The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by ninalanyon » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

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…

I don't know how it works in the US but in the UK a contract term that you cannot read before purchase is simply not part of the contract and hence completely unenforceable. As far as I can tell this is the case all over the world, except it seems the US.

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

#92

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

DaSHacka wrote: post #67

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."

Well, then prevent that via regulation, too. It fatalistic to say "Well, we just can't possibly regulate companies, because they will surely find loopholes and avoid the regulation!" The answer is to write better, more thorough regulation that prevents loopholes. That shouldn't be such a tall order!

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

#93

Post by yndoendo » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

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…

This is why I stopped playing Call of Duty after the original Modern Warfare 2. After self hosting servers were removed, the game became less fun.

Solutions to this modern problem was solved during the dialup and LAN party era. None of those single player games required an online launcher.

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

#94

Post by 1123581321 » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:12 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #92

DaSHacka wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

Well, then prevent that via regulation, too. It fatalistic to say "Well, we just can't possibly regulate companies, because they will surely find loopholes and avoid the regulation!" The answer is to write better, more thorough regulation that prevents loopholes. That shouldn't be such a tall order!

Just write a regulation that every game developer has to make a great game, not charge too much, support it for years, and give it away for free as soon as it's not popular. That way, we'll only have great games and archives of great free games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM

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

#95

Post by teeray » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

Companies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say “we need to shut this down because we’re losing money on it.” On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: “but that’s our IP and it’s valuable to us.” You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to society.

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

#96

Post by teeray » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #83

mysterydip wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then they should not be allowed to use words like “buy” in the online stores.

I wish legislators would poison marketing language more frequently in cases like this. It’s bad enough with “unlimited* data”.

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

#97

Post by knollimar » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #79

knollimar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have add a "easily releasable" clause then the game companies could just do something that makes it not-so, e.g. a shell company that owns the code and they only "licence" it without permission to release it or whatever would fly under that law.

Yeah I understand it's unworkable; I don't think it's a serious suggestion. It is the cwtegory I want to target.

I personally would just put like a $200k sales carveout and that would make me happy.

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

#98

Post by knollimar » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

gosub100 wrote: post #85

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…

Effectively you're saying it's ok to steal, because "it's just from 60 people, c'mon". Try stealing from 60 different corporations and see how that works out.

Im saying they got years of enjoyment out if it and they probably didn't expect servers to actually stay up forever.

It's not stealing in that sense. You're enshrining "devs can't sell a 1 time payment license to an ongoing service" as a right and I simply disagree.

Your framing relies on devs not being allowed to sell this license. I don't think banning them is healthy.

If they marked the buy button "license" like California will soon mandate, would that suffice for you, or do you actually demand a perpetual experience?

Edit: also corps frequently short each other very slightly all the time. No one makes some outrage about small amounts like that.

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

#99

Post by knollimar » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:50 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #82

knollimar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some games are perfectly fine without online features yet they still got shut off. Mirrors Edge Catalyst only used online for leaderboards and challenges, everything else was entirely single player, yet it’s not possible to play it anymore because they wanted to shut off the servers yet designed the game to not run without them, even though it’s a single player game. That should not be ok. It wasn’t sold with a discl…

It probably was sold with a disclaimer tbh.

I wish we could target this specifically.

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

#100

Post by customguy » Sun, Jun 07, 2026, 9:59 PM UTC

Here's an idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's not new: instead of forcing all game devs to ensure longevity, just make clear criteria for what constitutes that longevity, and developers that meet them (or promise to meet them when they shut down) can slap a nice bright logo onto their game. Something like the rating system, except it's a line that's only there for games that claim they are "yours forever". Steam would have a filter for it, and so on.

Then you can make the punishments/fines for breaking that promise draconian, since nobody has to opt in.

Most single-player games would have the logo out of the box, gamers would come to expect it for those, and take a good hard look at single player games that don't have it. With multiplayer games it would be more varied, but there would now be a very clear incentive to see if it might not be possible after all to do what is needed to get that label, especially if none of your competitors have it. And most importantly when planning new games, you'd double check every decision would disqualify the game for it.