They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game.
Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.
The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
61–70 of 294 posts
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The binaries can be obfuscated.
Not meaningfully. AI-guided reverse-engineering is very effective. This also isn't relevant to third-party code obtained under license. It is a de facto restriction on code dependencies, which may significantly increase development costs.
While AI isn't particularly good with obfuscated code, it is true that code obfuscation in most old games can be removed relatively easily. The attack and defense state-of-the-art has moved on from those days.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#63> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination. I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for tho…
So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)
I assume you're actually a gamer, and not just an economist speculating on a market you're not exposed to? Because I don't know how to reconcile your comment with my reality. There are tons of live-service single-purchase games, I would even say they the overwhelmingly default model in 2026 compared to WoW-style subscription games.
If you want an answer to your "continuous cost without continuous revenue" riddle, the answer is in-game purchases, DLC, attracting new accounts over time, and the unspoken unadvertised promise "we can cut our losses at any time and shut down servers." This lattermost incentive is what is unhealthy for the market and what should be regulated to no longer be an incentive (short of having peer- or community-hosted servers, at least).
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)
It also covers games with any form of MTX, even if the base game is free. So most live service games.
I don't read it that way. "Free-to-play" games generally include games with microtransactions, and the bill text does nothing to disagree with that:
> (b) This section does not apply to any of the following:
> (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.
This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#65Releasing server-side code would be a non-starter for lots of companies. For one, many of them don't actually own all of the code they use to implement the game server. There's lots of proprietary middleware in use in online games. Perhaps a workaround is to just have 1 server online indefinitely. Technically the online services are still functional - the match queue times would just be very, very large.
Release a spec. Release a binary distribution. I’m sure they could find a way to make it happen if it was in the studios’ interest.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#66> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination. I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for tho…
California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven! If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.
Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think.
Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)
I assume you're actually a gamer, and not just an economist speculating on a market you're not exposed to? Because I don't know how to reconcile your comment with my reality. There are tons of live-service single-purchase games, I would even say they the overwhelmingly default model in 2026 compared to WoW-style subscription games. If you want an answer to your "continuous cost without continuous revenue" riddle, the…
See Diablo 4. One time purchase, live service game. I'm almost certain blizzard makes most of its revenue from it on the cosmetics shop.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#68They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game. Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.
I mentioned this in a separate thread. It seems like a huge risk to release an online game if you don't do this now. A single bad game can take down a studio. Now there's even more risk because a previously successful game may come with a big bill in the future if you have to do refunds or some late architecture change when you instead want to take a product down to save money.
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#69They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game. Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.
These laws just complicate things, make it more expensive to run a game company and these government people don't get it. This will just result in making it more expensive to make games and keep them running. On top of that, it incentivises subscription based games.
> 'it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.'
The only winners are lawyers. NOT gamers. The lawyers always like to call their laws "protect X" lol
Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)
We shall call it the Diablo 4 law.
Don’t a bunch of shooters also follow this model?