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Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

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Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#21

Post by crest »

JasonFruit wrote: post #9
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #2

We need to re-think intellectual property. If a creator (or worse, buyer) of an IP loses interest in supporting it, then why should they retain a legal monopoly to do so?

That sounds like a rationalization of "But I want it!" If someone owns useful land, but prefers to leave it fallow, they don't lose ownership of it; why shouldn't they have the right to leave their intellectual property idle? Part of ownership is the right to use your property as you please.

Because there is no scarcity that requires management by enforcing an monopoly. If I want to stop playing chess why should everyone else stop playing chess as well?

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#22

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

waqf wrote: post #14
JasonFruit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a rationalization of "But I want it!" If someone owns useful land, but prefers to leave it fallow, they don't lose ownership of it; why shouldn't they have the right to leave their intellectual property idle? Part of ownership is the right to use your property as you please.

You begged the question here. The question is whether and to what extent the creator of software should have "ownership".

Precisely. That's the difference between land and IP. IP is made. Land is bought, maybe worked on, developed, but as Mark Twain said about land, "they're not making it anymore."

>Inb4 South China Sea.

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#23

Post by craigsmansion »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #7
wickedlogic wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should start by not calling it intellectual property (IP). Clearly this is not servicemark, trademark, etc. Is copyright actually preventing this?

IANAL but as I understand it video games are IP. What I'm suggesting is that if an IP is abandoned in a meaningful way (such as server support for a multiplayer game) then the IP owner should not be allowed to prevent others from replicating that functionality. A few details still have to be hashed out though: can people charge for the use of their third party servers? Are new players required to purchase the game fr…

> as I understand it video games are IP

What I think wickedlogic means is that the term "IP" is often used as a catch-all term for legal frameworks that are very dissimilar, and the various sides of "IP" should be treated very differently.

As a catch-all term it might seem useful because it's short, but it's often used to confuse and divide.

As an example: for Free Software,

-software patents are just a terrible idea

-copyright is broken, but usable

-trademarks are important

Three different branches of "IP," with widely varying consequences and implications.

If someone talks to you about "IP," ask them to be specific, even if just to make sure you're talking about the same thing.

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#24

Post by djsumdog »

This reminds me of the old Blizzard vs open battlenet (bnetd) crap that happened in the early 2000s. I think it really hit a full head when people were using modified bnetd servers so they could play leaked beats of WarCraft 3.

It's sad because bnetd lost their case, even though it was a total open source re-implementation and was an amazing work for what it was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#25

Post by [deleted] »

waqf wrote: post #14
JasonFruit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a rationalization of "But I want it!" If someone owns useful land, but prefers to leave it fallow, they don't lose ownership of it; why shouldn't they have the right to leave their intellectual property idle? Part of ownership is the right to use your property as you please.

You begged the question here. The question is whether and to what extent the creator of software should have "ownership".

[deleted]

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#26

Post by jannes »

In my opinion the question is how do we treat hybrid software products: A part of it runs locally and another part runs on a server.

If you sell/advertise those two pieces of software as a single integrated product but you only give away the client executable, how long after the sale should you be required to keep the server running?

It's a bit like a web app: The user downloads some HTML+JS which makes XmlHttpRequests to a server backend. In theory the user could download the HTML+JS only once and keep working with that initial copy, but after a few weeks the server endpoint might change and break that copy.

I think the expectation for a web app is to keep working for a day or so and the expectation for a console game is at least 20 years?

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#27

Post by maxerickson »

ajmurmann wrote: post #3

What bothers me about this is that people bought the game, but they can't play it because EA doesn't want to run servers for it and prohibits everyone else from doing so. I very much preferred the old days when players had to run their own servers. It was less convenient, but made for great community and avoided situations like this.

I think my preferred fix is to require them to support the online features until a date that they make clear wherever the game is sold.

Then the legal system isn't trying to mandate specific implementation details.

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#28

Post by Illniyar »

Thaxll wrote: post #4

What most people don't understand is EA can't legally release server code because they probably use libraries that forbid public distribution, physics engine ect ...

I fail to see how is that relevant, people are saying either keep the server up or let other people run their own, reversed engineered server.

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#29

Post by ajmurmann »

slezyr wrote: post #8
ajmurmann wrote: post #3

What bothers me about this is that people bought the game, but they can't play it because EA doesn't want to run servers for it and prohibits everyone else from doing so. I very much preferred the old days when players had to run their own servers. It was less convenient, but made for great community and avoided situations like this.

Well it's not about server, but about MASTER servers. Those used to discover "players own servers" in the internet.

Can I still type in a IP address directly?

Re: Old Battlefield games re-killed after EA’s legal warning

#30

Post by pdelbarba »

brango wrote: post #12

Anyone play Battlefield 2 on the PS2 I think it was? You could look at any allied character on the battlefield and hit a button and you'd take over control of the character. So you could be a soldier on the ground being pinned down by a machine gun nest, look up to an allied helicopter, hit the button, become the pilot, launch missiles at the nest, then look down to a tank, become the driver, then back to the soldier…

All of the ARMA games have had this feature if you bother to enable it. It's not usually seen in the popular online "maps" though
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