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Stop Killing Games

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Re: Stop Killing Games

#81

Post by ashdnazg »

dijit wrote: post #70
fragmede wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the server binary doesn't start unless you have 190GiB of RAM and 38 available CPUs. > So, we'd have to work on slimming that down ...why? My reading of the law is that you need to make the binaries accessible, you don't have to provide the hardware to run it on.

Community backlash will be fierce if it's not actually runnable. Ubisoft doesn't have the most stellar reputation for example (I don't work there anymore) so people look at things we do by accident as if they are intentionally malicious. Also, the California law is one law, the EU is also looking at this and it's likely to look different - that's why "Stop Killing Games" doesn't really mean anything yet, even people…

The key is communication. If the company says the binary has a certain min. requirement, then the vast majority of people will accept that.

Of course there'll be idiots, but I doubt you'll see a stronger backlash than to a company shutting down the servers without any solution, like they can do now.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#82

Post by dijit »

ashdnazg wrote: post #77
dijit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ok, you grasped at a few issues there that go off in different directions. The issue with "Stop Killing Games" is that the legislation doesn't currently look like anything, it's a broad appeal and the solution for studios will depend on where it finally lands. If it lands in the realm of "Games must be released FOSS after x years" then, aside from the fact that a lot of the times we don't own the copyrights to…

> But the server binary doesn't start unless you have 190GiB of RAM and 38 available CPUs. As far as I understand that situation is accepted by the initiative. The requirement is not that it works on any specific hardware or software stack, just that it can theoretically work. > a binary that can be used to create cheats against the next version of the product Anti-cheat solutions aren't required to be released, and…

What you're saying is true for the californian legislation, but not the EU which is currently being drafted (in a different direction) - nor the direction of the authors article, and like I replied in a sibling response: it's not like people would be pleased to get our binaries.

Second: anti-cheat itself is a fucking joke. A crutch, a last ditch hail-mary because we ran out of time to batten down the hatches or things were changed so often from the start of the project to the end that we couldn't add safety into the protocol design properly.

Exposing how our systems think about how you move, how you shoot, when AI ticks, when loot ticks, behaviour trees and how phase transitions are computed: gives an attacker a hell of a lot of leverage.

To put this into broader easier to understand terms: ask yourself why it's so easy to cheat in Unreal Engine games vs Battlefield.

It's not the anti-cheat. It's the complexity of digging through the engine and knowing what the memory is doing and what the server is doing.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#83

Post by mattbis »

Stop playing games ;

Can't see how an independent developer would ever be able to do this. We need more independent things not less... this would be my concern.

Better legislation would be to force developers to at least allow people to run their own servers.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#84

Post by ashdnazg »

john_strinlai wrote: post #79
fragmede wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the server binary doesn't start unless you have 190GiB of RAM and 38 available CPUs. > So, we'd have to work on slimming that down ...why? My reading of the law is that you need to make the binaries accessible, you don't have to provide the hardware to run it on.

> My reading of the law is that you need to make the binaries accessible, you don't have to provide the hardware to run it on. if no one can run the binaries, despite them being accessible, then the regulation has failed and there will be a new movement to alter the regulation. the spirit of the law is that i can reasonably spin up an instance of the server for me and my friends to play.

Kind of depends on the definition of no one.

If the company puts an artificial proof of work demanding a rack of the latest data center GPUs, that should be illegal.

If the binary has the same hardware requirements that the company used when the service was up, I see it as totally fair.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#85

Post by stuaxo »

I think they are taking a limited[1] but pragmatic approach.

[1] This is still way more than the industry would want.

If the are successful we will see quite a bit more open source.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#86

Post by F3nd0 »

dijit wrote: post #63
F3nd0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As not a game dev myself, may I ask for clarification? How does ‘Stop Killing Games’ legislation kill any sort of multiplayer games specifically? Aren’t there already games which don’t have the problem the movement is trying to solve? Wouldn’t it only require action from you if you were trying to kill multiplayer in the first place? I feel like I may have misunderstood your point or am just lacking a lot of important…

Well, ok, you grasped at a few issues there that go off in different directions. The issue with "Stop Killing Games" is that the legislation doesn't currently look like anything, it's a broad appeal and the solution for studios will depend on where it finally lands. If it lands in the realm of "Games must be released FOSS after x years" then, aside from the fact that a lot of the times we don't own the copyrights to…

Wow, thank you for the detailed answer! I understand your point much better now.

I still think ‘kills any sort of multiplayer games’ (what the other dev said) is a gross exaggeration, since you list some ways this could be made to work, but it sounds like some things would cost significantly more resources and need to be done differently. But hey, maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (Plus, there are multiplayer games which aren’t quite as resource-intensive on the server side.)

Re: Stop Killing Games

#87

Post by doctorpangloss »

saghm wrote: post #27
F3nd0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > > Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between soft…

In that vein, the other day this got posted to HN: https://twilitrealm.dev/ It uses an independent reimplementation of the code of a Zelda game from the GameCube and combines them with the assets from the actual game to make native binaries for various platforms, which blows my mind a bit but demonstrates the power of this sort of split abstraction.

what power, exactly? that nintendo doesn't care about these guys for some idiosyncratic reason?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#88

Post by 0xy »

cogman10 wrote: post #61
0xy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you deserve free labor from a game developer that you paid a nominal amount to 10 years ago, not to mention infrastructure costs. At no point did you purchase unlimited free online service forever, by the way. The game developer did not promise that, and you hold no contract with them mandating free labor and infrastructure perpetually. It's the equivalent of paying $10 to enter an all-you-can-eat restaurant a…

I purchased a toy that I expect to be able to continue playing with long after the company that made that toy loses interest in it. I don't expect the company to run servers for my toy, I can do that if they gave that opportunity. The way the industry currently operates is you show up to an all you can eat buffet, pay your $10, and then they give you a 30 page contract that you have to sign before you can start eatin…

Games explicitly do not promise online features remain available perpetually. No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either.

I also completely disagree that "it doesn't cost Valve anything to run Half Life". Firstly, it's patently incorrect, given Half Life has received 20+ updates in the last 5 years alone. Secondly, it's technically incorrect, given Steam going offline prevents you from opening Half Life at all. Newsflash, Steam games have CEG DRM and will not function for long periods of time without Steam.

Steam shuts down tomorrow, guess what? None of your games are working without a third party workaround. Even if you had them installed.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#89

Post by Telaneo »

itvision wrote: post #74

I love it but how do people tolerate the Steam launcher? Why is it a requirement to launch ages old games that lost support aens ago and do not even support Windows 10/11 and the best way to launch them is under emulation or virtualization, e.g. in Windows XP, but modern Steam is not compatible with XP, so ... you're screwed? Valve could have made `steam.dll` optional for really old games but DRM is DRM and it's here…

> Valve could have made `steam.dll` optional for really old games but DRM is DRM and it's here to stay.

It mostly is if you digging a bit. Yes, it should work out of the box, but at least it's possible to make it work. When the battle of getting games to not permanently break is still being fought (not to mention that there's (somehow?!) significant sentiment that games permanently breaking isn't an actual problem), there's little wonder why the battle of inconvenient DRM isn't really happening.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#90

Post by john_strinlai »

ashdnazg wrote: post #84
john_strinlai wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My reading of the law is that you need to make the binaries accessible, you don't have to provide the hardware to run it on. if no one can run the binaries, despite them being accessible, then the regulation has failed and there will be a new movement to alter the regulation. the spirit of the law is that i can reasonably spin up an instance of the server for me and my friends to play.

Kind of depends on the definition of no one. If the company puts an artificial proof of work demanding a rack of the latest data center GPUs, that should be illegal. If the binary has the same hardware requirements that the company used when the service was up, I see it as totally fair.

true, but i think this would be exceptionally difficult (if not impossible) to enforce.

ubisoft would surely be willing to spend an extra $500k on server hardware while developing a $25MM game, and subtlety bloat their server-side code so that they can say "this is the hardware we had to use to run it".

there are a million ways to slow down code/increase hardware requirements that look plausible.

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