381–390 of 506 posts
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Vast majority of games don't rely on any server.
And those will be made subscription based anyway.
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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.
> Most games bought on steam will never be played, not even once. How did you gain access to my Steam library statistics?
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> open source server code if you are going to cease support When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Le…
> Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used Your company did not tracked libraries licenses in the first place?
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> open source server code if you are going to cease support When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Le…
To be fair, it was in a time and age where BOM was not that common. I am assuming nowadays, with BOMs being in place, the process should be much easier.
Lots of games are written in C++ to this day for example so they can eek out every bit of possible performance no matter the trickery required. I would presume this extends to server side of MMOs etc too. C++ has no standard build system even, it's sort of settled on CMake mostly, which has minimal native (working) support for dependencies even, let alone lock files and/or BOMs.
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> Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used Your company did not tracked libraries licenses in the first place?
Consider that there might be a difference between knowing which licensed libraries you used and verifying that your usage of them fully complied with the current license terms when releasing the source code. For example, licensing a library for binary distribution might not cover releasing a copy of a header file, modified copy of something you got from support before a bug fix made it into a release, some random uti…
Not a bad idea, but why does this only apply to games? I prime example of other software this would have benefited is AutoCAD. People who refused the conversion to a subscription, and maintained their "lifetime" licenses, where shut down after a couple of years.
It would be fair in general to disallow charging a one-time fee for something that's shut down soon later. I don't expect perpetual support, but there should be some target based on the price that any well-intended software maker will exceed. Also if you advertise "lifetime license," that should mean lifetime.
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because real P2P is hard for realtime stuff. Be it timing or network port forwarding issues.
A self hosted server executable still works fine with that though. Plenty of games had that model.
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…
> 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. I believe it's possible to write laws that serve the people they're supposed to protect. It may tak…
I agree. In theory it should be possible to create a fully transparent legislative drafting process incorporating red-teaming, open comment periods and mandated iteration cycles where bugs and unintended consequences inconsistent with the original intent are required to be addressed years after a law is passed. I'd love to design such a process.
Unfortunately, that's not at all how legislation gets made. It's opaque and fully penetrated at every level by highly-organized, well-funded special interests working to subvert the process in overt and covert ways. There have been entire books written about the incredibly sophisticated and devious ways legislation gets nerfed, loop-holed and corrupted. I once had dinner with a long-time Washington lobbyist for a public interest group. He has decades of experience seeing how the sausage is really made in the backrooms. It was a very depressing dinner.
The one thing that doesn't happen in recent decades of U.S. law-making is any chance of revisiting and revising a law once it is passed and not working. The reality is the U.S. Constitution and law-making process was brilliantly conceived 250 years ago by smart people with the highest ideals for mankind. It's amazing that system survived for as long as it did. But it's now been corrupted by black hats at Ring 0. And you can't deploy patches to resecure a system once the patching process itself has been pwned.
The only legislation which still gets passed in any reasonably pure form are things which no well-funded political or corporate vested interests care to fight over. Games now represent more yearly revenue than movies and music combined and most of the money now rolls-up to giants like MSFT, EA, Sony, etc. The chances of any legislation passing with real teeth to meaningfully restrict online games are virtually nil. Although if legislators see it as a popular enough issue, we might see a law pass with much fanfare but it will have subtle nerfs and kill-switches built in ensuring it makes no real difference in practice.
If you're wondering why legislators propose such laws if they know they're doomed to ultimately make no difference, it's for two reasons: 1. To get some positive press just for proposing something they know will never be enacted in law, or 2. Proposing a law which very well-funded vested interests will mobilize to kill or nerf generates an extraordinary amount of cash "donations" to campaigns, political parties and PACs. I learned from the lobbyist I had dinner with that #2 is far more common than #1.
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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…
I'm curious how this would play out in the case that the company paid to license some software component that they can't open source.
If you still choose to license something you can't release later, and it's critical to the game's operation, then that's a deliberate liability and you'll need to replace it.
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I'm curious how this would play out in the case that the company paid to license some software component that they can't open source.
Simple: that contract would be illegal. It's that simple. You can't put yourself into a position where you would be violating the law. The licensor would be on the hook for violating the law. This is "you can’t outsource compliance". Either your contract makes sure that you are compliant or a judge would make you both. This case illustrates this point fully: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/08/settleme…