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

Stop Killing Games

jxself.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 287 posts

Re: Stop Killing Games

#141

Post by addandsubtract »

metabagel wrote: post #138
Altern4tiveAcc wrote: post #95

PSA for anyone considering reading it: this article is full of LLMisms and was probably generated from a prompt. That being said, I agree with the premise. Most of those cultural preservation issues wouldn't be a problem if users had control over their computing. The problems caused by game servers going offline aren't necessarily specific to games, and the cultural preservation aspect can be applied to other program…

> PSA for anyone considering reading it: this article is full of LLMisms and was probably generated from a prompt. Possibly, but it doesn't appear that way to me.

"Freedom 2" makes zero sense:

> A multiplayer game cannot survive if only one person has the server files. Freedom 2 ensures that the community has the legal right to share the server software

In most online games, only the developer has the "server files". You'd need access to them first to even share them. Freedom 2 should be access to server files, if anything.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#143

Post by john_strinlai »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #140
john_strinlai wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, i wrote that. right now that would be illegal to do in most jurisdictions.

despite that, people have been doing that for over two decades, but publishers continue to publish.

right. that is because most people would rather buy the game than take the risk of downloading it illegally. if you remove the risk, the math changes.

publishers also have legal recourse. remove that and the publisher's math changes.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#144

Post by MYEUHD »

dangus wrote: post #120
F3nd0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > > Am I missing something serious here or is this really trying to advocate for that. What you might be missing is that the author advocates for free software (which is framed differently from open source), while games typically aren’t pure software, but rely very heavily on art assets. The movement for free software traditionally draws a distinction between soft…

This is largely how open source game engines like OpenMW or OpenTTD work: the game engine is reverse engineered, and the art is something the end user provides by downloading/owning a legitimate retail copy. And that’s really great, but this model is ultimately not realistic for most game developers. It’s not like productivity software where the code of the product isn’t the majority of the value being delivered. Git…

Games will get pirated regardless whether they're on GOG or not.

> This model works for games on GOG because they tend to be priced so low that most users are okay with paying for convenience. Many of the games in that catalog are essentially back catalog that have been paid off for years and whose sales are quite insignificant to the publisher.

This is not always the case. For example this game will be available on GOG on day 1. In fact you can pre-order it now: https://www.gog.com/en/game/gothic_1_remake

As another example, this game was released on GOG 5 months after the Steam release: https://www.gog.com/en/game/clair_obscur_expedition_33

Likewise, Cyberpunk 2077 was released on GOG 4 months after the Steam release. And IIRC the game's revenue didn't cover its costs until ~2 years later.

All three of the examples I gave are $50 or more.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#145

Post by runevault »

stale2002 wrote: post #119
DSMan195276 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn’t it only require action from you if you were trying to kill multiplayer in the first place? It's a question of when, not if - you're not going to pay to keep the servers online forever. What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't? If they're bad enough then plenty of people will not be interested in taking that risk by making such games.

> What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't? How about "the government forces you to release the code"? That's seems fair. Unless you hid your source code in USB drives under your bed, the government can probably just force GitHub (or similar )to release it. I bet they've got it backed up.

So you're assuming game devs write every line of code in their server infrastructure. First, could be using a third party library you have license to use on a limited number of machines that make up your backend servers. Second you could be paying for third party API access to something like snowflake.

You either have to rip out the code (which may or may not break the server, but still requires developer time to do) or write replacement code which likely takes even more dev time to do or you would have done it instead of paying for the library/access to the service.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#146

Post by john_strinlai »

strbean wrote: post #113
john_strinlai wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My reading of the law is that you need to make the binaries accessible, you don't have to provide the hardware to run it on. if no one can run the binaries, despite them being accessible, then the regulation has failed and there will be a new movement to alter the regulation. the spirit of the law is that i can reasonably spin up an instance of the server for me and my friends to play.

If a game is popular enough for anyone to care, some turbonerd will get the server running on a massive cloud instance, and then people will be able to play the game. Fans have reverse-engineered and stood up servers for tons of games with no access to the server binaries. The idea that they wouldn't figure it out when given much better resources (server binaries or source code) is crazy.

>The idea that they wouldn't figure it out when given much better resources (server binaries or source code) is crazy.

i wasnt implying they couldnt figure it out.

i was implying that you would have to be an incredibly rich turbonerd to stand up a massive cloud instance for some of these games. which sort of defeats the entire goal of the regulation.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#147

Post by [deleted] »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #87
saghm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that vein, the other day this got posted to HN: https://twilitrealm.dev/ It uses an independent reimplementation of the code of a Zelda game from the GameCube and combines them with the assets from the actual game to make native binaries for various platforms, which blows my mind a bit but demonstrates the power of this sort of split abstraction.

what power, exactly? that nintendo doesn't care about these guys for some idiosyncratic reason?

[deleted]

Re: Stop Killing Games

#148

Post by b65e8bee43c2ed0 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #143
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

despite that, people have been doing that for over two decades, but publishers continue to publish.

right. that is because most people would rather buy the game than take the risk of downloading it illegally. if you remove the risk, the math changes. publishers also have legal recourse. remove that and the publisher's math changes.

people pay for convenience. when was the last time you heard about someone being prosecuted for pirating something?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#149

Post by BlarfMcFlarf »

DSMan195276 wrote: post #131
stale2002 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't? How about "the government forces you to release the code"? That's seems fair. Unless you hid your source code in USB drives under your bed, the government can probably just force GitHub (or similar )to release it. I bet they've got it backed up.

The government will release it with all the copyrighted code and assets that's owned by a bunch of third-parties? Ex. if I license my artwork, music, characters, code library, etc. to a game developer and they don't create a legally releasable version of their server, then the government will forcibly break our licensing agreement and I just get screwed?

If everyone in the industry knows what the rules are, you can make contracts and agreements and licensing that works with those rules.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#150

Post by knollimar »

stale2002 wrote: post #119
DSMan195276 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn’t it only require action from you if you were trying to kill multiplayer in the first place? It's a question of when, not if - you're not going to pay to keep the servers online forever. What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't? If they're bad enough then plenty of people will not be interested in taking that risk by making such games.

> What are the legal consequences of not releasing a functioning server if for some reason you can't? How about "the government forces you to release the code"? That's seems fair. Unless you hid your source code in USB drives under your bed, the government can probably just force GitHub (or similar )to release it. I bet they've got it backed up.

Ab1921 in california doesn't propose this. Its either an offline copy, a copy that works without servers, or 100% refund. Basically patch or refund.

I can't wait to see "you haven't met your patch obligations" on a balance sheet and a full indie game being underwater

Post reply on HN