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

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

#51

Post by surgical_fire »

dijit wrote: post #35
jjani wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline?

Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter?

Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought?

Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.

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

#52

Post by chithanh »

I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice. Same applies to all paid in-game content.

That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.

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

#53

Post by meheleventyone »

surgical_fire wrote: post #51
dijit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline? Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter? Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought? Well, good news for you…

It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.

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

#54

Post by charcircuit »

meheleventyone wrote: post #53
surgical_fire wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline? Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter? Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought? Well, good news for you…

It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.

How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down.

Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.

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

#55

Post by surgical_fire »

meheleventyone wrote: post #53
surgical_fire wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline? Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter? Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought? Well, good news for you…

It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.

> It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive

The current state of affairs is that the net result is such that consumers are stripped of their rights. I find it more unacceptable.

If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist. If no one is licensing the brands/assets/music/whatever because the licensing costs are too high, it's likely that in time the costs will come down.

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

#56

Post by meheleventyone »

charcircuit wrote: post #54
meheleventyone wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.

How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down. Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.

When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on needs to have been licensed for that use. That is typically more permissive than licenses as mentioned up thread and so more expensive.

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

#57

Post by charcircuit »

meheleventyone wrote: post #56
charcircuit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down. Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.

When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on n…

Stop killing games is not about forcing developers to perpetually sell games. They can still stop selling games. They just can't leave it in an unplayable state.

If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.

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

#58

Post by surgical_fire »

meheleventyone wrote: post #56
charcircuit wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down. Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.

When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on n…

> In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content

You start your argument from a presumption that releasing an offline game is almost an impossibility. Are you trying yo argue that offline games have zero things licensed? This sounds like a major argument in favor of offline games.

Sounds to me that the simple solution is just stop licensing things with such draconian requirements. If I play a racing game I care about it being fun. If the car I am using in-game is a BMW or a made up brand for the game is immaterial.

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

#59

Post by msgodel »

LocalH wrote: post #16

Of course it does. The whole idea of "Stop Killing Games" is that developers should not be able to summarily kill off a game that people have invested time and money into, just because it's not making them enough money going forward. Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a d…

It's such a bizarre counter argument. The whole point of the movement is that developers are choosing to harm the medium and should stop.

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

#60

Post by dmurray »

chithanh wrote: post #52

I don't buy these arguments. If game developers don't want to sell games that way then don't. Sell subscriptions instead. Like instead of $60 for a game, $60 one-time fee for a two-year subscription, which afterwards renews automatically in 3 months intervals at no cost until further notice . Same applies to all paid in-game content. That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where eac…

I don't think this would have any significant impact on the industry.

Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer.

No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.

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