Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Your vain appeal to objectivity is just a steelman argument. emotional != biased emotionless != unbiased Hard things are often worthwhile.
I agree wholeheartedly, which is why I didn't imply bias.
Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
371–380 of 506 posts
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#372I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse. Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." a…
> I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse. I believe it's possible to write laws that serve the people they're supposed to protect. It may tak…
"It may take iteration, but you have to start somewhere."
It's hitting the assembly floor. Whether this is good depends, imo, entirely on indie carveouts for revenue. I'm afraid of shortsighted legislation like certain sections of DMCA.
Talking about the problems now is important. "Add this or the harm is worth more than the benefit" isn't a blanket refutation, but it is a refutation of the existing bill
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#373I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse. Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." a…
I played games online over dial-up, a few asynchronously via email, in the 1990s. Until the modern era, if some sort of direct TCP/IP connection wasn't built in, then an add-on usually supplied everything needed for private multiplayer and map editing. I don't think companies should be on the hook for maintaining moderation, hosting, and development at no cost in perpetuity, but addressing not providing any legal way…
Isn't this settled? Vernor vs Autodesk, they're services
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Game engines/code aren't all open source. The game developer might not have the legal rights to release the source. Also, does this stop at games? Why not any online service ever? Why not any program at all?
> The game developer might not have the legal rights to release the source. Then the game developer/publisher should choose to use another technology or be ready to replace that piece when game reaches EOL. If no game developer can use that technology, the vendor will end up loosing a lot of sales. They can then decide if more permissive license would make sense.
It's just going to push all multiplayer games to be sold as a service. The users will get used to this because they basically already are used to it for every other piece of software.
There is basically zero chance that when given the choice between "structure billing as a service" vs "rewrite everything and open source it" that they will choose open source.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not feasible to open-source all of that, especially given that it may well still be in use for more recent titles If they're still running their authentication server (for example), then they wouldn't need to release that service. Patching the game to no longer contact the authentication server would also be acceptable, for services that aren't a core part of the game. It's pretty likely the game already allow…
So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. You wouldn't get scalability from reuse (e.g. reusing an auth library). Or what's likely cheaper is budgeting for that patch in the game. You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games…
> So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion.
They don't need to keep services running perpetually. strags's objection seemed to be that it could be infeasible to release services like authentication that they're still running, to which I'm saying they don't really need to consider any of this until they stop running it.
> You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math.
Releasing or patching it out is largely just fulfilling their side of the deal.
If I sell you a lawnmower that depends on some authentication server to start up, then shut down the server the next day (I got your money, why would I keep the cost?), and don't release the server code or a patch to work without it, then would you not say I've scammed you?
The resource cost of everyone I've sold to losing access to their lawnmowers would be far greater than what it'd cost me to release a patch, just that the former is not a cost borne by me if the law allows me to ignore it.
> I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games than trying to play a multiplayer only game 20 years later wtih 6 people on the server.
Allowing a company to cut people off of their software (large cost) just to save having to push out a patch (small cost) will, on net, result on more expensive products - since on net you're wasting more resources.
Particularly when it comes to authentication checks, this doesn't just apply to multiplayer games. Imagine if this applied to other forms of media (already kind of happening with DRM), like if we couldn't read books from over 20 years ago.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#376This is some remnant of the stop killing games initiative no doubt. Bad for the industry as a whole, and piratesoftware didn’t deserve to be dragged for being against it, in spite of his other flaws.
He was dragged for persistently lying about it, doing everything in his power to shut down discussion of it, and being absurdly hostile on a personal level to the founder of the initiative unprovoked. Not for being against it.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? The point is that game developers would never be able to use commercial libraries again. Thus making all development significantly more expensive.
But what commercial software licenses are you using to write backend server architecture for a video game? There's no need for a dependency on FMOD or anything (unless you're doing something very unusual)
Big AAA games have access to Unreal or Unity code and they change the code to fit their needs. They are not able to share the Unity/Unreal code
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has an easy solution. If the middleware cannot be used in a new regulatory environment then it will either die or adapt.
This is not the only possible outcome. Another approach would be not to offer software within the affected region. U.S. local news is often not available to European visitors now due to GDPR. Similarly, Canadian news outlets are not available on Facebook due to Bill C-18. If I was an indie game developer I would consider this approach and simply avoid selling within California. Larger game studios would likely adjust…
Lets skip California, the 5th biggest economy in the world.
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#379It 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 th…
> open source server code if you are going to cease support When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Le…
> Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used
Your company did not tracked libraries licenses in the first place?
Re: Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. You wouldn't get scalability from reuse (e.g. reusing an auth library). Or what's likely cheaper is budgeting for that patch in the game. You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games…
> So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. They don't need to keep services running perpetually. strags's objection seemed to be that it could be infeasible to release services like authentication that they're still running, to which I'm saying they don't really need to consider any of this until they stop running it. > You may bemoa…
"If I sell you a lawnmower that depends on some authentication server to start up, then shut down the server the next day (I got your money, why would I keep the cost?), and don't release the server code or a patch to work without it, then would you not say I've scammed you?"
A lawnmower isn't a piece of software. It's not licensed. There's an expectation it should continue working. The lawnmower is a single player game.
I think it's understood that online games are a license (read multiplayer ones, not the Crew).
If I sell you an IoT lawnmower, and you get 20 years out of it, do I owe you a full refund if I shut down my server? imo, any refund should be prorated.
I get your externalities argument, but I think multiplayer games should be treated differently if there's not an easy solution.
>Allowing a company to cut people off of their software (large cost) just to save having to push out a patch (small cost) will, on net, result on more expensive products - since on net you're wasting more resources.
I don't think all the patches are small costs when you factor in licensing, etc. Also keep in mind if you use a library for networking and the API changes, do you have to then roll it on your own? I'm skeptical of the middleware that's made life easier
>Allowing a company to cut people off of their software (large cost) just to save having to push out a patch (small cost) will, on net, result on more expensive products - since on net you're wasting more resources.
This doesn't logically follow. Mandating you need to put out a patch creates a legal obligation that would sit on your books. Cutting the 12 people off your multiplayer game after 20 years isn't a large cost, and it's not going to make your next game more expensive. It was an externality that made consumers sad, not one making products more expensive.
>Particularly when it comes to authentication checks, this doesn't just apply to multiplayer games. Imagine if this applied to other forms of media (already kind of happening with DRM), like if we couldn't read books from over 20 years ago.
I think the DRM thing is a separate issue from the mandate for recoding games to be usable post server shutdown. I'd like it to be legislated separately as well. The books are analogous to single player games.
I think it's a slippery slope to turn that entitlement onto multiplayer games; if not that, then why not all software that you buy? Everyone should get a full refund when any software EoL's and companies go bankrupt whenever an online product stops being profitable.
You don't get a full refund in other sectors when they kill the consumable after a long while. Printer cartridges can stop being made and you don't get a refund for your printer. We didn't give HP the option "make your competitors ink work on your printer, give full refunds, support indefinitely, or open up your ink manufacturing line blueprints".