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The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

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Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#51

Post by knollimar »

ryandrake wrote: post #9

The 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…

It's hardly a whim if a game runs 15 years, they announce "our active playerbase is 60 people" and the game shuts down.

I think we need to stop treating it as a dichotomy.

There's an understanding it won't last forever, when you buy a multiplayer game, ans making devs make offline versions in the cases where its trivial is going to bite indie game studios.

Gamers have repeatedly shown they dont like subs. Its hard to model "we want to charge you 40 cents per month, escalating with inflation" but thats what youre asking for

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#52

Post by vblanco »

dpcan wrote: post #6

I’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.

Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines. Any argument against SKG is lobbyst nonsense. With the very specific exception of stuff like MMOs. We are seeing cases of pirates being able to play those "turned off games" through cracks and private servers, so there is absolutely 0 reason why the publisher cant already do it.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#53

Post by cogman10 »

mystraline wrote: post #44
cogman10 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufact…

My opinion is that is a fraudulent rental masquerading as a sale. And any and all EULAs or similar documents presented after a sale should be completely null and void. But any corporation attempting to that should be fined a signficant portion of their revenue. Past that, dissolution of company. But no, we live in a shit society that someone who signs up for a demo of Disney+ and then has his wife die due to bad food…

Yeah, contract law is simply busted here. If it were sane, these contracts would be deemed null and void. In fact, common contract law does require that both sides be compensated. It doesn't require fair or reasonable compensation and that's the big problem.

But I think there is an argument to be made that the EULA has no compensation. Since payment has already been made for the product, it's completely one sided.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#54

Post by tetha »

aurareturn wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The 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…

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 is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever. Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total…

So release the server code as OSS, data necessary to function & support community servers. Even in a crappy hard-to-support way, the community will usually figure out a way.

IMO, the move from community servers over to matchmaking & vendor only servers being the only viable option was a huge disservice to the long-levity of games. If I find the code around here, I could still get a Tremulous server running today for a few bucks, even if I haven't played that game for 20+ years.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#55

Post by cm2012 »

vblanco wrote: post #48
phyzix5761 wrote: post #22

Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...

Im a professional gamedev. There is pretty much no indie on earth who actually depends on cloud systems to work, because that stuff is expensive and indies dont have money. Thats a megacorp thing particularly from AAA publishers. Indies are either singleplayer (this is 0 problem) or they have local servers. That article is paid for by the lobbysts and completely incorrect and wrong.

Two of my favorite games of all, Chivalry 2 and Hell Let Loose, are indie studio games and this law would make more expensive to make.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#56

Post by knollimar »

RobotToaster wrote: post #19
dpcan wrote: post #6

I’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.

Counterpoint: UK law gives you six years to sue if goods are faulty or otherwise not as advertised, why should software be any different?

6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#57

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #38
zahlman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you are replying to doesn't argue any such thing, and is pretty clear in its explanation of how your position is perfectly compatible with what is requested.

The author is arguing for it. This is what the post was saying: 1. No nerfing to the game/service whatsoever. This means you can't just kill online play. Ever. 2. Charge a monthly price or significantly increase the purchasing price. Clearly neither of these are viable for most games and the game industry.

[deleted]

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#58

Post by bethekidyouwant »

ajuc wrote: post #25
phyzix5761 wrote: post #22

Why 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…

Any sufficiently popular multiplayer Indy game gets ruined by cheaters.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#59

Post by knollimar »

junaru wrote: post #41
sph wrote: post #26

A 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…

You can't make a person see a problem if his livelihood depends on not seeing it. In my gaming circles, people who work on SaaS solutions are against SKG even though they are avid gamers and even open source contributors. They just recoil on a thought of an EOL plan. Same on HN. "Think of the indies" is just same old "Think of the children" astroturfing.

Or they have an indie game theyre "making" and being forced to build an EOL plan for a game that will statistically be a flop is silly to them.

I feel a carveout for total says, say $200k USD or less, would be reasonable. Otherwise you're just conscripting indie time.

I was working on a game, but I'm not looking forward to releasing updates everytime steam changes their relay. Considering scrapping multiplayer completely.

Re: The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

#60

Post by danaris »

0x59 wrote: post #29
danaris wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why should we let these kinds of concerns dictate what happens with our cultural heritage?

Why should profit be the first, last, and only consideration when it comes to deciding whether the art of today is even possible to view tomorrow?

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