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Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
31–40 of 506 posts
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#32Most "gamers" don't want to pay $5 for a game you spent 10,000 hours slaving to make. They will complain the game was too short when Steam shows they spent 10+ hours playing it. Now they want more.
I'm old enough to remember a time when you bought a copy of a game and played it locally. Most games were around $60 and we paid it. It is only more recently that someone decided that viewing ads was a better way to pay for games - you got what you wanted and no one values games anymore. Even back in the day, if I paid 60 bucks and spent less then 40 hours solving the game I was disappointed and felt like I paid too…
They still sell plenty of games as a one-time $60 purchase. Though instead of owning a physical copy, you might only have a key to some DRM system.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#33[flagged]
If you do not care then why did you take the time to share an opinion on the topic?
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#34This appears to treat subscription style games and free to play with in game purchases differently than other games. I would assume if that law passed the simplest compliance would just be to charge subscriptions and stop selling games directly. It seems like doing that would comply with that law without requiring much to change?
AFAIK the issue is with one time purchase games, where is not clear if you will be able to play forever or whenever they want to pull the plug, if they change to subscription based model or free to play, then it will be clear for the players what they are paying for.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#35So 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 microservices. A s…
Does it though? Just release the a standalone server once the game is done making money.
Updated my original post to explain why this wouldn't work.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#36[flagged]
If you do not care then why did you take the time to share an opinion on the topic?
I care about the topic from a legal and technical standpoint and am interested to see the outcome, just have no skin in the game and no sympathy for the industry or a bunch of children (both literal and figurative) who will whine whichever way it goes.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#37This is the road of stupid that stop killing games has paved.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#38The "final boss" of bad legislation. Often, Government intrusion into the markets is worth the side effects. But in this case, even the best-case outcome is extremely dumb. Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced. And there will be side effects, ultimately including geo-fencing of games to exclude California. It's a big market, but you can't make up for a net loss…
it seems like it would be good programming to parameterize the details of how to connect to a server, so really all the game developer would need to do is document the requirements for the server/make the server software.
..things they'd be doing anyway as they developed the game??
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#39Dumb. Just make it legal to reverse engineer the software, the community will take care of the rest, in a way the community actually wants, instead of getting just the bare minimum compliance from the original company, if they even still exist.
I tend to agree with you that allowing the community to keep games running would be a more desirable outcome, but I don't believe California could make such a law. As I understand it, reverse engineering is already illegal federally because of things like the DMCA. California can't just make the DMCA not apply in this case because its not a California law. However they can pass consumer protection laws making there b…
I don't know about California, but AFAIK reverse engineering is legal, but breaking DRM protection isn't, so what companies did was to put DRM in their software, hence the reverse engineering became illegal.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#40It seems like the fair solution to this problem is to open source server code if you are going to cease support for an online game. That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to.
I also really support giving 60 day notice if an online game is going to shut down. Places I have worked have had policies like that for games they are sun setting and I think the best game publishers think a lot about how to do that operation. It's not simple, because if people think a game is going away their behavior changes. And nothing sucks like buying online content for a game right before it shuts down. No matter what you do people will tell you they didn't know the game was shutting down. And if you give away content that you previously sold that also sometimes angers the community.
The problem is when companies know a game isn't working they tend to want to shut it down right away because the money they spend keeping it up is never coming back. And maybe the company is going to die too. So I do support a law for a 60 day notice.