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Stop Killing Games

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Re: Stop Killing Games

#211

Post by trinsic2 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #133
singpolyma3 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have decades of real world experience which shows this is not true. People buy things they could otherwise get for free with a bit of work all the time.

you aren't getting a company to build baldurs gate 3 and hope they recoup the costs from ko-fi donations. real world experience is that most companies do not offer their software for free, and open source developers either have to get sponsored or have to constantly solicit donations. donations do not typically cover multi-million dollar, multi-year development cycles.

Everything you are talking about appears to me as AAA. There will be many game companies that dont think it's worth the time to do this for the reasons you describe, but IMHO they shouldn't exist in the first place. The way online only games are made right now is destroying the game industry so im glad to see them go. We will see better iterations of games once the bloat is removed.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#212

Post by trinsic2 »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #187
john_strinlai wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i was unaware torrenting copyrighted content was made legal, thanks for the update

I think their point was that lots of media is easily piratable but still makes money and companies continue to produce more of it.

Yep another lost soul at the parent that thinks piracy equals death.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#213

Post by bigstrat2003 »

BlitzGeology91 wrote: post #177
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.

> To be fair, the legislation also kills any sort of multiplayer games, so it's in the same spirit. No, it doesn’t. It just requires that we go back to making multiplayer games the old-fashioned way (the good way). Descent 3 was released in 1999. You can still play Descent 3 multiplayer to this day if you want to [1], and there’s nothing that anyone can do to stop you from doing so. You can still play Descent 3 multi…

Hard agree. I think it would be a genuine service to the world if it was no longer feasible to make the modern style of multiplayer game. The older games were not only not beholden to a company continuing to run servers, they were more fun.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#214

Post by trinsic2 »

nerdjon wrote: post #8

This is basically advocating for open source games which is a completely different story than what stop killing games is trying to do. There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them. I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say: > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. A…

>That... basically kills the entire gaming industry.

The AAA industry are already destroying the gaming industry with there shit games and stupid DRM pratices. This would be returning balance to the game industry.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#215

Post by mvdtnz »

duped wrote: post #203
mvdtnz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web servers, message brokers, physics engines, anti cheat, fraud detection, flood mitigation, ranking systems, chat moderation, match making systems. There are thousands of possible components which may have been licensed in any given game server system. In some cases the entire game engine runs on the server.

I guess what surprises me here is how much of this is 3p code that couldn't possibly be distributed. Like why would you not be using an open source web server, or widely available message broker? Things like chat moderation/match making/anti cheat/etc seem like add on services that would be implemented per game (well, maybe not match making) and aren't relevant to the problem that the "stop killing games" people are…

Frankly it's none of your business why, and it's completely irrelevant. The fact is that this 3p code exists and this law needs to account for it or it's unworkable.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#216

Post by skotobaza »

apnorton wrote: post #162
F3nd0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Games like these evolve their content over time

This is true, but the issue is not with the content, it's with the ability (or rather inability) to access any of the content past some point. Even if only the latest content is left accessible after EOL, it will still be better than having nothing at all. The older content can be added back, no matter how finicky it can sometimes be.

Regarding the dependencies, no one is forcing the developers to release closed ones, you can replace them with stubs. But it will be beneficial from a developer to think about it beforehand - how they will implement online systems with additional requirement of EOL etc. It's not an implementation problem, but rather an architectural one.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#217

Post by skotobaza »

habinero wrote: post #193
drnick1 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Another possibility is to release the source code when the game reaches its end of life. You might not have permission to, if it uses a lot of third party libraries.

It's not a problem, you can replace such function calls with stubs and document it. Some games that released their source code already did that.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#218

Post by skotobaza »

nkrisc wrote: post #112
promano wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we need a separate campaign, "Kill Games": any games whose existence requires players being "shaken down" should not be allowed to exist.

Or “You Don’t Need to Play Video Games”. I enjoy playing video games but I recognize them for what they are: a luxury past-time that is not necessary for life and one that would probably leave most of us better off if they all disappeared tomorrow.

> one that would probably leave most of us better off if they all disappeared tomorrow

I get what you are trying to say, but in general video games offer unique experience that no other media can provide - interactivity, e.g. exploring different worlds with different mechanics. I think this experience can invoke something in people that no other media can replicate. So I think we will lose something important if it suddenly vanishes.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#219

Post by skotobaza »

adamrezich wrote: post #127
nerdjon wrote: post #8

This is basically advocating for open source games which is a completely different story than what stop killing games is trying to do. There are tons of closed source games that have zero online component to them. I don't see how you can actually argue that this is a good thing, especially when they say: > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. A…

> That... basically kills the entire gaming industry. > Am I missing something serious here Only just that the video games industry as we've known it for the past few decades is basically already dead—at best, it's a hollowed-out husk of what it once was.

"Few decades" is a stretch I think. More like one decade.

Re: Stop Killing Games

#220

Post by tmtvl »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #148
john_strinlai wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Just yesterday when I saw the Leonhart French video about the NVIDIA piracy case.
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