3 ms·
Unless terms of service start getting a lot more specific, this sounds harmful even to the gaming industry. The status quo is that the TOS of most online games
by halomru 10y ago
Unless terms of service start getting a lot more specific, this sounds harmful even to the gaming industry.
The status quo is that the TOS of most online games just have a blanket ban on anything that modifies the game experience, but in practice enforce this very selectively. Basically the players develop software and then the game publisher decides whether the software is acceptable. An aimbot probably isn't, something that logs the ingame chat probably is, in between there is a huge gray area to explore.
But if the worst punishment for a misstep isn't an account ban but five years in jail, people might think twice about developing anything for that games community. On that front, everybody loses.
- etatoby 10y agoThis is a good thing. The less programmers work for free on proprietary game systems, the more they can work on open source games, where they don't face criminal charges and where their work enriches everybody, instead of a specific corporation.
- noobermin 10y agoBe honest brother, hardly anyone plays open source games and they aren't up to par with proprietary games. Proprietary games have had similar issues (although without a jail sentence) forever and the 20 quake-likes out there have existed forever but the communities that play them are still a niche.
- Karunamon 10y agoExcept the programmers working in this case work directly against the interests of the creators, and players, of those games. So the hackers are driven away from working on Counterstrike so they can ruin my Sauerbraten game instead? Fantastic! /s
- niij 10y agoSo coercive legal action against modders is a good thing because... Open Source?