[Schiendelman]

I generally agree that you could require something like this for titles in the future. I think defining future is difficult, the engines everyone is using exist today, and often are just improving overtime, it's very rare for a studio to start from scratch.

But I'm still unsure that there's a good reason to require this. Basically we are saying that if a hobbyist really wants to operate and maintain something, they should be allowed to after some amount of time if the studio stops. It's a chink in the armor of copyright law, really - if a rights holder decides not to continue to license a film or TV show or book for publication, we let them.

I think it's a good idea to figure out who pays for this outside of the studio - I want studios to take risks, honestly the bigger the better, because that's how really interesting ideas get made. I recommended an auction in another thread about this, having a reserve and required auction at shutdown might be a good idea.

[hodgehog11]

> Basically we are saying that if a hobbyist really wants to operate and maintain something, they should be allowed to after some amount of time if the studio stops.

I don't believe that is the problem as defined by SKG. I think the issue is less about empowering users to make use of the property afterwards (although that is nice), and more about the legal ambiguity in the process where products are removed from users without effective prior notice (from purchase date). Games without subscription fees are traded as effective goods by commerce law, but publishers operate as though they are services without a defined end-date through a EULA. IANAL, but my understanding is that whole concept is not legally tested. A one-time purchase should include a contract where the terms for revocation (ideally none, but we can't have nice things) are agreed upon and cannot change at the discretion of one party. You cannot have a license that essentially says "we can do whatever we want at any time". That has never been okay in the history of commerce. A subscription is different, since you know exactly how temporary it is at any particular time. Of course, both a defined lifetime or a subscription are tactics that have been tried and were not as popular with users, so companies resorted to effective trickery while users looked the other way for a time. The social contract is changing as users are watching games they loved die. So overall, the better solution for every party now is a minimal EOL. This isn't a precise threshold and it isn't an expectation that the game would continue to function as normal. It's a minimal effort taken to ensure that the customer still has something left to play around with which is in the spirit of the intended customer agreement; in the California bill, either patching for reasonable offline play (the command-line switch), providing server binaries (I can see this as more of a problem more often), or refunding (no-one wants this).

> if a rights holder decides not to continue to license a film or TV show or book for publication, we let them.

We let them, provided they don't rip the product we buy out of our hands. That's not new for games, but is only now happening for movies. It's unacceptable in every domain. It's like a user being told they can rent a movie, but it isn't clear how long for, so the movie can be requested back after only 5 minutes or could be after 5 years. It is fundamentally unfair. That comparison is quite real too, since some have bought a game, only to find it to be shutting down soon. That feels like theft. Sony removing movies from users libraries and from their computer feels like theft. I would argue it is theft, but that is part of the legal battle here.

> I want studios to take risks, honestly the bigger the better, because that's how really interesting ideas get made

I agree that creative risks should be taken, and also that bad economic strategies should not be rewarded. That's the natural course, and it seems that is happening right now just as one would expect. Many AAA studios are not taking many creative risks according to users (it's almost in the definition of AAA at this point), but are making poor economic decisions by not handling volatility with diversification. It's a recipe for disaster and the developers suffer most it seems.

> having a reserve and required auction at shutdown might be a good idea

I think that's fine, but I'm not sure whether it addresses the legal issues if the new rights holders do not uphold the original understanding of the purchase.