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The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

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Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#71

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

gwerbin wrote: post #53
pibaker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

> See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#72

Post by numpad0 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38
phreack wrote: post #2

> 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.)

This is really about Ubisoft's The Crew, a one-time-paid mostly-singleplayer car race game about infights and revenges in an illegal street racing group, that required Internet connection, which server got shut down. So yeah.

The required connection and authentication was likely an anti-piracy measure, so kind of doubly yeah.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#73

Post by gib444 »

It looks less like a ban on killing games, and more like a road-map for how publishers could change products/marketing/T&Cs to avoid flak and liability.

(Not an ideal source btw: "This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of NC AI." The Bill is tiny can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... )

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#74

Post by argentite »

bob1029 wrote: post #9
wagwang wrote: post #3

The reasonable compromise should be to force devs to release server binaries if they are not willing to run the servers themselves.

I don't think forcing a person or business to divulge their intellectual property, simply because they no longer wish to provide downstream products or services, is reasonable. That said, as a consumer I really don't like when something goes away. Overwatch 1 was probably the most brutal experience for me. In the end, I don't think anyone has any kind of special entitlements here. The server binaries will almost alwa…

> now you are also compelling the individual or business to do additional (presumably unpaid) work

This is not unpaid work as they had already received payment at the time of purchase of the game. They should take into account the cost associated with this work at the time of sale.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#75

Post by Akronymus »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #64
Akronymus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 availabl…

> > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration.

I'd argue buying any form of MTX creates a monetary consideration. Though, I guess it is kind of a gray area that's gonna have to be ruled on.

> This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.

I didn't intend to mean additional stuff being free. I meant additional stuff you can buy, resulting in the no monetary considerations carveout not applying.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#76

Post by ocdtrekkie »

Paracompact wrote: post #63
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38

Earlier 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…

There are a bunch of these, and they are silly/unviable. I see a lot more free-to-play than single-purchase live service games, but the latter is a fun additional exploit in that they get you to pay up front for something that they never have any intention to survive long-term.

Currently I'm heavily playing both a free-to-play with microtransactions title (Heroes of the Storm) and a subscription title (EVE Online), both of which are live service games which would be exempt from this bill by definition, but are both games I would meaningfully like to play even if the companies decided they didn't want to run them anymore. (Yes, I'm aware both games I am playing regularly are old as time itself.)

Meanwhile, yes, there are single purchase games with an online model, and they fail and get shut down because they were never sustainable to begin with. The bill would arguably cover something like the FPS-of-the-years which are intended to grab everyone's attention for a few months and then die off when the company needs you to buy the next version of the title because they get no recurring revenue from you continuing to play the current one. (See Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc.)

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#77

Post by Ukv »

Manuel_D wrote: post #57

Releasing 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.

> There's lots of proprietary middleware in use in online games

If bills like this pass, there'd be financial pressure on middleware providers to allow distribution at end-of-life (or for their component to be easily severed) else they'd lose out on all customers selling games in California/EU/etc.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#78

Post by jonhohle »

I’ve thought about how to introduce a bill and find sponsors for extending first sale and related rights to digital goods. I understand the current terms and licensing, but we’ve lost too much to non-transferable contracts and millennials and later will likely have no books, music, or games that can be inherited by their children. It’s crazy that after thousands of years of sharing copies of writings, hundreds of years of sharing recordings, and decades of sharing games, we’re going to give it all up because it’s a license now.

The problem is, where to even start? I would think EFF would be spearheading something like this, but I haven’t come across anything. There have been attempts in the past, but they don’t seem to have ongoing support.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#79

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #67
Paracompact wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

also pretty much all first person shooters are in this category

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#80

Post by jnovek »

gwerbin wrote: post #53
pibaker wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?
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