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Stop Killing Games

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Re: Stop Killing Games

#161

Post by ianburrell »

Telaneo wrote: post #92
0xy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either. I expect perpetual access to my game the same way I expect access to my books. Most of my multiplayer games can still be played without involving a clown server somewhere (either by hosting one myself, or by playing over LAN). This is somewhat skewed by me not having bought many of the offending games, but it's clearly not an impossible feat. It's not ev…

I have books that link to online content. I've had one that had printable workbook that that no longer worked because the site had disappeared.

Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running? What will people choose, the 5 year support for game that might never play again, or the forever support? Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#162

Post by apnorton »

F3nd0 wrote: post #50
dijit wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a game dev myself, agreed. I’m guessing nobody here has ever actually tried to make games, let alone multiplayer ones. It’s not “oh just make it better” we’re usually already stretching the limits of what’s possible financially and time wise to get a working (fun) product. You can add burdens all you want, but that means the games get simpler.. because they can’t be made cheaper (price sensitive customers) and tim…

As not a game dev myself, may I ask for clarification? How does ‘Stop Killing Games’ legislation kill any sort of multiplayer games specifically? Aren’t there already games which don’t have the problem the movement is trying to solve? Wouldn’t it only require action from you if you were trying to kill multiplayer in the first place? I feel like I may have misunderstood your point or am just lacking a lot of important…

I'm not a gamedev, but there's a more insidious issue with the CA "Stop Killing Games" legislation that was just passed --- namely, a Ship of Theseus problem.

Pick your favorite game today that you purchase once, then have long-term free multiplayer support. Something like, idk, Fortnite before it was made F2P in 2017. Games like these evolve their content over time: sometimes minor changes, like rebalancing guns or matchmaking, but sometimes these are major changes, like completely redoing the map or altering fundamental mechanics. There can also be seasonal events that are designed to be available for a limited time.

The obvious question, then, is: is it "OK" that significant parts of the multiplayer experience changed after you purchased the game? In the spirit of people who prioritize game preservation, the answer should be "no, that's destroying part of the game and losing it to history." If we accept that interpretation, then we end up killing live service games. On the other hand, if we allow significant parts of the multiplayer experience to change, then we've neutered the legislation, because the easy workaround is to slowly patch out all online features until you're left with a husk of what was originally sold.

California's legislation [1] attempts to dodge this by phrasing things in terms of "ordinary use" of the game, but the definition of "ordinary use" is quite vague and will absolutely be the subject of some court case at some point.

---

Of course, there's a bunch of other side effects to the "general" notion of "make games usable past end-of-life," too:

- You might be able to use certain open source libraries on the server side because you are not distributing them to the user, and thereby don't have to open source your server. However, if you were required to distribute a binary, that could pose issues.

- You could have a dependency on an expensive piece of software (e.g. an enterprise Oracle DB license), and be unable to package that with the download.

- You could have a dependency on another online service (e.g. AWS Game Development Services [2]) that discontinues an API you depended on, and would require massive rework to be able to release a functional binary at end of life.

- You could have a dependency on an internal system at your company that you aren't willing to release the IP for yet, due to its use in another game

[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

[2]: https://aws.amazon.com/gametech/

Re: Stop Killing Games

#163

Post by drnick1 »

dijit wrote: post #37
felipellrocha wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the legislation also kills any sort of multiplayer games, so it's in the same spirit. It just takes the idea to its logical conclusion. As a game developer, if this thing passes, I would just not build multiplayer ever anymore.

as a game dev myself, agreed. I’m guessing nobody here has ever actually tried to make games, let alone multiplayer ones. It’s not “oh just make it better” we’re usually already stretching the limits of what’s possible financially and time wise to get a working (fun) product. You can add burdens all you want, but that means the games get simpler.. because they can’t be made cheaper (price sensitive customers) and tim…

> I’m guessing nobody here has ever actually tried to make games, let alone multiplayer ones.

One possibility is to charge for online play on the "official" server. This can be done regardless of the availability of source code.

Another possibility is to release the source code when the game reaches its end of life.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#164

Post by 0xy »

ryandrake wrote: post #155
cogman10 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> And, it is reasonable to expect because, as I said and other old game players can attest to, this was the status quo for games ~15 years ago. This was a change in living memory. 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 pr…

You just finished praising Steam, the company responsible for the proliferation of DRM technology that does exactly what you claim to hate.

If Steam goes offline, billions and billions of dollars of games go with it. The online ones, the offline ones, all of it. Gone forever. Some will not function at all without Steam servers.

Steam pioneered remote DRM attestations for PC gaming, remote product key validation, always-online dependencies on Steamworks and more.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#165

Post by usef- »

krupan wrote: post #47

The discussion here is amazing! Takes me right back to the early days of Linux and discovering Free Software. How will developers eat?? Who would write software for free?? These people clearly didn't think this through!! Amazing to hear it all again, lol! Let's think about it. Free software just applies to the source code. Artwork, logos, even trademarked names are not Free. Support, services, and documentation can a…

Have there been commercially successful free software games?

If the code was Free Software, how would you sell in-game purchases? Note that if it were just 3d models for your character, others could sell them too, likely cheaper without the overheads of developing the base game. Note that the article is advocating for multiplayer code to be open too.

I love free software, but I don't see how it was works in practice with games unless you're talking about open sourcing years later. Games seem different in usage and development than operating systems.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#166

Post by duped »

runevault wrote: post #145
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.

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)…

Genuinely curious - what third party closed source dependencies are they using? Like what is their purpose?

Re: Stop Killing Games

#167

Post by ryandrake »

0xy wrote: post #164
ryandrake wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, it is reasonable to expect because, as I said and other old game players can attest to, this was the status quo for games ~15 years ago. This was a change in living memory. 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 pr…

You just finished praising Steam, the company responsible for the proliferation of DRM technology that does exactly what you claim to hate. If Steam goes offline, billions and billions of dollars of games go with it. The online ones, the offline ones, all of it. Gone forever. Some will not function at all without Steam servers. Steam pioneered remote DRM attestations for PC gaming, remote product key validation, alwa…

You might be thinking someone else. I never praised Steam. It should be totally unacceptable that Steam shutting down would cause the disappearance of billions of dollars of people's games.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#168

Post by Telaneo »

ianburrell wrote: post #161
Telaneo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No reasonable consumer would assume perpetual access, either. I expect perpetual access to my game the same way I expect access to my books. Most of my multiplayer games can still be played without involving a clown server somewhere (either by hosting one myself, or by playing over LAN). This is somewhat skewed by me not having bought many of the offending games, but it's clearly not an impossible feat. It's not ev…

I have books that link to online content. I've had one that had printable workbook that that no longer worked because the site had disappeared. Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running? What will people choose, the 5 year support for game that might never play again, or the forever support? Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.

The web archive kind of solves this problem.

Beyond that, I think the authors of your books are idiots for not making whatever content they have online not just a bundled part of the book (throw in a CD or thumb drive or whatever, not my problem. Solve it however you want. Just™ actually solve it). I've had the same happen with a quiz book I found, which had the answers online, with just a QR code in the book, which then lead to a 404 page. They could have just printed a few extra pages of answers in the back, but they didn't, and I mock them for it. They're fucking morons. Thankfully quiz questions tend to be easily googleable.

> Are you going pay the extra money to the developers to keep the servers running?

No, because you don't need to do that to have a playable game.

> Game companies will raise prices, by a lot, if forced to maintain or release games.

Good thing they don't need to do that then.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#169

Post by zzo38computer »

They are right that Free software is important, not only games but other stuff as well; I agree with the ideas they mention in this article.

Freedom 1 is also important for understanding the rules of the game in case it is not documented very well; changing which server it connects to is not the only issue (and a well-designed FOSS program would have an option to configure which server it connects to without needing to recompile it).

(In some cases, other people figure out the rules of the game independently and might write independent FOSS implementations (in one case, I have done this for a single-player game; other people have also done for other games). In this case, it may be less of a problem (if the FOSS implementation is actually correct and complete (and might even have less bugs than the original and/or other improvements)), and both official and unofficial implementations can continue to be used.)

Re: Stop Killing Games

#170

Post by mvdtnz »

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.

And you're... in favour of this kind of doctrine...?
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