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The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

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Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#141

Post by pibaker »

slg wrote: post #126
Sharlin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It incentivizes subscription-based games.

The natural incentives had already pointed to subscription based games, these companies attempted it, and consumers mostly rejected it. I'm extremely dubious that this regulation would be enough to reverse that. It's a much easier decision for a company to put a small development team on readying the server tools for public release than brute forcing a new business model on a resistant consumer base and all the assoc…

If by subscription you mean World of Warcraft style continuous subscription then yes, it doesn't work for most games. But I'd argue the modern battle pass model is just another flavor of subscription. And according to the article, free to play games with battle passes and micro transactions also get an exemption from the proposed bill, so companies will just move to that instead.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#142

Post by wsve »

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk.

Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a company may use or release. What popular libraries are we concerned about no longer being usable because of this? Remember, this is server architecture. Networking libraries? ENet is distributable, so is Valve's GameNetworkingSockets.

Yes, it'd ask developers to write their servers with this possible/inevitable transition in mind. Developers will plan ahead for that, and I have a very hard time imagining the server architecture would change much at all. A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden.

This is great news!

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#143

Post by gopher_space »

wagwang wrote: post #18
bob1029 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think forcing a person or business to divulge their intellectual property, simply because they no longer wish to provide downstream products or services, is reasonable. That said, as a consumer I really don't like when something goes away. Overwatch 1 was probably the most brutal experience for me. In the end, I don't think anyone has any kind of special entitlements here. The server binaries will almost alwa…

If they dont want to release the source then just keep running the servers! I think its ridiculous that people can buy games and the games just stop working and its ok because of some legalese that literally no one reads. Alternatively, why not just align your incentives with the user and charge subscriptions. Games are interesting because players will sink a lot of time and sometimes money in and so it goes beyond a…

> I think its ridiculous that people can buy games and the games just stop working and its ok because of some legalese that literally no one reads.

It's entertainment. It's ok for entertainment to end, especially when it's this cheap. There aren't any situations where I haven't gotten my money's worth out of a title I've played for 1000+ hours.

> Alternatively, why not just align your incentives with the user and charge subscriptions.

Because most people balk at subscriptions. And that's kind of the answer to a lot of "why don't they just" questions in this area. They can't release the server because of proprietary libs, but they're using those because it's way, way, way cheaper than not doing that and the people who write those libs really know what they're doing. People won't buy your game at the price you'd need to set to do everything in house.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#144

Post by Akronymus »

pibaker wrote: post #141
slg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural incentives had already pointed to subscription based games, these companies attempted it, and consumers mostly rejected it. I'm extremely dubious that this regulation would be enough to reverse that. It's a much easier decision for a company to put a small development team on readying the server tools for public release than brute forcing a new business model on a resistant consumer base and all the assoc…

If by subscription you mean World of Warcraft style continuous subscription then yes, it doesn't work for most games. But I'd argue the modern battle pass model is just another flavor of subscription. And according to the article, free to play games with battle passes and micro transactions also get an exemption from the proposed bill, so companies will just move to that instead.

Battle passes/mtx would IMO definitely fall under monetary considerations, which would make the excemption not apply. But as is written now, there still needs to be a precedent set for that, to really cement that interpretation

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#145

Post by ryandrake »

markstos wrote: post #121
ryandrake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, CA should get rid of those loopholes, too! We need to culturally accept things like "zero day law patches" for loopholes and unintended consequences. Legislators, don't just pass a law, see it incentivizing something unintended, and then throw up your hands crying "Well, we tried!" Patch the law as soon as the bad behavior starts!

And how you would craft a law to prevent a company from forming sub-companies for specific games to isolate risk? Or make it illegal for a company to go bankrupt? Creating sub-companies is common business practice that even small businesses use. Like if a small company wants to buy a building, they may form an LLC to hold the property to isolate that risk from the rest of their business.

I don't know how you'd craft that law--I'm just saying they should. How to encode the spirit of the law into the letter of the law is the job for legislators.

Whenever the topic of regulating companies comes up, there's way too much fatalistic "Oh dear, we can't possibly incentivize good corporate behavior because companies are oh-so-clever and there's just no way to handle all the edge cases they will exploit!"

We'll never get anywhere at all if we simply give up the moment someone forms a shell LLC.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#146

Post by jandrewrogers »

Ukv wrote: post #127
markstos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how you would craft a law to prevent a company from forming sub-companies for specific games to isolate risk? Or make it illegal for a company to go bankrupt? Creating sub-companies is common business practice that even small businesses use. Like if a small company wants to buy a building, they may form an LLC to hold the property to isolate that risk from the rest of their business.

Bankruptcy process already involves identifying and administering the company's assets, so releasing the server software (as-is) to owners of the game could be part of that.

Bankruptcy sells the assets on behalf of creditors that have specific priority in law. Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights.

The most likely outcome is that some PE firm would buy the software rights out of bankruptcy and figure out how to bleed money out of people that want to continue using that software.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#147

Post by slg »

pibaker wrote: post #141
slg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural incentives had already pointed to subscription based games, these companies attempted it, and consumers mostly rejected it. I'm extremely dubious that this regulation would be enough to reverse that. It's a much easier decision for a company to put a small development team on readying the server tools for public release than brute forcing a new business model on a resistant consumer base and all the assoc…

If by subscription you mean World of Warcraft style continuous subscription then yes, it doesn't work for most games. But I'd argue the modern battle pass model is just another flavor of subscription. And according to the article, free to play games with battle passes and micro transactions also get an exemption from the proposed bill, so companies will just move to that instead.

Are we still talking about negative impacts of this regulation? Because I don't follow the argument that games going free-to-play is bad for the consumer. Consumer pressure has pushed most games with battle passes and microtransactions to limit those to optional expansions of the base game, often merely cosmetic. People can and do spend hundreds of hours playing Fortnite without paying a cent and I don't see how that type of outcome is bad for the consumer.

And if the consumer doesn't invest any money into the experience, I have a hard time justifying a requirement for the publisher to provide options to keep the game running in perpetuity, so I'm fine with that exception.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#148

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain »

wsve wrote: post #142

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk. Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a compan…

Its because people are brainwashed by techno capitalists propganada and think they're going be in the "startup" founder position one day and thus defend the people currently in those positions no matter what, thinking their protecting their own interests (and its almost always the opposite).

There's nothing wrong with having an ambitious attitude, but why not be ambitious seek to build a better tech-biz ecosystem that is actually pro consumer and pro human..

People seem to think there's only one way, and that way is letting capital owners behave however they want incase they're also in that position one day.

Re: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

#149

Post by Dig1t »

wsve wrote: post #142

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk. Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a compan…

It’s not irrational, the comments literally explain in great detail the downsides of the regulation.

For example one commenter in this thread said:

>See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

This is an objectively true and prove-able statement. What is irrational about that?

WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it creates.

>If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only.

This is a valid concern and a real incentive if that’s how the law works. What is irrational about this argument?

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