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I think including abandoned server code is odd, and I'm for it. I think we should start curating more public libraries with games in general, but that's going t

I think including abandoned server code is odd, and I'm for it. I think we should start curating more public libraries with games in general, but that's going to be very difficult to do publicly (i.e. in a government library) in today's current online landscape. Between walled garden platforms and API integrations to centralized corporate servers, it seems unlikely that many of today's games will survive in their current state for long. More than ever, games frequently update becoming a different game or die to competition. It'd be rewarding to be able to spin up or join a local [Flavor] World of Warcraft server without getting shut down or told to wait for Blizzard to do it because that specific version of software was abandoned at some point. If it became public domain then, it would be available to the public to operate as we please. I really just look at situations like Halo 2 and think that there's got to be a way to put server code into the public domain so that if someone wants to "rent" Halo 2 server code from the Library so that they can play online on the original hardware and everything, that'd be really cool, and experiences would be able to be shared across generations like books, films, and other forms of art. In the wild, it seems permanent shut down of an online service is equivalent to forfeiting server code for the dead game over to whomever can acquire it, either for sale, or often times theft in form of sharing among the most hardcore followers. This up-for-grabs situation is a symptom of the problem, and shouldn't be the main focus, but it is worth noting because it can affect Copyright/IP protection. If the company behind the game doesn't want to continue supporting a version of their online game, there needs to be a way to gracefully donate said deprecated version without losing underlying IP rights. It's donated and falls into public domain for operation under some relatively clear license a la books in a library. That'd be cool.

Shivetya 9y ago
Well one issue is that an online game may be subject to multiple licenses. One example I do know of is Asheron's Call. There were some attempts to get it and its sequel. However there were licenses to Microsoft to consider and other third parties. Hence the "owner" of the game could not simply turn it over to the public. I know, just rip out what is otherwise covered by another license or copyright. Well not only would that take time but it may leave the code in a state beyond repair.
- manicdee 9y ago
  I think the point of claiming a code base abandoned would be to strip rights from rights holders for property they do not show any intention of servicing. You contributed to AC2? That’s great! The game is now abandoned, you have no rights to that code anymore. To maintain your rights you either maintain the game in a serviceable state, or deploy your server technology as an API rather than integrating it into the client. So an AC2 server needs certain IP to work? You can license that IP as a product or publish the API and contracts, allowing third parties to emulate that IP.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    So an AC2 server needs certain IP to work? You can license that IP as a product or publish the API and contracts, allowing third parties to emulate that IP. Not all codebases have a clean separation between "own code" and "third-party code". If the AC2 devs licensed a commercial engine and then heavily modified it, the abandoned IP is still a derivative work of non-abandoned IP.
rootw0rm 9y ago
To hell with the DMCA anyways. People who care will still reverse engineer the games they love and host the servers. There's probably zero chance of any legal avenue being opened up. As it should be, it's more fun that way.
Thlom 9y ago
In many countries you are obligated to "donate" one copy of any published and distributed work to the national library. That includes music, film, radio, tv, books, papers, pamphlets, websites etc. Depending on how the law is written this might also include games in playable form, so online games would require a copy of the server application as well as the client. If not games should be included asap. Making these archives available for the general public might be difficult, but librarians are creative and many already have experience in making games available to the public. It's manageable.
- taneq 9y ago
  "Playable form" for an MMO would require donating a server team. These games don't run themselves.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    Is that true? I keep seeing community run WoW servers for example.
    - taneq 9y ago
      A team of volunteers is still a team. Also, WoW private servers run on a reverse-engineered server infrastructure which seems to require much less babysitting than the actual live servers. I'd guess because they: * Don't have to deal with quite so many edge cases * Run on hardware an order of magnitude more powerful than was available to the original WoW server devs, meaning that much simpler solutions with far less sharding / IPC / configuration can still scale sufficiently well
      - merb 9y ago
        > * Run on hardware an order of magnitude more powerful than was available to the original WoW server devs, meaning that much simpler solutions with far less sharding / IPC / configuration can still scale sufficiently well well the hardware was never a problem, but the user base. you can basically run a 100 people reverse engineed wow server on basically a server with 2gb-4gb memory and a non virtualized cpu (a older gen one, dual core probably enough) and you would more run into networking limits than in actually performance issues. the problem with wow classic/burning crusade/wrath of the lich king, was mostly the overwhelming people, servers took way more than 100 people, and the biggest problem was logging them in, if there was a prime day, all sharded servers could login too many people which overloaded login servers quite regulary.
rixrax 9y ago
Let's assume vendor A decides to donate their server code to public domain, or better yet a fully functional VM/container/... that can be booted up to host their old title(s). The question that comes to my mind is that who is now going to maintain the code (and OS) on the server so that it is current with the latest security updates (thinking of 3rd party or home grown components providing http, tls/ssl, image/audio/video/xml/... decocoding/encoding,...)? I am all for making and keeping old games available and playable. But I see this as a big differentiator in making pre-internet era games available vs. games requiring access to an on-line server [that some one should probably be continuously maintaining from security standpoint].
- jononor 9y ago
  Whoever runs a server is responsible for its security. Who donated the code has nothing to do with that. Of course the donating party should provide source code, and without legal restrictions that prevent fixing issues.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Shivetya 9y ago

Well one issue is that an online game may be subject to multiple licenses. One example I do know of is Asheron's Call. There were some attempts to get it and its sequel. However there were licenses to Microsoft to consider and other third parties. Hence the "owner" of the game could not simply turn it over to the public. I know, just rip out what is otherwise covered by another license or copyright. Well not only would that take time but it may leave the code in a state beyond repair.

manicdee 9y ago
I think the point of claiming a code base abandoned would be to strip rights from rights holders for property they do not show any intention of servicing. You contributed to AC2? That’s great! The game is now abandoned, you have no rights to that code anymore. To maintain your rights you either maintain the game in a serviceable state, or deploy your server technology as an API rather than integrating it into the client. So an AC2 server needs certain IP to work? You can license that IP as a product or publish the API and contracts, allowing third parties to emulate that IP.
- icebraining 9y ago
  So an AC2 server needs certain IP to work? You can license that IP as a product or publish the API and contracts, allowing third parties to emulate that IP. Not all codebases have a clean separation between "own code" and "third-party code". If the AC2 devs licensed a commercial engine and then heavily modified it, the abandoned IP is still a derivative work of non-abandoned IP.

rootw0rm 9y ago

To hell with the DMCA anyways. People who care will still reverse engineer the games they love and host the servers. There's probably zero chance of any legal avenue being opened up. As it should be, it's more fun that way.

Thlom 9y ago

In many countries you are obligated to "donate" one copy of any published and distributed work to the national library. That includes music, film, radio, tv, books, papers, pamphlets, websites etc. Depending on how the law is written this might also include games in playable form, so online games would require a copy of the server application as well as the client. If not games should be included asap. Making these archives available for the general public might be difficult, but librarians are creative and many already have experience in making games available to the public. It's manageable.

taneq 9y ago
"Playable form" for an MMO would require donating a server team. These games don't run themselves.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Is that true? I keep seeing community run WoW servers for example.
  - taneq 9y ago
    A team of volunteers is still a team. Also, WoW private servers run on a reverse-engineered server infrastructure which seems to require much less babysitting than the actual live servers. I'd guess because they: * Don't have to deal with quite so many edge cases * Run on hardware an order of magnitude more powerful than was available to the original WoW server devs, meaning that much simpler solutions with far less sharding / IPC / configuration can still scale sufficiently well
    - merb 9y ago
      > * Run on hardware an order of magnitude more powerful than was available to the original WoW server devs, meaning that much simpler solutions with far less sharding / IPC / configuration can still scale sufficiently well well the hardware was never a problem, but the user base. you can basically run a 100 people reverse engineed wow server on basically a server with 2gb-4gb memory and a non virtualized cpu (a older gen one, dual core probably enough) and you would more run into networking limits than in actually performance issues. the problem with wow classic/burning crusade/wrath of the lich king, was mostly the overwhelming people, servers took way more than 100 people, and the biggest problem was logging them in, if there was a prime day, all sharded servers could login too many people which overloaded login servers quite regulary.

rixrax 9y ago

Let's assume vendor A decides to donate their server code to public domain, or better yet a fully functional VM/container/... that can be booted up to host their old title(s). The question that comes to my mind is that who is now going to maintain the code (and OS) on the server so that it is current with the latest security updates (thinking of 3rd party or home grown components providing http, tls/ssl, image/audio/video/xml/... decocoding/encoding,...)? I am all for making and keeping old games available and playable. But I see this as a big differentiator in making pre-internet era games available vs. games requiring access to an on-line server [that some one should probably be continuously maintaining from security standpoint].

jononor 9y ago
Whoever runs a server is responsible for its security. Who donated the code has nothing to do with that. Of course the donating party should provide source code, and without legal restrictions that prevent fixing issues.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]