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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

#61

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

knollimar wrote: post #51
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…

Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.

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

#62

Post by knollimar »

zamalek wrote: post #39
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-...

This the lobbyist's FUD, and SKG are so up-front with the reasonable constraints that it makes it pretty obvious that this is a paid piece. Edit: oh, it's yours. Spend 5 minutes understanding exactly what SKG have said they are not asking for.

California AB1921 notably doesn't match those opinions.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

vblanco wrote: post #52
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 p…

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by Kiro »

mysterydip wrote: post #15
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…

“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere

I don't see how the publisher is relevant here. It would be the developer saying that.

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

#65

Post by knollimar »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #61
knollimar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.

Not every game has a server architecture like that. There's been a Renaissance of indie multuplayer due to good libraries and third party dependencies.

Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games.

I'd be 100% for "if your game has an easily releasable server you have to release it on EoS" but this bill isn't it.

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

#66

Post by aurareturn »

tetha wrote: post #54
aurareturn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Releasing the server code isn't always ideal. There's likely a ton of secrets, hardcoding, and exploits.

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

#67

Post by DaSHacka »

emptybits wrote: post #40

Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Then let gamers decide. Example: If I'm reminded, at purchase time, that this $70 game will work online for 24 months and single-player offline for 36 months, then I can make an informed decision before I buy. Studios would be forced to bring their business plan into visibility and be held to a lev…

> Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for.

Companies would just default to saying "we reserve the right to shut off online connectivity at any time."

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

#68

Post by Devasta »

emptybits wrote: post #40

Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Then let gamers decide. Example: If I'm reminded, at purchase time, that this $70 game will work online for 24 months and single-player offline for 36 months, then I can make an informed decision before I buy. Studios would be forced to bring their business plan into visibility and be held to a lev…

That's fine if "gamers" are my age, but 3 years for a 12 year old is an eternity. This isn't a thing which can be handled like the cookie consent popups.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by anankaie »

bpavuk wrote: post #42
vitalyan1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fortunately, that's been already attempted and despite the best circumstances imaginable resulted in a much welcome failure. >On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service was shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google refunded all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. even more fortunately, further atte…

some timing-sensitive games such as Clair Obscur (parry) or I Am Your Beast (movement)? sure, they depend on low latency. that said, GeForce Now is, sadly, pretty good nowadays. enough to play a moderately fast paced game such as DEATHLOOP. Ukraine, streaming from Germany. 5 GHz is basically required, but in slower-paced games, on a phone, with 720p streaming, you can get by with 4G. even games are not really a moat…

Clair Obscur was perfectly playable for me through GeForce Now, for what it is worth, even when hitting parry timing. (N = 1, but a datum nonetheless)
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