Just don't design the game so that, when the business model stops working, every paid copy becomes a brick
The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
21–30 of 172 posts
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#22Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#23The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…
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Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#24I imagine the end result will be another layer of online subscription.
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#25Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...
> Now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features.
Good riddance. Online features suck. Make your game multiplayer or make it singleplayer. Don't add pointless online features.
PS all you need to make sure it works is release the server once you stop supporting it yourself.
> They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud micro services.
Give people the docker file.
> 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.
That's more AAA stuff not indie.
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#26A lot of “yes, but…” in this comment section. Hard to tell if it’s HN playing contrarian as it usually loves to do, or just people so brainwashed they default to defending corporate interests.
Nothing makes me as hopeless for the future as reading people trying to one up the negativity about any initiative at all, and if no one did anything, they’d hit you with the snarky ‘go vote to make your voice heard instead of complaining’
It takes big balls to fight publishers and even more massive to fight the internet and the pseudo-intellectual snark of internet commenters. The entire SKG initiative has my support and perhaps it’s the only thing that might convince me that ordinary citizens actually have any say at all in directing legislation.
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#27Good cause, but society has rapidly moved passed them just switching off games after people bought them. Now the hardware production companies for gaming are winding down and not producing gaming computer parts because megacorp datacenter parts have a much higher margin. The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud; a context in which these "stop killing games" arguments will have much less lever…
Hardware scarcity and cloud incentives are real, but they're also part of the same broader trend: more dependency on centralized providers, less control for the buyer
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#28I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.
Not everything is economic value. For gamers, an online game can be a community hub, part of their identity, a hobby. It’s not about whether they got their money’s worth, it’s about destroying a virtual “place” they’re emotionally and socially invested, and the specific skill they posses when they’re there.
I think this is the root of it and what the article describes in the first half. I suspect owning a copy of a game will soon be completely eliminated and replaced w the subscription model. Then when subscription dollars stop flowing, the company naturally winds down the service.
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#29I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.
So who gets to be the arbiter of how much time $70 is worth? You? The companies making the games? Why should they get to destroy games—gone, forever, with no chance of retrieval or resurrection—that hundreds of people put their time and love into, and millions of people want to play, just because they think it'll make this quarter's stock price numbers look better? Copyright was created to protect the rights of the c…
Why would you buy my new game if you're spending all your attention on the one I sold you 10 years ago?
Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
#30The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…
“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere
"deemed". the past tense is doing a lot of work here.