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

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131–140 of 172 posts

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

#131

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". S…

Is it just because some gamers are very irate or is this actually a bad idea? If so, how?

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

#132

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…

> making devs make offline versions There's no need to "make devs make" anything. We'll do it ourselves. The corporations just need to stop getting in our way with their idiotic cease and desist letters and injunctions and legal threats. There's no need for them to spend even one cent of their money or even one second of their time on the matter. They just need to do literally nothing. That's literally all they have…

I don't think there's strong federal pressure in the U.S and Europe is likely bound by international agreement.

This is a root problem, but you can't simply say "void copyright ownership" without crossing international lines.

It's an awkard international committee problem since you can't overwrite the centralized law.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may actually be the case in the US. The problem is it's really hard to take something like this to court.

For starters, the arbitration clause is designed to make sure that these cases never get to the supreme court. Lower courts see an arbitration clause and say "Thank god, I don't want to deal with this" and are more than happy to sweep cases that way to unload their docket. Once in arbitration, any ruling made has no precedent setting value. The arbitration process is itself designed to drive up legal costs.

But even if that arbitration clause wasn't there or a judge decides to hear the case, it's incredibly expensive to take someone to court. Hundreds if not millions of dollars in fees. The US doesn't have a "loser pay" system, instead both sides are responsible for their own legal fees. Further, the US doesn't have any sort of public civil litigators. We barely have criminal defenders.

The best case scenario is that some sort of class action is built up. But that's really hard and isn't likely to address the contract itself. Even if it does, it'll only be the one contract for the one manufacturer.

Big legal fees, limited applicability, likely burden shifting from public courts. The only way this gets addressed would be through regulation or new laws outlawing the practice.

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

#135
post #52
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…

> 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.

Not guaranteed. Many just run a local server, either in-process or externally. Minecraft's singleplayer mode actually runs a server in-process internally. This simplifies development because singleplayer is conceptually the same as playing alone on a server.

This gets more complicated when there are infrastructure servers in the mix for things like player state, matchmaking, etc. You would bypass that in development but they are required for normal play while being external to the game server.

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

#136

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…

No, what's silly is that you haven't even taken the time to read the initiative. You're coming out with the same incorrect arguments as PirateSoftware did. What they're saying is (for games that would come out in the future only), is that they need to have an EoL plan for the game. Let people host their own servers. That used to be a standard feature of multiplayer games.

Well there's kind of motte-bailey going around where the law effort is of course focusing on the thing they might win, while common commenters demand vastly more unrealistic things.

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

#137

Am I the only one finding the dependency on those videos games to be concerning?

No. The people in the in-group you want to be a part of feel the same way.

Sorry - I didn't get this comment? I mean isn't strange that people get to live in a digital reality that is dependant on a servers that could be taken down instead of being embedded in physical reality that we call life?

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

#138
post #48

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.

It's not just clouds systems. SKG might not cover it but what happens if Steam hypothetically shuts down? Many games are built on the Steamworks API for things like matchmaking and networking. Those will stop working if Steam is gone which could bring down many multiplayer titles with it, even if the games have local servers.

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

#139

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…

No, what's silly is that you haven't even taken the time to read the initiative. You're coming out with the same incorrect arguments as PirateSoftware did. What they're saying is (for games that would come out in the future only), is that they need to have an EoL plan for the game. Let people host their own servers. That used to be a standard feature of multiplayer games.

Why do gamers need protection? Games aren't essential resources. There's zero reason you have to buy a game that doesn't allow users to run servers. Why would you prevent gamers who don't care from buying these games?

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

#140
post #25

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…

> That's more AAA stuff not indie.

If they run it themselves, probably. Indies are more likely to use free services like Steamworks and Firebase which can be pulled out from under them for any reason.

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