly it not being the default way most founders think about these things)

[figmert]

Not really my point. My point is more that you suggested no one has thought about this, but yes, they have.

To answer your question, there have been plenty of business who have created and published free software (albeit plenty have later closed them). Notable examples are Databricks, Hashicorp, Mongodb, RedHat.

Sure they've built a moat on top of their free software, but they have (or had) free software regardless.

[john_strinlai]

>My point is more that you suggested no one has thought about this, but yes, they have.

i didnt say no one has thought about free software.

i said that this specific llm that output this article did not think about how the freedoms would work in todays gaming industry.

there are dozens of issues that immediately pop into my head, mostly specific to gaming, which are not mentioned or addressed at all.

[singpolyma3]

lol. The article is obviously not written by an LLM.

[throwaway85825]

If the game is being sold it has to be supported, and if it's supported no legislative requirement applies.

[john_strinlai]

my comment is in response to the demand that games be free, not the legislation

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

>they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again".

fyi, there are tens of torrent trackers with every game/movie/album/etc under the sun. had been for two decades.

[john_strinlai]

i was unaware torrenting copyrighted content was made legal, thanks for the update

[sapphicsnail]

I think their point was that lots of media is easily piratable but still makes money and companies continue to produce more of it.

[trinsic2]

Yep another lost soul at the parent that thinks piracy equals death.

[john_strinlai]

that is not what i think.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

>they sound great in theory, but in practice exactly one person will buy the game that cost millions to produce, put it up on a website for free, and then the studio will say "well, never doing that again".

[john_strinlai]

yes, i wrote that.

right now that would be illegal to do in most jurisdictions.

[b65e8bee43c2ed0]

despite that, people have been doing that for over two decades, but publishers continue to publish.

[john_strinlai]

right. that is because most people would rather buy the game than take the risk of downloading it illegally. if you remove the risk, the math changes.

publishers also have legal recourse. remove that and the publisher's math changes.