151–160 of 287 posts
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Because we don't have a right to a continuing service that requires their labor unless they agreed to it. A buyer should discount the value of products that rely on ongoing services accordingly. See also 'Juicero'.
> Because we don't have a right to a continuing service that requires their labor unless they agreed to it There are carve-outs in the legislation for this. It's a moot point.
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> but not the EU which is currently being drafted (in a different direction) Where can we find information about the direction the EU is going on this? AFAICT there has just been one meeting on the topic?
There's been... a lot more than just one meeting. https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/news/14th-valid-initia... https://commission.europa.eu/european-citizens-initiative/me... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/stop-destroying... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXdmoeaYZ9Y https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/news-media/news/eesc-debates-e...
First link is announcing the initiative was submitted, second is a private meeting where the initiative was presented to the comission by the organizers.
Then there was a public meeting on 16 April 2026 and a public meeting on 20 May 2026.
Is there a specific part of one of those meetings that indicates they want to go a different direction than the California bill?
From the last link:
> If designed responsibly, most games that connect to the internet can operate indefinitely without publisher support. This has been a customer expectation for over 50 years. We are open to any solution that solves the problem. We are flexible on specifics and implementation by publishers. We understand that not all game features may be operable in a discontinued game. We are not seeking ongoing support from publishers after a game has been discontinued
This sounds like the California bill would address these issues.
edit: Particularly, I'm wondering if there is any serious push for release of binaries / source code prior to the end-of-life of a game, which seems to be of particular concern.
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Well, ok, you grasped at a few issues there that go off in different directions. The issue with "Stop Killing Games" is that the legislation doesn't currently look like anything, it's a broad appeal and the solution for studios will depend on where it finally lands. If it lands in the realm of "Games must be released FOSS after x years" then, aside from the fact that a lot of the times we don't own the copyrights to…
> But the server binary doesn't start unless you have 190GiB of RAM and 38 available CPUs. This doesn't seem like much of an obstacle? Can buy or rent such without too much trouble.
for... thousands of dollars a month.
the goal of the regulation is that regular people can keep playing their games. not just rich people.
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> 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…
Dwarf Fortress is a modern example of that paradigm.
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Games explicitly do not promise online features remain available perpetually. No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either. I also completely disagree that "it doesn't cost Valve anything to run Half Life". Firstly, it's patently incorrect, given Half Life has received 20+ updates in the last 5 years alone. Secondly, it's technically incorrect, given Steam going offline prevents you from opening Half…
> Games explicitly do not promise online features remain available perpetually. No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either. Explicitly through a contract you HAVE to sign AFTER the purchase. That's a big problem I have with this model. It's not made explicit until after the purchase. And, it is reasonable to expect because, as I said and other old game players can attest to, this was the status quo…
I fear an entire generation is growing up thinking that it is normal and acceptable that products you buy can be remotely disabled by the developer, manufacturer or vendor when it suits them, with no recourse to the person who bought the product.
This is one of those tech nerd debate hills I'm willing to die on: It should be totally unacceptable/illegal for someone else to remotely nerf or destroy a product you bought and paid for.
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Okay well how about my EVSE (EV car charger)? Much more akin to a tool. I can't configure it now because it relies on a cloud interface and the company that sold it to me changed hands several times and now doesn't operate in the US. Now it's stuck thinking I want it limited to 28 amps rather than the 50 amps my new car can use.
You should be entitled to a fix for that, yes (say, some way to connect it to Home Assistant, or just a physical switch somewhere). That or your money back so you can buy an equivalent product that isn't broken. I've seen discussions about this exact topic in Europe, but it's a hard topic to tackle, since the relevant services will usually shut down bell beyond five years, and by that time, the statute of limitations…
If this were normal, my car would suddenly stop working if Toyota went out of business.
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There's been... a lot more than just one meeting. https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/news/14th-valid-initia... https://commission.europa.eu/european-citizens-initiative/me... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/stop-destroying... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXdmoeaYZ9Y https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/news-media/news/eesc-debates-e...
Seems like that's... one more substantive meeting? First link is announcing the initiative was submitted, second is a private meeting where the initiative was presented to the comission by the organizers. Then there was a public meeting on 16 April 2026 and a public meeting on 20 May 2026. Is there a specific part of one of those meetings that indicates they want to go a different direction than the California bill?…
The fact here is pretty simple: they have not indicated any support for the californian style legislation and they aren’t done yet either. The californian model is also very direct and instructive and EU laws tend to be broad frameworks, so they’ll definitely be different in some way, but unsure if they’ll encompass each other.
I can’t say what way they will definitely go, but it seems naïve to presume the californian stance given how disparate the solutions are from with in the SKG movement itself.
I’m watching it closely, obviously, but nobody knows where it will go. But this is like a 500-sided dice, the odds are low that a solution cleanly overlaps.
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Because we don't have a right to a continuing service that requires their labor unless they agreed to it. A buyer should discount the value of products that rely on ongoing services accordingly. See also 'Juicero'.
> Because we don't have a right to a continuing service that requires their labor unless they agreed to it There are carve-outs in the legislation for this. It's a moot point.
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> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. Pretty dismissive, no? Jason Rohrer puts many (most?) of his games in the public domain, including "One Hour, One Life" [0] [1]. As far as I know, his game is pretty successful, by indie standards. Teeworlds was at one point accepting donations, I believe [2]. Solarus has a donation page [3]. I'm sure there are many more examples that span the spectrum of payment…
> Jason Rohrer puts many (most?) of his games in the public domain, including "One Hour, One Life" [0] [1]. As far as I know, his game is pretty successful, by indie standards. OAOL runs commercial proprietary servers and the community was not free to distribute the game or run competing servers during the commercial active period. The community only got access to the servers when they had declined to 20-30 concurren…
Reference? The source was dedicated to the public domain in early 2018, which coincides with the release of the game [0].
> So the model that made this economically viable was the proprietary control model.
This is a complete fabrication.
> Anyway, just because a handful of games can exist on libre models (even given what I've said) that doesn't mean the industry can survive with mandatory libre requirements.
Making a living from open source software is hard, game or no. Making a living as a game developer is hard to begin with and many proprietary games are not commercially successful or viable.
My point was that the ecosystem is a lot more complex than your reductive analysis.
[0] https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/commits/master/no_cop...
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> Because we don't have a right to a continuing service that requires their labor unless they agreed to it There are carve-outs in the legislation for this. It's a moot point.
So it's ok for companies to misrepresent their subscription services as a "single-payment" acquisition and pull the brought product away form their customers when they want?