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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'

#171

Post by acters »

agoodusername63 wrote: post #91
nine_k wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions Yes, please, produce more " games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely ".

> However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. How is that incentivizing offline games? Half of the service game focused industry would be exempt

They will also prefer subscription or free-to-play than actual offline gaming. This is going to be a disaster

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

#172

Post by Manuel_D »

stouset wrote: post #136
duskwuff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The server binaries will almost always include other proprietary information that the studio will not want to release. Or even information that they are contractually forbidden from releasing. A typical scenario would be a game developed as a fork of a proprietary codebase which was licensed from another company. Forcing the licensee to release material would infringe on the rights of the licensor.

Setting aside for a moment whether or not this specific legislation is a good implementation of the idea, I cannot understand how people don’t comprehend that this only happens because there is currently no obligation to release their server binaries or code. The second that becomes a legal requirement with associated penalties, developers will stop licensing technology under those kinds of terms.

Right, they'll stop licensing proprietary sever code. But that in turn drives up the cost of game development since they'd have to either purchase redistributable licenses or develop their own networking software.

I suspect companies will just scale down the servers to 1 instance with bare minimum support. Technically the online service is still active, thereby eliminating the requirements to distribute source code, even if it can only handle a handful of active players and terrible latency.

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

#173

Post by circuit10 »

duskwuff wrote: post #168
Maxatar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every law that exists about software exists to dictate what a consumer is or isn't allowed to do with software on their own computer using their own hardware. For once, there is a law that actually dictates the responsibilities that a developer has to the customer, and all that responsibility states is that the developer can not revoke the use of software that a customer has already fully paid for under certai…

I think you may have misunderstood the situation I'm outlining: 1. Developer A writes some software. 2. Developer B licenses that software from Developer A, under the terms that (for instance) it only be used internally by Developer B and not disclosed. 3. Developer B makes modifications to that software and uses it as part of the implementation of a video game server. 4. Developer B goes bankrupt. Under this propose…

For new games, they would know from the beginning that they’ll need to release the server software eventually, so they wouldn’t be able to agree with those terms

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

#174

Post by wsve »

zdragnar wrote: post #164
wsve wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. All this says is that it's possible for regulations to have negative, unintended consequences. It's about as relevant as reminding your friends that some restaurants are not very good when you're picking a place to eat. It's not relevant when we're talking about something specific and the field of things…

> It's about as relevant as reminding your friends that some restaurants are not very good when you're picking a place to eat Interestingly, restaurant food is typically less healthy, more expensive and less tasty than what you can make at home. Eating out should be the exception, not the rule, which plays directly plays into the anti regulation argument.

That is very far from the point, not only because what I meant was that some restaurants are not as good compared to others, but also because the connection between eating out vs eating at home and regulations is basically non-existent? I don't really understand what you're saying.

The point is saying "some regulations have downsides" is meaningless in conversation about a particular regulation, just like saying "some restaurants don't serve very tasty food" is meaningless in a conversation about "should we try that new Thai place on 3rd street?"

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

#175

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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…

There's so many renditions of these style bills that it's hard to keep track what's in this specific one.

From what I can tell this one doesn't include provisions to protect indie shops/solo devs. The entire time spent developing a game is a net loss until release (and probability wise, probably still a loss then). So this is adding more upfront cost to devs.

The bill text I found is also one of the more generic versions I've seen. Specifically this line

>the ordinary use of the game

This is quite broad. I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement. For instance, an mmo raid may require 20 players. If after the death of the game getting 20 players is impossible, I have seen people push for ai (just the game version) so it would be possible, or a patch to make the content possible for 1. Each of which are development time that serves no benefit to making money.

There's also the likelihood of the server architecture requiring many moving pieces. Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

Now the day 1 proponents would probably focus on the obvious provide the server exe cases, but these are concerns down the line.

Also at least this one doesn't do the 'development bond' idea I've seen to protect against the entity going bankrupt, essentially requiring every dev to pay for some sort of insurance before releasing the game (more costs for indie devs).

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

#176

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #148
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 tha…

>think they're going be in the "startup" founder position

Can't wait for the posts 10 years from now asking what happened to indie devs.

This bill alone won't do it, but as you pass regulations it gets harder and harder for a regular person to participate.

The worst rendition I've seen of this bill for Europe requires basically a development bond/retainer to 'ensure' there's dev time available to develop offline features. I.e, extra costs for devs who already by the numbers lose money releasing a game.

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

#177

Post by pibaker »

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…

What is irrational in pointing out that this particular law, as it is written, gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services? The technical implementation is irrelevant. It is the business side of things that you should actually worry about.

If anything, some people seem to have this weird faith in regulation that makes them think if some politician is promising to fix something via legislation, then it will get fixed, regardless of how the law is actually written or how it will work out in practice. California in particular is full of regulations that feel good but are either ineffective or has unintended consequences. See prop 65 which litters the state with vaguely worded warning messages that provide next to zero useful information, or prop 13 which massively disincentivizes home building and effectively makes new homeowners subsidize the property taxes of those who bought before them.

You can be supportive of regulations. I am supportive of many regulations. But I don't just support a regulation because it is great news that makes me feel warm and fluffy. I want well thought out regulations that don't neuter themselves with exemptions and don't easily lead to undesirable consequences. If this makes me an irrational anti regulation crusader, then off to Antioch, CA I shall go.

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

#178

Post by phil21 »

slg wrote: post #147
pibaker wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s basically going to incentivize gambling and skinners box type implementations to juice revenue.

Sure, people can opt out and some will. However the base human psychology is pretty well documented. If the ability to simply not engage in what amounts to addictive behavior was enough we wouldn’t have the crazy online gambling epidemic. That is at least to me obviously bad for the consumer even if you can simply choose not to engage.

Some ethical game companies will likely draw the line at what you say - but I predict far more will realize they can juice revenue quite easily by simply moving towards incentivizing more lootbox type things.

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

#179

Post by gopher_space »

gs17 wrote: post #159
gopher_space wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cha…

> It's entertainment. It's ok for entertainment to end Sometimes it ends right after you bought it with no way of knowing it would, or before you bought it. Not everyone gets 1000+ hours out of a title, sometimes the day you install they announce that the servers are going down forever.

I'd rather discuss actual problems people had with specific titles. Hypothetical edge cases always turn into corner cases during cross-examination. If we think about people who bought a game closing on day one we need to think about the people who shop at stores with a no-return policy. I'm not sure who's problem that should be.

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

#180

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

frankdlc222 wrote: post #154

This isn't really about ownership in the abstract, it's about honest labeling. Owning a copy has never meant you can duplicate it. You can't run off copies of a book you bought, but nobody thinks that means the publisher can take it off your shelf when they stop printing it. The ESA conflates the copyright they keep with the copy you bought. The real difference with live-service games is server dependency, and that's…

>This bill just forces that honesty: notice, an offline patch, or a refund.

According to the bill text I can find, notice does not matter. The exceptions are subscriptions, f2p, or simply already offline games.

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