321–330 of 506 posts
I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse. Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." a…
Exactly.
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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was a game running all of these things (matchmaking, skins, anticheat ...). After Counter-Strike 2 was released, the servers for CS:GO were shut down. Yet, the game remains mostly playable. Sure, the skins no longer work and there's no official matchmaking, but third parties have stepped up. That's because Valve released (and have always released) server software. I find this argument…
CS:GO's server architecture makes perfect sense for a game that would be easy to release server software. What do you do for, say, a failing MMO built on a proprietary game engine you're trying to make a sequel for?
Also, your example doesn't really make sense. First, no one is arguing that companies should right now go revive all past MMOs. This is something that would affect future products.
Additionally, why are you making a sequel to a product that already failed?
This appears to treat subscription style games and free to play with in game purchases differently than other games. I would assume if that law passed the simplest compliance would just be to charge subscriptions and stop selling games directly. It seems like doing that would comply with that law without requiring much to change?
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You were able to use it. Nothing lasts forever. People need help with a world that is hell, not video game related problems.
I don’t know where you’re from but in the UK, consumer protection law sets requirements that your goods last a reasonable length of time. Under your logic, a TV manufacturer could have their TV self destruct after 3 months and you’d be fine with it? Governments should do nothing because “it’s just TV, you can get another.”
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Not quite, afaict. When the auth servers are shut down, you wouldnt be able to play it anymore, even in single player.
In addition to the sibling comment, even Minecraft server has an "online-mode" setting, and if it's set to false, it doesn't authenticate players. Whenever my family has played on LAN, we've never used any auth servers (which is clear because we don't give Minecraft any credentials). The setting only applies to LAN players, but that should be easy enough to work around with a VPN or something.
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As I understand it, the obstacles are mostly legal. Our development team would love to just throw the code on GitHub.
Sounds like if it was mandatory to make a server release, legal would mostly shut up and it would be low cost. In other words, minimal change in risk. The refund thing is just there to force action by putting a dollar value on inaction. Pretty much no company is expected to actually choose refunds. > Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards free-to-play if in-app-purchases are excluded. Good point, the…
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The distinction makes sense, but I wonder if the bill will inadvertently incentivize games to move to subscription based models, which would be ultimately be a worse experience for consumers.
It won't. Most games bought on steam will never be played, not even once. Customers won't splurge on subscriptions they won't use.
This happened to me back in 2024 when Supercell abruptly shut down the game “Clash Mini”. Lost $100+ in in-game purchases. They did offer to transfer things to other Supercell games, but that had no value to me as I didn’t play those. I complained to the App Store, but Apple refused to refund purchases made more than 60 days ago (IIRC). I know things don’t necessarily last forever , especially digital assets, but to…
>Lost $100+ in in-game purchases. You lost the money the moment you made in-game purchases.
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Remember back in the old days when you could just run your own game server, even though it wasn't open source? That would work too. Or peer to peer LAN gaming, why is that not popular any more? Designing a game to use developer hosted servers is a choice they made. Probably to squeeze money from microtransactions.
> Or peer to peer LAN gaming, why is that not popular any more? This. I mean, modern game companies could setup a common (for every game) Headscale or similar solution, let group of friends create their own private VPN between them punching through any NAT and host their own distributed multiplayer game. Yes there is still some involvement server aide from the company but it could be easily shared between games. And…
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I don't follow. What IP value is there in game server code? I would wager usually none. And I would imagine the amount of games made without open source software somewhere in the stack could be counted on one hand. Open source is a pretty broad umbrella. I doubt a company would say Slay The Spire 2 was poisoned by Godot and that there's no IP value.
I think you miss how sophisticated some game server code is. Taking fighting games for example: they have entire processes to have both clients predict what the other client will do, and then have the server arbitrate the different client solutions into a "fair" result based on latency, player inputs, etc. There are problems that game servers solve that could have applications in other areas, and have a lot of value.