Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

stopkillinggames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 160 posts

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#71

Post by tadzik_ »

diggan wrote: post #66
Moru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look on the thing you sign when getting a steam account, you don't actually own any of the games. Just like the MMO's, you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down.

> you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down. Doesn't Steam actually let people keep a game in their Steam library even if the publisher takes down the store page for the game?

That only gives you the client component though, which isn't very useful when the game servers shut down.

Most games these days don't have a self-hostable dedicated server.

In case of Steam/Valve specifically it happened a while ago with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve replaced it with Counter-Strike 2, and while GO's client is still usable, some of its online components are not.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#72

Post by leftyspook »

diggan wrote: post #66
Moru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look on the thing you sign when getting a steam account, you don't actually own any of the games. Just like the MMO's, you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down.

> you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down. Doesn't Steam actually let people keep a game in their Steam library even if the publisher takes down the store page for the game?

It does. Not sure if publisher can opt-out though.

Another point is that Steam DRM is a) optional b) unlike always online GaaS trivial to circumvent

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#73

Post by maccard »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #64
maccard wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure. So if a company only offered game streaming they would be exempt from this?

Xbox yes, stadia no. Depends whether the expiration date is communicated at time of transaction.

While I disagree with your criteria, I agree with you in principal - it's not black and white, and we could do better as an industry (speaking as an online game developer) to set clearer expectations around what will happen and when it will happen.

I would happily and whole-heartedly support a bill that requires some sort of SLA/minimum guaranteed availability for licensed content to be presented along with the payment terms in plain english. Something like "By making this purchase, XCORP agrees to provide you with an ongoing and updated YGAME until at least DD-MMM-YYYY and after that point makes no guarantee for availability. This date may change but may not be moved earlier without your agreement".

Which is pretty much what we as developers negotiate with cloud providers, third party technology, etc. Note I'm not a lawyer, so please don't critique my wording here.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#74

Post by throwaway48476 »

tadzik_ wrote: post #71
diggan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you cant play them when steam or producer decides to shut them down. Doesn't Steam actually let people keep a game in their Steam library even if the publisher takes down the store page for the game?

That only gives you the client component though, which isn't very useful when the game servers shut down. Most games these days don't have a self-hostable dedicated server. In case of Steam/Valve specifically it happened a while ago with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve replaced it with Counter-Strike 2, and while GO's client is still usable, some of its online components are not.

I believe csgo on the Xbox still works online.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#75

Post by throwaway48476 »

maccard wrote: post #73
throwaway48476 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xbox yes, stadia no. Depends whether the expiration date is communicated at time of transaction.

While I disagree with your criteria, I agree with you in principal - it's not black and white, and we could do better as an industry (speaking as an online game developer) to set clearer expectations around what will happen and when it will happen. I would happily and whole-heartedly support a bill that requires some sort of SLA/minimum guaranteed availability for licensed content to be presented along with the payme…

I think such disclaimer pop-ups would be the worst kind of GDPR banner style 'solution' to the problem. Copyright having an expiration was supposed to be a balance of the public interest and author rights. Copyright extension and DRM has absolutely smashed the scales. Once something leaves commercial relevance it should enter the public domain. In the case of software this pretty much requires source code.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#76

Post by drcongo »

exe34 wrote: post #45
maccard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, why is this just for games? Why are Figma allowed to do this, but EA aren't?

you got to start somewhere. plus I don't actually use any proprietary software outside of Nvidia' drivers and cuda (and binary blobs in my phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in my cpus and a bunch of stuff I can't remember), so I don't know much about that.

Yes, but apart from the Nvidia drivers, cuda, binary blobs in your phone and raspberry pi, and the minix in your cpus, and the stuff you can't remember, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#77

Post by throwaway48476 »

maccard wrote: post #69
throwaway48476 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheating is a social signaling problem disguised as a technical problem.

The problem is that the desired outcome of the cheater in a multiplayer game is to ruin the experience for others. It's a game of cat and mouse, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't mean that because it's technically impossible to stop all cheating that no efforts should be made. Distilling everything down to "open good closed bad" doesn't help anything, as the reality is it's far more nuanced than that.

Lately successful anti cheating programs have separate matchmaking for cheaters instead of using technical measures to try to stop cheating which will always be bypassed.

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#78

Post by NorwegianDude »

graeber_28927 wrote: post #37
petterroea wrote: post #11

This is a great excuse to also ensure the legality of third party reverse-engineering as a legitimate and reasonable reaction to the unavailability of official support. I believe EU law already to a certain degree supports this. Just look at the situation Fisker Ocean Car owners are in at the moment - the company has gone bankrupt, and their fate is in the hands of whoever buys the assets. eSIMs may not be paid for,…

The sunroof needs to phone home to work?

Welcome to 2024, I guess. Let's hope it won't start raining while it's open and there is no coverage, lol.

Next year the brakes might require a round trip to the data center too, so I guess we should start to account for network latency when braking. /s

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#79

Post by RHSeeger »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #57
cchi_co wrote: post #55

Would it be challenging for small developers financially to design their games to meet these requirements? And for multiplayer online games to live without publisher support... Yet the proposal is a strong step towards protecting!

A source code dump would likely be 'reasonable' and not cost anything.

It's not really as simple as that, though. What if your server code uses paid, 3rd party libraries?

Re: Stop Killing Games – European Citizens' Initiative

#80

Post by robin_reala »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #53
graeber_28927 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sunroof needs to phone home to work?

https://insideevs.com/news/725463/fisker-ocean-owners-bankru... Apparently, isn't the future great?

But… what happens if you drive out of coverage? Someone must have said that at some point during the development?
Post reply on HN