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by drorco 42 days ago
Well I'm talking from experience as a mobile indie game developer.

Pretty much every year I'm getting warnings from Apple or Google, or 3rd party SDKs, that unless I make sure to update libraries, or comply with a new rule, they are going to take down the game.

One of the latest rules was some sort of a digital services act (again another regulation) that made it very difficult for indie devs not to share their personal address and phone numbers.
1 comments
drbscl 42 days ago
That's not related to SKG though, that's storefront policy.

In principle, as long as _you_ are not blocking using the binary on hardware that supports (i.e. a player already has it installed on an old phone), you're in the clear.

SKG is explicitly _not_ advocating for lifetime support, compatibility with new devices, etc

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drorco 42 days ago
But there are 3rd party SDKs that rely on outside servers that will stop working and the app could have unexpected behavior. It doesn't have to be complete crash, but it might be enough to degrade functionality to a point where some players might say the game is unplayable etc.

Being bootstrapped with no investors, there's no extra resources, and no financial benefit in making sure that the app can function well even with these 3rd party services, servers etc. not working.

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drbscl 42 days ago
> degrade functionality to a point where some players might say the game is unplayable etc.

Yeah, it's a good point, the law that may result from parliament does need to be clear on where the line is drawn.

Personally, I would expect singleplayer and LAN to work at EOL

Edit: on 3rd party libraries & services, I would expect that such vendors would need to make their software compliant for their customers after any law change on this front. No one is gonna buy GameLift if it's a legal liability for their EOL plan

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