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Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

pcgamer.com

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Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#31

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

dijit wrote: post #10
jjani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable! Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!

It’s more complicated than that. I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way. The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t…

Why would you be responsible for what other people do? Your game can already be modded to e.g. have the logo fall off.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#32

Post by mavamaarten »

poisonborz wrote: post #25

These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictio…

I also think many comments are a bit too eager in claiming "oh just publish the code" and "oh just let users host X". It's obviously not that simple. The biggest one for me is that single player games should still be playable offline after servers have been sunset.

I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#34

Post by pointlessone »

poisonborz wrote: post #25

These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictio…

Saas offerings are safe as they don’t let you Buy a thing. They’re very transparently a service. Same with timed licenses. It’s clear what you’re paying for. Most of the time.

With games it’s often not the case. You buy them and then at unspecified moment you might lose a significant portion of functionality or the whole game. At the time you buy a game you don’t know if it’s for a time, what time, or what will stop working.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#35

Post by dijit »

jjani wrote: post #21
dijit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more complicated than that. I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way. The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t…

I'm happy to be convinced, but so far this isn't really helping the point. What you've described applies to an extraordinarily small percentage of games. I'm looking at my Steam library with ~170 games. I see ~8 that have real brand names, 7 being shooters that contain gun brands - which have never cared about these things, given they're already appearing in the context of people killing each other in the first place…

I can’t speak for them because I never worked on them, but you’d be surprised how often a piece of music or a graphic is copyrighted. One of thousands of your common textures gets a bit too close to something else and suddenly you need a license.

Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such.

Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it.

To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game.

Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#36

Post by tossandthrow »

turtlebro wrote: post #33

If anything even comes out of this, the furthest a law could possibly go is to impose a 2 year window (after sale) in which a game needs to work as described.

A law can do much more.

Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#37

Post by ykonstant »

gryn wrote: post #8

> many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control. seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative. the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products inste…

OK, I signed it. hopefully I entered the correct postal code for my address; I always have to look up the code online.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#38

Post by 4hg4ufxhy »

dijit wrote: post #10
jjani wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable! Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!

It’s more complicated than that. I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way. The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t…

You shouldn't blame consumers that you failed to negotioate proper terms for your licenses. Maybe having legislation to point at will help you out to get more reasonable terms.

Re: Game publishers respond to Stop Killing Games claim it curtails developer choice

#39

Post by 4hg4ufxhy »

poisonborz wrote: post #25

These are weak arguments but there are valid ones why I would not think this has a footing, even if I support the attitude. What about games where the world is fully generative, tied to a licensed engine? You can't just rip/disable licensed items out, they may form a significant part of business code. Code and APIs would be needed to be documented. Why just games? What about abandoned Saas offerings? These restrictio…

Why not apply it to Saas? If you sold lifetime licenses and you don't want to run it anymore, just let your customers self host it. Even better if you can open source it.
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