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

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

#141

Post by rendaw »

StillBored wrote: post #133

Part of this is simply fixed by a tweak to copyright that if the IP isn't available for sale at a reasonable price the copyright no longer applies. Games, books, movies, music, etc.

I think this is an important point.

The point of copyright is to increase the amount of creative works available to people by making the production financially viable. If companies aren't making the works available, or taking released works and making them unavailable, copyright has failed.

Even the "Copyright Alliance" acknowledges this: https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...

> While the copyright law is intended to serve the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative work, it is important to understand that the copyright law imposes no obligation upon creators to make their copyrighted works available. As a result, an unpublished work that is never distributed to the public receives the same copyright protection that a published work would receive.

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

#142

Post by bentley »

rpdillon wrote: post #90
dkersten wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games are perfectly fine without online features yet they still got shut off. Mirrors Edge Catalyst only used online for leaderboards and challenges, everything else was entirely single player, yet it’s not possible to play it anymore because they wanted to shut off the servers yet designed the game to not run without them, even though it’s a single player game. That should not be ok. It wasn’t sold with a discl…

This is the reason I buy many games twice: once when they release on Steam, and again (if I loved them) when the come out on GOG, with Doom Eternal being the most recent example, but also Doom 2016, Skyrim, Dying Light, Tomb Raider, etc. I want to reward the devs with money for giving me a copy that doesn't need servers to run. It's work to produce it, and it has value for me, so I don't mind paying. CDPR is particul…

> This is the reason I buy many games twice: once when they release on Steam, and again (if I loved them) when the come out on GOG

It’s the reason I buy most games once, on GOG.

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

#143

Post by xingped »

orev wrote: post #34
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. 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 problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

Maybe it’s better to start in a smaller, more focused and less controversial topic to set some precedents before trying to boil the ocean.

This. If we try to tackle everything at once it won't work, but make inroads where you can while the winds are at your back for a particular issue.

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

#144

Post by david_allison »

dkersten wrote: post #82
knollimar wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every game has a server architecture like that. There's been a Renaissance of indie multuplayer due to good libraries and third party dependencies. Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games. I'd be 100% for "if your game has an easily releasable server you have to release it on EoS" but this bill isn't it.

Some games are perfectly fine without online features yet they still got shut off. Mirrors Edge Catalyst only used online for leaderboards and challenges, everything else was entirely single player, yet it’s not possible to play it anymore because they wanted to shut off the servers yet designed the game to not run without them, even though it’s a single player game. That should not be ok. It wasn’t sold with a discl…

> Mirrors Edge Catalyst

Are you sure? I played in 2024 on PC and it was playable.

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

#145

Post by pbhjpbhj »

teeray wrote: post #95
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. 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 problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

Companies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say “we need to shut this down because we’re losing money on it.” On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: “but that’s our IP and it’s valuable to us.” You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to socie…

In my personal opinion, the actual problem there relating to "that's our IP" is the length of copyright.

20 years max will provide plenty of reward for creators. Some work on making copyright protect creators first, preferencing them over later owners, would also be good.

We also need works to be free to use, legislated so, after copyright expires. That would be to prevent, for example, Trade Marks being leveraged against users of works on which copyright has expired.

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

#146

Post by pbhjpbhj »

knollimar wrote: post #51
ryandrake wrote: post #9

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. 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 problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn dow…

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…

Explicit information at time of sale is required, that's a cornerstone of Capitalism.

So companies should be required to either have a server release or meet the their explicit obligation given at time of sale.

So "this game for rent until 1/1/2031". If it flops, they buy out the users, release to make the game work without the company, or maintain servers until they fulfill their obligation.

Capitalism can't refine markets without full information. That means here, how much support a game will get. Whether it's a sale or rent, and so on.

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

#147

Post by BlitzGeology91 »

knollimar wrote: post #65
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.

Not every game has a server architecture like that. There's been a Renaissance of indie multuplayer due to good libraries and third party dependencies. Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games. I'd be 100% for "if your game has an easily releasable server you have to release it on EoS" but this bill isn't it.

> Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games.

Well, the comment that you replied to said “Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place.” If the gaming company inserts itself into the process in such a way that the multiplayer part of the game would stop functioning if the game company were to disappear, then the game company is a single point of failure. And it would be a single point of failure that cannot be repaired or replaced by end users. In general, I would consider single points of failure to be design flaws. In this particular case, I would consider it to be a particularly egregious design flaw because it’s actually easier to create a multiplayer game that does not have the design flaw (e.g., local split screen multiplayer, releasing the server binary) than it is to create a multiplayer game that does have the design flaw. In this case, it really is bad design.

Also, I’m highly skeptical that this would have a chilling effect on novel games. Could you give an example of a game that might be chilled in this situation?

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

#148

Post by atvcatole »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #145
teeray wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say “we need to shut this down because we’re losing money on it.” On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: “but that’s our IP and it’s valuable to us.” You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to socie…

In my personal opinion, the actual problem there relating to "that's our IP" is the length of copyright. 20 years max will provide plenty of reward for creators. Some work on making copyright protect creators first, preferencing them over later owners, would also be good. We also need works to be free to use, legislated so, after copyright expires. That would be to prevent, for example, Trade Marks being leveraged ag…

An example here is that Quake was released in 1996 and the source code released in 1999. Quake 2: 1997->2001, Quake 3 Arena: 1999->2005.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that these releases were negative to ID or the game series.

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

#149

Post by knollimar »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #146
knollimar wrote: post #51

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…

Explicit information at time of sale is required, that's a cornerstone of Capitalism. So companies should be required to either have a server release or meet the their explicit obligation given at time of sale. So "this game for rent until 1/1/2031". If it flops, they buy out the users, release to make the game work without the company, or maintain servers until they fulfill their obligation. Capitalism can't refine…

The SKG movement goes beyond that. 2031 isn't an option for them.

The movement just says a bunch of stuff and expects the important nitty grotty to be figured out, but that part is load bearing for many.

Id support mandating notices. I just don't want indies to have to do this from day 1 before many sales tbh.

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

#150

Post by dkersten »

david_allison wrote: post #144
dkersten wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some games are perfectly fine without online features yet they still got shut off. Mirrors Edge Catalyst only used online for leaderboards and challenges, everything else was entirely single player, yet it’s not possible to play it anymore because they wanted to shut off the servers yet designed the game to not run without them, even though it’s a single player game. That should not be ok. It wasn’t sold with a discl…

> Mirrors Edge Catalyst Are you sure? I played in 2024 on PC and it was playable.

I tried to play it about two months ago and it pops up a notice and quits. I found on Reddit that the notice is “we are Rory, but servers for this title have been shut down. Thank you very much for playing” which is roughly like what I remember.

According to Wikipedia: “in December 2023, all servers for mirrors edge catalyst were shut down by EA” but that only says online content was disabled.

It’s possible that the game is only unplayable on PlayStation, but still playable (without online features) on PC. But it does seem to still be listed in stores (steam and PlayStation) so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. I’d have to redownload it to test it again.

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