The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act' • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by donatj » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:02 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #112

wilg wrote: post #92

This is such a terrible solution to a literal non-problem. You should be able to make software that has a limited lifespan if you want. I just think that's fine. Games should not be special.

Think of your favorite movies. Now imagine your kids never being able to watch them. Same for books. Same for music. Games are an art form distinct from the above, and can in many ways be more powerful than they are. I've played games that toyed with my emotions in ways few movies can. As such, they need to be preserved just as all the above categories. I'm incredibly glad I can still play most of my 80's and 90's DO…

An online game isn't the dos game you played as a kid. It's temporal. It's the roller coaster you rode as a kid. A law forcing the any roller coaster built to stay open so your children can ride it is just silly and going to deter interesting rollercoasters people might not like from being built.

Moreover, if a game is art, it is a form of speech, no? And compelled speech seems like a moral violation.

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

#222

Post by Filligree » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:13 AM UTC

bigfishrunning wrote: post #209

maccard wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a few, as someone who has worked in games for 12 years. Most games have code and design decisions that hark back 25+ years. Every single unreal engine game for example is based code written in the mid 2000s and some parts of the engine really feel like it. Online components are developed the same way. If you made a multiplayer game 10 years ago and it was successful, your next game is going to be built on top…

> we have a GPL’ed library here that we can use but now all of a sudden the vitality of the license means we have to replace it? The "we're not distributing it" loophole is why the AGPL exists. So yeah, even though you can technically not violate the gpl by not distributing the server, don't do that, it's scummy. Better to just not use gpl code at all.

Respectfully disagree. The AGPL exists for that use case, and the difference is exactly that you need to distribute the changes.

If you license something under GPL, that necessarily means you’re okay with people making local changes and not sharing them. If you aren’t okay with that, then don’t use the GPL.

For me, that means I use a mix of AGPL and MIT depending on project.

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

#223

Post by drewbeck » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:27 AM UTC

It seems like one reasonable response from game companies is to include a service agreement with all games that explicitly limits the guaranteed server uptime. Ie “buying this game only guarantees operation until Dec 31 2028”

No clue if the market will go for that but it would meet the issue head on. “Companies will provide server binaries” on the other hand feels like pure fantasy.

Overall I’m glad folks are trying to do something about this.

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

#224

Post by jcranmer » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:28 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #217

maccard wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a few, as someone who has worked in games for 12 years. Most games have code and design decisions that hark back 25+ years. Every single unreal engine game for example is based code written in the mid 2000s and some parts of the engine really feel like it. Online components are developed the same way. If you made a multiplayer game 10 years ago and it was successful, your next game is going to be built on top…

All of this is valid and none of it is a good reason to oppose legislation to keep games from being destroyed. 35 years ago, in 1991, the vast majority of games were programmed in assembly, directly fiddling with the hardware registers. If you wanted to port your game to a new system, you were basically making a new game. There were some exceptions where systems shared enough internal components to make code reuse vi…

One of my first lessons in open source was just because I could imagine an architecture where a feature was easy did not mean that the software had an architecture where said feature was easy. And I don't see any reason to doubt GP's assertion that existing server architectures are not in a position to comply with the law.

The problem in this instance is not that the legislation effectively mandates that companies move away from particular server architectures (I mean, there's room to debate the wisdom of that, but it is a pretty explicit goal of many proponents of this law). But if you want to seriously push companies to do that move, you also have to recognize the ways to actually entice them to do that. And you know what is a very good way to ensure noncompliance with your regulation? Tell companies they have 6 months to make core architectural rewrites of not only to-be-released games, but games that they are currently selling and expect to continue selling. That kind of timeframe is just not possible.

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

#225

Post by jcranmer » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

wsve wrote: post #220

rafram wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the law specifically exempts subscription-based revenue models, so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.

> so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition. Please reread my comment. You're doing the exact same thing. You're saying this like it's a given, but it is not. WHY would it be more attractive?

Because doing so gets them out of obligations to release tools that may be difficult-to-impossible to release to comply with the law.

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

#226

Post by wsve » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:33 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #219

wsve wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement. That seems a bit silly to my eyes, self-hosting a server seems sufficient. But not included in this bill, so not an issue here > 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 c…

>The main point would be if you start development from the premise that your server executable will be released to the users, the architecture/performance considerations are not that different at all. Except devs aren't, and shouldn't, be developing under that assumption, they should be developing under the assumption their game will be successful. You don't want to be giving your pitch to investors and have to go "w…

> The most obvious example is pretty much any form of inviting a player/having idenities. The storage of users and inviting them is what brings in the scaling complexities in your average online game, and that's when you'd use a service harder to have a self hosting equivalent of.

A bill like this isn't asking for a 1-to-1 level of service once the company servers are turned off, it's a minimal product to make multiplayer play at all possible. The assumption is that, like with most fanbases for a product, you'll have to form a community of people to engage with it on your own.

The solution is to do what so many older games like Quake or Minecraft or TF2 have done since day 1: Release the server executable, and allow direct LAN connections (and disable login requirements).

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

#227

Post by kbenson » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:53 AM UTC

drewbeck wrote: post #223

It seems like one reasonable response from game companies is to include a service agreement with all games that explicitly limits the guaranteed server uptime. Ie “buying this game only guarantees operation until Dec 31 2028” No clue if the market will go for that but it would meet the issue head on. “Companies will provide server binaries” on the other hand feels like pure fantasy. Overall I’m glad folks are trying…

If they did that, people would notice, it would be talked about, and it would be factored into (some) people's decisions on whether the game was worth the price. That's the market figuring out how to appropriately price a good based on information about it, which I think would be good. Even if that's the only thing this legislation changes I think it would be a good change, by forcing what was an ambiguous aspect of the good you purchased into a well understood and legally enforced aspect.

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

#228

Post by hananova » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #176

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 feat…

This is absolute fearmongering. Indie devs aren’t the ones releasing this always-online quadruple A garbage in the first place. They will be affected the least, since their games already would work just fine if the company ever goes belly up.

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

#229

Post by kbenson » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:56 AM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #146

Ukv wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bankruptcy process already involves identifying and administering the company's assets, so releasing the server software (as-is) to owners of the game could be part of that.

Bankruptcy sells the assets on behalf of creditors that have specific priority in law. Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights. The most likely outcome is that some PE firm would buy the software rights out of bankruptcy and figure out how to bleed money out of people that want to continue using that software.

> Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights.

Would it, if legally required at the point of sale of the good the source code is based on and utilizes? I doubt creditors claiming ignorance of state law works well as a defense.

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

#230

Post by kbenson » Sat, May 30, 2026, 5:04 AM UTC

Manuel_D wrote: post #57

Releasing server-side code would be a non-starter for lots of companies. For one, many of them don't actually own all of the code they use to implement the game server. There's lots of proprietary middleware in use in online games. Perhaps a workaround is to just have 1 server online indefinitely. Technically the online services are still functional - the match queue times would just be very, very large.

Even if this law just caused companies to put into their sales contracts that they will support the servers to a certain date X years in the future and then handling of the online services would pass to a third party that might charge a nominal fee to administer the service, that would be an enormous win for the free market (in that it makes obvious what was ambiguous about a good) and for people both better knowing how a good will function in the future and what future costs there might be. In a way, this could just force companies to provide the equivalent of a warranty for the functioning of the online aspects of the software.

People far too often forget the absolutely vital aspect information plays in the free market, and anything that increases information (for example, how long a good should be expected to continue to function) is a net good, when compared to a complete lack of information about that.