Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

dexerto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 346 posts

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

#111

Post by hobofan »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #107
hobofan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If the law were to be passed, surely Photon would be incentivized to make a self-hosting alternative, no? Something that uses the same API but is self-hosted.

There is no indication that a self-hostable alternative that to what Photon is providing is even feasible, as a lot of what they are doing includes tuning network settings, setting up CDN-like structures, etc.. Even for their enterprise offerings they are targeting a managed cloud approach, and not an independently deployable binary.

If the law were to be passed, Photon would at the maximum be incentivized to produce a self-hostable API-compatible alternative that would be neutered to such a degree that Games still qualify as "playable" on paper but would be unenjoyable to actually play. More likely, they won't do anything, as they are not the game developer and not responsible for compliance.

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

#112

Post by gambiting »

jon-wood wrote: post #83
p0w3n3d wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

I work in games, worked on some of the huge(40+ million players) online live-service games out there, and I have no idea what you're talking about here:

" What isn’t realistic is stamping their feet and demanding that companies make it possible for people to run their own servers for live service games, just the licensing issues are going to be a nightmare to solve"

Like....what licencing issues? After the game is "dead" and the parent company doesn't want to support it anymore, we could easily release the source code or even just the executables for the servers. There's nothing complicated about it, it's just some windows executables with a whole load of config files to tell them what to serve and how. I once had to go to a gaming conference with a really basic laptop to setup a local-only version of our servers to host some private lobby of the game - it took all of 30 minutes to set it up. But oh no, players can't have that because what, it's too complicated?

Like, as someone who actually wrote some of these servers for various services in these games, I really don't buy this entire argument that it can't be done. If anything, it's just the people at the top who have no idea about tech dragging their feet and coming up with implausible "what if" scenarios as to why it can't be done. For at least 3 of the games I worked on I could give you a zip file with all the files and you'd have the servers up and running within an hour, given powerful enough hardware. And then what, we can't change the servers the clients connect to? Please. Modders would have that done within 24 hours of release, probably with a nice GUI for players to use.

>> that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.

Yes, and their help isn't needed with any of it, the game is by definition dead at this point, the alternative is the publisher shutting everything down and no one ever playing it again.

>>If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.

It's not just about consumer choice - it's also about us losing part of the culture that cannot be restored once shut down.

I say that wholeheartedly as someone who has worked on games that are(for the time being) still online. And in few years they will be inevitably shut down, leading to years of my life and effort being inaccessible to anyone - the only way that you will be able to experience it is through Youtube videos. That's a cultural tragedy, and I'm 10000% for companies being forced through law to include it in their design that _eventually_ the servers have to be released to the public. They don't have to offer any support whatsoever, the communities will figure it out, guaranteed.

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

#113

Post by 59nadir »

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…

> [...] running it requires a combination of dynamodb, Kafka, a few microservices on lambda [...]

The initiative has no problem with this as far as I know; the backend being an overengineered mess doesn't make it non-compliant with what SKG wants.

I've worked on game backends that would've trivially complied with just a basic executable blob + MySQL, and ones that would've required someone to run 10+ services on AWS (yes, it was entirely stuck on AWS).

With that said I don't think anyone would really be developing things this way in a world where they actually took this type of compliance seriously, and there is no real upside to hyperfocusing like that on third-party platform solutions and so on.

3rd party libraries I agree about, I think it'd force people to actually do things in-house instead, which could be quite the ask for some of them (some of the libraries, and also some of the companies, who sometimes do not possess the talent to solve harder problems, or create their own things).

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

#114

Post by schnitzelstoat »

TheTaytay wrote: post #17

As written, wouldn’t this result in fewer online games? Maybe dramatically fewer?

Why? I can go and fire up my own Unreal Tournament (1999) dedicated server right now, loads are still running.

It means the customer needs the option to run their own servers.

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

#115

Post by BoredPositron »

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…

[flagged]

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

#116

Post by hobofan »

skotobaza wrote: post #108
maccard wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the cloud providers have generous enough free tiers that small developers fit into them. Look at EOS, Playfab, Steam. You can run a backend for free for edit: > To my knowledge, cloud services are usually used for simple stuff like logs and analytics Respectfully, you’re wrong here and this is the problem that me and many others have with this line of defense for SKG. No small developers who are managing thei…

The question remains - how does any of this prevent small developers from releasing either the binary or the code in the modified form? Again, that has already been done with variety of games (not just popular ones as you assume), so it's not something extraordinary. The developers definitely have the resources to do so since they were getting money for the game, and the least they can do for their game and its commu…

> The developers definitely have the resources to do so since they were getting money for the game

There is no guarantee that they did!!! Yes, the examples we are pointing out (typical "friendslop" games from the last years) made bank, and should be able to afford to afford and EOL path.

However for every successful game that uses those technologies there are ~100 that "didn't make it", or barely broke even that are now also forced to do additional work on something they either post-hoc now was financially unfeasible, or have to do up-front work on something where it's a gamble whether it will be financially feasible.

In my personal opinion, completely downplaying the effort and financial reality that comes with making games compliant, and based on that creating carveouts for e.g. sub-$100k-revenue games was the downfall of SKG. If they would have made an effort to recognize that, they would be able to mobilize a large base of the indie developer community as well.

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

#117

Post by gambiting »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #103
hobofan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonable to at least expect that. It's their job after all, while for any single voter there is a lower standard you can realistically hold them too and less time available to verify/debunk claims. On top of that, there are also instruments that help the voters track whether politicians are engaging in corrupt lobbyism like voting records + donation / campaign contribution records, though few countries do that…

Why is it reasonable to expect that? What mechanism makes politicians immune to disinfo?

Well, your local coucilor probably doesn't have access to it, but MPs definitely have access to aides and experts they can ask for opinion and summary before they go in front of a camera and make a fool out of themselves for saying something based on a snippet they saw on TikTok. They are literally surrounded by people whose entire job is to be well informed.

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

#118

Post by skotobaza »

danieltanfh95 wrote: post #63
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…

wrong, the commission did discuss with SKG, but the entire group had their head in the sand when reasonable people asked SKG to respect technical reality and resubmit a better, reality-focused proposal as SKG 2.0. They ban anyone not in their echo chamber.

The commission was talking with the game industry much more than with the initiative, which opened a clear way for the industry to misrepresent the initiative with phrases like "endless support" which nobody demands.

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

#119

Post by maccard »

skotobaza wrote: post #84
hobofan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You've not just edit'ed and added to your comment, you removed a point about supporting open sourcing the games as a solution.

> : 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...

Many people (myself included) have absolutely no problem with that in principle. It's how do you do it that we have a problem with. Saying "just have every video game use the architecture that I have in my head that works, and isolate them from how all other software works" isn't practical.

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

#120

Post by maccard »

skotobaza wrote: post #101
maccard wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you don't have to design the backend this way. You’re calling for legislating software architecture for a subset of software that is different to how it works everywhere else in the tech industry. > Some games that have been open sourced by the developers solved this issue by replacing such library calls with stubs. I think this is an acceptable compromise. The other commenter hit on the moving goalposts - I ag…

> You’re calling for legislating software architecture Not really, it will be the consequence of requiring the game to be given to the community after the EOL. > the community are free to reverse engineer the service it relies on While that is true, it is much harder than receiving the code with the most logic intact. We already do reverse engineer the binaries, including the server protocols, so we know how hard it…

> Not really, it will be the consequence of requiring the game to be given to the community after the EOL.

"I'm not calling for it, but if it happens to be the only way to achieve what I want then so be it".

> While that is true, it is much harder than receiving the code with the most logic intact. We already do reverse engineer the binaries, including the server protocols, so we know how hard it is. And that's why we know that it's not the way to go.

But for many games, the logic _is_ in the remote service calls. Who decides what calls are reversible and which aren't? In a chess game, matchmaking is probably the most important part, for example.

Post reply on HN