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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

#61

Post by meheleventyone »

charcircuit wrote: post #57
meheleventyone wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No I’m talking about the distribution of games. With physical media that’s all fine because once the license expires they stop making new copies. People that own a copy are fine. With digital distribution once you’ve EOL’d a product you still need to make it available right? Otherwise how do people that have paid for it get it? But that means you can’t distribute elements you no longer have the license to.

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

#62

Post by meheleventyone »

surgical_fire wrote: post #58
meheleventyone wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

It’s about the distribution of games, doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline you need a license to distribute IP that you don’t own.

Never making a licensed product or using third-party IP is definitely one solution but I don’t think is the intent nor without adverse effects.

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

#63

Post by meheleventyone »

surgical_fire wrote: post #55
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.

> 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 hig…

> If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist.

Wow, who is killing games now?

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by meheleventyone »

chithanh wrote: post #49
bpfrh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The licenced design seems to include the front part of the car per the above comment, that would mean creating seperate models for EOL games.

No, even if the licensing agreement between the developer and the car maker ends, then according to first sale doctrine, the game buyers keep the licensed content. Removing it from user systems would be undue (but admittedly has happened such as with the in-game music in GTA).

The reason for that is that the game is continuing to be distributed and the nature of digital distribution is ephemeral so contents like music are removed from the distribution when the license expires. If you own the game on physical media or remove the connection to the digital distribution service (never patch it) then as a consumer you’re fine as you note with the first sale doctrine. It’s just legally the developer can no longer offer the content as part of future distributions. The same would be true for another physical media release.

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

#66

Post by dgfl »

mavamaarten wrote: post #32
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 sunse…

What’s the problem with releasing a server executable? As far as I can tell that would be enough to get around this legislation. And I can’t imagine that to be prohibitively expensive.

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

#67

Post by cwillu »

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.

If the law is that you can't do this, then those terms will just disappear from licencing agreements. It's not like there's a shortage of textures and sounds in the marketplace.

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

#68

Post by meheleventyone »

cwillu wrote: post #67
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.

If the law is that you can't do this, then those terms will just disappear from licencing agreements. It's not like there's a shortage of textures and sounds in the marketplace.

That entirely depends on the content, some is fungible and some isn’t. For the majority of general content developers are already getting a perpetual license so it’s really these special cases that will remain an issue and are unlikely to be resolved in the manner you suggest.

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

#69

Post by xg15 »

I guess the (media) battle is on now.

In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this)

I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels)

So we'll see.

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

#70

Post by meheleventyone »

dgfl wrote: post #66
mavamaarten wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sunse…

What’s the problem with releasing a server executable? As far as I can tell that would be enough to get around this legislation. And I can’t imagine that to be prohibitively expensive.

What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
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