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Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

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Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#81

Post by konimex »

maccard wrote: post #68
DexesTTP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would result in fewer online games that stop working altogether when the publisher wants to stop it. All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this. It's really not that complicated. Not "free", of course, but it's not exactly expensive either if you plan to do that from the moment you write your first line of code.

Game developer here. If it were “just” that easy I’d love to support this. > All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this You’re making a huge assumption here both about the scope of the law, and about how straightforward this is to do. I’ve worked in games where we could drop a server binary over the fence an that would b…

> What if I rely on steam, or epic for P2P and they shutter the service? What if playfab discontinue their offering, or AWS decide to remove a service that our “mini self hosted server” relies upon. Games aren’t some magical piece of technology, they’re just software like everything else.

Not really an apt comparison (since you mentioned P2P), but providing something like HLDS should solve this, no? Counter-Strike 1.6 has long ended its development but it has (or had) a prolific community servers to this day. If Playfab, AWS remove that service, just use your own hardware.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#82

Post by hobofan »

skotobaza wrote: post #78
maccard wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of games have no online conponent, and run in perpetuity after purchase So those games are unaffected regardless of this law. > This only affects AAA game studios that produce micro transaction slop and live services. The exact same that are lobbying against any sort of regulation. F2P live service games are specifically excluded from this though, which presumably is what you mean by micro transaction slop. Thi…

> The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game How so? Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. That's mostly AAA publishers that do so (at least I can't remember the opposite from the top of my head).

> Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public.

Yes, they do. Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services to make their multiplayer games work to a playable standard acceptable to the users, as they can't afford to write them from scratch (and couldn't even afford to do the devops work that comes with a self-hosted alternative).

Example: PEAK, on of _the_ multiplayer hits of last year from a small studio is built on top of Photon[0] for their multiplayer. If you were to remove that component you might as well completely rewrite the game.

[0]: https://www.photonengine.com

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#83

Post by jon-wood »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #53
hodgehog11 wrote: post #7

As is stated in the article, but is not clear just from the headline, this was not an unexpected outcome from the initiative. The Commission did not seek discussions with SKG, and spent virtually all of their time with the gaming industry lobby groups. SKG was prepared for this, and their intention has been to join up with the group putting together the new Digital Fairness Act, since the objective there is very simi…

I'd say this shows how corrupted elites are. If the "democratic" entity spends all the time with lobbyists, and not the initiative which started the discussion, this speaks volumes.

[flagged]

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#84

Post by skotobaza »

hobofan wrote: post #80
skotobaza wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> games that have required a bunch of different standalone services just for core logic But you don't have to design the backend this way. Especially if you know that you will have to share the binaries when the support for the game ends. > This effectively bans any third party non redistributable libraries (of which there are many), using many open source licensed projects for the backend Some games that have been o…

So now you have shifted to goal post from "providing a simple runnable binary" (not feasible due to baked in third-party licensing) to "open sourcing the game code, so people can rewrite the game to patch the missing parts". The few examples you point out as "open source released with stubs" are also usually games that are decades old and cultural landmarks, where there was economic incentive from the right holders (…

That's just one of the options, albeit the most beneficial for gamers.

> "open source released with stubs" are also usually games that are decades old and cultural landmarks

Not necessarily.

Edit: the goalpost is "the games should remain playable after the publisher stop supporting it". It hasn't moved an inch. So I'm not sure what you are talking about...

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#85

Post by maccard »

skotobaza wrote: post #78
maccard wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of games have no online conponent, and run in perpetuity after purchase So those games are unaffected regardless of this law. > This only affects AAA game studios that produce micro transaction slop and live services. The exact same that are lobbying against any sort of regulation. F2P live service games are specifically excluded from this though, which presumably is what you mean by micro transaction slop. Thi…

> The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game How so? Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. That's mostly AAA publishers that do so (at least I can't remember the opposite from the top of my head).

Those games are unaffected whether or not SKG is written into law. If ojr of those games has an optional multiplayer component all of a sudden it can come under the purview. One of the things SKG has pushed down the line is what is “playable”. There is a very small but very active online community for a bunch of games that would call the online part of their game a requirement. The last of us and uncharted had very unpopular multiplayer modes off the top of my head.

Small multiplayer “friendslop” games - things like Lethal Fompany, Peak, Totally Reliable Delivery service. They’ve been smash hits, wildly popular but I can definitely see a world where those games just don’t get made when you add a new layer of liability, potentially in perpetuity.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#86

Post by maccard »

konimex wrote: post #81
maccard wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game developer here. If it were “just” that easy I’d love to support this. > All the publisher would have to do is to create a "mini self-hosted server" application and provide it and they would follow the law on this You’re making a huge assumption here both about the scope of the law, and about how straightforward this is to do. I’ve worked in games where we could drop a server binary over the fence an that would b…

> What if I rely on steam, or epic for P2P and they shutter the service? What if playfab discontinue their offering, or AWS decide to remove a service that our “mini self hosted server” relies upon. Games aren’t some magical piece of technology, they’re just software like everything else. Not really an apt comparison (since you mentioned P2P), but providing something like HLDS should solve this, no? Counter-Strike 1.…

Dropping a server binary works if that’s all you need. Playfab and AWS provide software services - how do you operate without Playfab's player data, or matchmaking, or parties?

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#87

Post by drorco »

pdpi wrote: post #76
drorco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're actually curious, to gate a taste of the cost of compliance, I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want a accessible websites or privacy? But in practice it's a total drain of resources, real legal risk even if you genuinely try and be compliant, and often you just pay a lot of $$$ for legal, compliance advisors etc…

The GDPR is almost trivial to comply with if you’re not harvesting data willy-nilly. Likewise, the legal risk for small indie games here rounds to zero. Most such games will, at worst, lose access to online leaderboards if their developers shut them down.

I'm a developer of a mobile indie game and it's not true. Just to get started you need to implement tons of third part SDKs like Meta Ads, AdMob, Google Analytics, etc. These require actual handling of player choices, data sanitation etc. disregarding the loss of revenue with not being able to serve personalized ads, or even ads at all to large segments of players. And I'm talking about strictly optional rewarded ads.

These already harmed a lot of small mobile game companies, while the bigger mobile companies had much better means to deal with these.

I personally paid over $10K for different services just to comply, disregarding the loss of revenue over this compliance.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#88

Post by skotobaza »

hobofan wrote: post #82
skotobaza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The groups hit hardest by this are going to be small-medium developers who are just trying to build a game How so? Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. That's mostly AAA publishers that do so (at least I can't remember the opposite from the top of my head).

> Smaller developers don't usually build games that require huge online components that will be hard to release to the public. Yes, they do. Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services to make their multiplayer games work to a playable standard acceptable to the users, as they can't afford to write them from scratch (and couldn't even afford to do the devops work that comes with a self-hosted a…

> Small developers disproportionally have to rely on online services

I'm not convinced that that's the case. If you're talking about cloud providers then the cost can become very high very quickly, so smaller developers have to carefully manage the budget. To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics, and games don't really need that to play the game.

Also, don't forget that it's not just multiplayer games. Singleplayer games suffer from this as well.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#89

Post by drorco »

acron0 wrote: post #73
drorco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're actually curious, to gate a taste of the cost of compliance, I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want a accessible websites or privacy? But in practice it's a total drain of resources, real legal risk even if you genuinely try and be compliant, and often you just pay a lot of $$$ for legal, compliance advisors etc…

I don't really buy this. From my personal experience, indie devs are more likely to use methods which make their server tech distributable (e.g. Minecraft). Large game publishers appear to go in the opposite direction for control and lineage reasons: "Crew 1 is dead so you need to buy Crew 2 now". Anyone who gamed before 2005 knows that games do not require magic, expensive, managed remote services. We all used to ru…

Well I'm talking from experience as a mobile indie game developer.

Pretty much every year I'm getting warnings from Apple or Google, or 3rd party SDKs, that unless I make sure to update libraries, or comply with a new rule, they are going to take down the game.

One of the latest rules was some sort of a digital services act (again another regulation) that made it very difficult for indie devs not to share their personal address and phone numbers.

Re: Stop Killing Games fails to secure EU law despite 1.3M signatures

#90

Post by iLoveOncall »

Farbklex wrote: post #74
iLoveOncall wrote: post #70

The fact that the dude from Stop Killing Games completely fumbled his speach at the European parliament definitely didn't help their case.

Which one exactly? I saw one speech and that was decent.

This one: https://youtu.be/oXcogLmxnJw?is=FJpTrhEpez_S6MzK

To be fair to him it's more bad coordination or bad prep but it weakened the argument so much in my opinion.

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