The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act' • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by etiennebausson » Sat, May 30, 2026, 6:59 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #156

Dig1t wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not irrational, the comments literally explain in great detail the downsides of the regulation. For example one commenter in this thread said: >See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. This is an objectively true and prove-able statement. What is irrational about that? WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it crea…

The "in favor of SUVs" part only exists because light trucks were specifically exempted from regulations to pander to specific subsets of voters.

It's not voting policy, it's protectionism.

It's all about limiting foreign build vehicle encroachment on US market.

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

#242

Post by RandomGerm4n » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:09 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #175

wsve wrote: post #142

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk. Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a compan…

There's so many renditions of these style bills that it's hard to keep track what's in this specific one. From what I can tell this one doesn't include provisions to protect indie shops/solo devs. The entire time spent developing a game is a net loss until release (and probability wise, probably still a loss then). So this is adding more upfront cost to devs. The bill text I found is also one of the more generic vers…

> There's also the likelihood of the server architecture requiring many moving pieces. Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

There are already several Fortnite servers available for self-hosting. Fans have created these on their own without access to the official code, and they run on a standard PC or a custom-built server using off-the-shelf hardware. One example of this is Project Reboot, which is publicly available on GitHub. People use it to play older Fortnite seasons or to play the game with friends on unsupported platforms like Linux.

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

#243

Post by watwut » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:16 AM UTC

sowbug wrote: post #125

Sharlin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It incentivizes subscription-based games.

Not exactly the same thing, but a few years ago the law changed to require a sesame-allergen notice on foods that had sesame. Some manufacturers starting adding sesame to foods that didn't need it, because they concluded that including the notice was easier than guaranteeing that their product was sesame-free. The intent of the law was to protect people with sesame allergies, but the result was fewer choices for them…

The result was same choices as before, but more information about it.

Per manufacturers, these were unsafe to eat things - they just wanted to kinda preted there is no danger in them.

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

#244

Post by RandomGerm4n » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:18 AM UTC

maccard wrote: post #191

wsve wrote: post #142

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk. Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a compan…

Here’s a few, as someone who has worked in games for 12 years. Most games have code and design decisions that hark back 25+ years. Every single unreal engine game for example is based code written in the mid 2000s and some parts of the engine really feel like it. Online components are developed the same way. If you made a multiplayer game 10 years ago and it was successful, your next game is going to be built on top…

> Am I responsible for providing a fallback to EOS, or Steam, or playfab in case their services are decommissioned?

In this case, the company offering this service should be responsible for making it possible to host the service independently before discontinuing it. However, games that use such standardized services are actually less problematic in practice. For Steam, for example, there is the Goldberg Steam Emulator, which emulates Steam’s online features. Games that do not have additional DRM or any extra features but simply use the standard Steamworks SDK for multiplayer can be played entirely without the Steam client or server using this emulator. Even for services that had already been shut down, like Gamespy back then, Openspy quickly emerged as an alternative. Not all games worked right away, but the community fixed most of the issues very quickly. So, in the end, the games that use some kind of custom solution built by the developer themselves are much more important.

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

#245

Post by RandomGerm4n » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:28 AM UTC

hadlock wrote: post #94

paradox460 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available

After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of t…

> After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years.

That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.

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

#246

Post by db48x » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:33 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #162

XorNot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not pressure to release the source code. Its that they need to release the server so anyone can run it. From Day 1 any Doom client could be a multiplayer server and this is how it worked for almost all games - Descent, Quake, C&C etc...

Right, but presumably the Doom and Quake server code was written by id Technologies themselves. That's not the case with a lot of modern multiplayer games. They license middleware like Photon Engine and don't have the rights to redistribute the server software, even in binary format. I guess they could just strip our the parts of the server code that they don't have the rights to redistribute, but then it wouldn't be…

Or just not use that kind of component in the first place. There are bound to be alternatives that they could use and redistribute.

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

#247

Post by phyzix5761 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

wsve wrote: post #142

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk. Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a compan…

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 micro services.

A single match might require separate proprietary systems for matchmaking, player inventories, anti cheat, metrics tracking, and database management. Many of those come with licenses that don't allow you to just give away the code for free.

Disentangling the actual game logic from these third party platforms like AWS or Epic Online Services requires months of rewriting code. At that point you're basically re-inventing the wheel on so many technologies that your costs go up exponentially.

Games are rarely built entirely from scratch by a single company and are usually packed with licensed proprietary third party software. Because the studio doesn't own the rights to distribute these proprietary tools to the public for free then releasing a standalone server forces them to spend extensive legal and development hours stripping out the restricted code and replacing it with open source alternatives.

Releasing server code also exposes the inner workings of the company's technology. If a studio uses the same proprietary engine or backend framework for their active money making games then releasing the server code for a dead game essentially hands hackers and competitors a roadmap to exploit their current profitable titles.

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

#248

Post by maccard » Sat, May 30, 2026, 9:04 AM UTC

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #239

maccard wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dedicated hackers already find a way around limitations. By that logic there’s no reason to do any of this.

After years of plugging away at it, sure. We can't rely on years of free labor from the community to make the games we bought work. Even if they had to substitute some proprietary libraries, it would be a much better starting point.

Oh I agree - I don’t think saying hackers will find a way is a good solution at all!

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

#249

Post by maccard » Sat, May 30, 2026, 9:13 AM UTC

RandomGerm4n wrote: post #244

maccard wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a few, as someone who has worked in games for 12 years. Most games have code and design decisions that hark back 25+ years. Every single unreal engine game for example is based code written in the mid 2000s and some parts of the engine really feel like it. Online components are developed the same way. If you made a multiplayer game 10 years ago and it was successful, your next game is going to be built on top…

> Am I responsible for providing a fallback to EOS, or Steam, or playfab in case their services are decommissioned? In this case, the company offering this service should be responsible for making it possible to host the service independently before discontinuing it. However, games that use such standardized services are actually less problematic in practice. For Steam, for example, there is the Goldberg Steam Emulat…

> In this case, the company offering this service should be responsible for making it possible to host the service independently before discontinuing it

So AWS are now contractually required to offer all of their managed services to be self hostable or they can’t be used in games?

> For Steam, for example, there is the Goldberg Steam Emulator

So open source reverse engineered solutions are ok? Why aren’t they acceptable for games instead of the underlying platform? Why is it ok for a game that uses steam for online services but not epic (as there’s presumably no equivalent emulator), or an in house tech?

> Games that do not have additional DRM or any extra features but simply use the standard Steamworks SDK for multiplayer can be played entirely without the Steam client or server using this emulator

And those games are unaffected by anything that will come from this law.

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

#250

Post by FeepingCreature » Sat, May 30, 2026, 10:27 AM UTC

pokstad wrote: post #138

ryandrake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, CA should get rid of those loopholes, too! We need to culturally accept things like "zero day law patches" for loopholes and unintended consequences. Legislators, don't just pass a law, see it incentivizing something unintended, and then throw up your hands crying "Well, we tried!" Patch the law as soon as the bad behavior starts!

Loopholes are possible from excessive regulations. Regulating everything will never stop. Vote with your money and support game studios that provide the best online support. Or buy games that are standalone purchases that don’t require online services.

Or vote with your vote and support lawmakers that make good laws.