5 ms·

It's my opinion that games as a service need to be forced to allow the community to resume hosting once the window of profitability has passed for a product. W

It's my opinion that games as a service need to be forced to allow the community to resume hosting once the window of profitability has passed for a product. We should definitely not rely on for profit businesses to preserve gaming history. They have repeatedly declined to do so in the past.

hedora 3y ago
I agree; I think it should apply even more strictly for user-provided content. Assuming there's no third-party backup of these levels somewhere, they're destroying countless people's creative work. I don't care what the terms of service say. Companies shouldn't have the legal authority to delete the only copy of third parties' copyrightable work. The current situation is mass censorship.
- phailhaus 3y ago
  I never understood this line of reasoning. You are not "entitled" to Super Mario Maker. Nintendo made it, they hosted the servers, they let you build stuff within their platform, and you were fully aware of all of it. You weren't forced to contribute, you weren't forced to play. How can you then turn around and cry about censorship? If Nintendo decides tomorrow to shut it down, tough luck! These servers cost money, and it's even more work to responsibly open it up to the community.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Key point: Nintendo is also not inherently entitled to copyright protections. We grant it the ability to exercise violence on people who copy Super Mario Maker. It's a perfectly reasonable compromise to require that people who want the protections of copyright also make that protected asset accessible.
  - CivBase 3y ago
    And I've never understood this line of reasoning. Nintendo made it and sold it to people. They didn't rent it. There was no lease with a defined expiration. None of that was ever presented to the user when they bought the game. It's tucked away in some TOS users are asked to click through post-sale where they essentially say "yeah you gave us money to access this but we can permanently revoke your access at any time for any reason git wrekt". I don't care if the servers cost money. Boo hoo. Nintendo sold access to people. They should be held responsible for upholding their end of the deal. At the very least they should stop being able to use misleading terms like "buy", the terms of the deal should be much more strictly defined instead of this "we can do whatever" nonsense, and the relevant parts of that deal should be made clear and apparent to consumers prior to any exchange of money. I don't think it's "censorship", but I do think the way it currently works is unethical and should be illegal.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    Right, but that was Nintendo's business decision, and it's really up to society to decide if that's acceptable or not. A hypothetical book publisher could adopt a similar models for books - if you're an author, you have to use the publisher's app to write your novel, and anyone who wants to read it has to access it from the publisher's servers via the publisher's app. For whatever reason, said publisher could corner the market on some niche, culturally-important genre of book. Would be a bummer if they decided server maintenance was no longer worthwhile and just deleted all the books as per the license terms.
throw10920 3y ago
I was going to disagree on "We should definitely not rely on for profit businesses to preserve gaming history", but as I was trying to figure out how to argue against this, I remembered that the intention of copyright (sure, the tuning variables have gotten screwed up in the US thanks to Disney, but focus on the original intent and what we should aspire to) was a trade-off between limited monopoly on a creative work (to allow creators to profit on their work) and growing the cultural commons. In line with the spirit of that, I think it's reasonable to require companies to release their source code and assets after the copyright duration expires (and I'm in full agreement that the current term is far too long). I think that the hard part is assessing "profitability" though - Nintendo has shown that they're able to re-release games decades after initial release and turn a profit. Trying to legislate "profitability" could result in Nintendo (and other big game companies) holding on to their IP for longer, as opposed to just getting Congress to reduce copyright term back down to 15 years or something. I agree with the intent, I just think that it'd be extremely hard to legally implement and a fixed term would work almost as well.
- gamepsys 3y ago
  Video games have become an important part of our culture. We do need more focus on preservation of that culture. We currently have archives of books, music, and movies that have been published. We have no archive, and no way to feasibly archive, all of the levels created in Super Mario Maker. There's currently no obligation for Nintendo to keep the source code/assets, much less all of the user generated content. If I buy an album or a book I can be reasonably certain I can enjoy that content in 25 years. If I buy an online service video game I can be reasonably certain I cannot enjoy that content in 25 years.
  - throw10920 3y ago
    This is a very good point about UGC and how it's not really present for most other types of media (like you described) and unaddressed by existing copyright law. So - additional legislation is necessary. Maybe something where the platform host has to either make the UGC available for direct download immediately, or preserve it on their own servers at their own expense until the copyright expires?

hedora 3y ago

I agree; I think it should apply even more strictly for user-provided content. Assuming there's no third-party backup of these levels somewhere, they're destroying countless people's creative work. I don't care what the terms of service say. Companies shouldn't have the legal authority to delete the only copy of third parties' copyrightable work. The current situation is mass censorship.

phailhaus 3y ago
I never understood this line of reasoning. You are not "entitled" to Super Mario Maker. Nintendo made it, they hosted the servers, they let you build stuff within their platform, and you were fully aware of all of it. You weren't forced to contribute, you weren't forced to play. How can you then turn around and cry about censorship? If Nintendo decides tomorrow to shut it down, tough luck! These servers cost money, and it's even more work to responsibly open it up to the community.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Key point: Nintendo is also not inherently entitled to copyright protections. We grant it the ability to exercise violence on people who copy Super Mario Maker. It's a perfectly reasonable compromise to require that people who want the protections of copyright also make that protected asset accessible.
- CivBase 3y ago
  And I've never understood this line of reasoning. Nintendo made it and sold it to people. They didn't rent it. There was no lease with a defined expiration. None of that was ever presented to the user when they bought the game. It's tucked away in some TOS users are asked to click through post-sale where they essentially say "yeah you gave us money to access this but we can permanently revoke your access at any time for any reason git wrekt". I don't care if the servers cost money. Boo hoo. Nintendo sold access to people. They should be held responsible for upholding their end of the deal. At the very least they should stop being able to use misleading terms like "buy", the terms of the deal should be much more strictly defined instead of this "we can do whatever" nonsense, and the relevant parts of that deal should be made clear and apparent to consumers prior to any exchange of money. I don't think it's "censorship", but I do think the way it currently works is unethical and should be illegal.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  Right, but that was Nintendo's business decision, and it's really up to society to decide if that's acceptable or not. A hypothetical book publisher could adopt a similar models for books - if you're an author, you have to use the publisher's app to write your novel, and anyone who wants to read it has to access it from the publisher's servers via the publisher's app. For whatever reason, said publisher could corner the market on some niche, culturally-important genre of book. Would be a bummer if they decided server maintenance was no longer worthwhile and just deleted all the books as per the license terms.

throw10920 3y ago

I was going to disagree on "We should definitely not rely on for profit businesses to preserve gaming history", but as I was trying to figure out how to argue against this, I remembered that the intention of copyright (sure, the tuning variables have gotten screwed up in the US thanks to Disney, but focus on the original intent and what we should aspire to) was a trade-off between limited monopoly on a creative work (to allow creators to profit on their work) and growing the cultural commons. In line with the spirit of that, I think it's reasonable to require companies to release their source code and assets after the copyright duration expires (and I'm in full agreement that the current term is far too long). I think that the hard part is assessing "profitability" though - Nintendo has shown that they're able to re-release games decades after initial release and turn a profit. Trying to legislate "profitability" could result in Nintendo (and other big game companies) holding on to their IP for longer, as opposed to just getting Congress to reduce copyright term back down to 15 years or something. I agree with the intent, I just think that it'd be extremely hard to legally implement and a fixed term would work almost as well.

gamepsys 3y ago
Video games have become an important part of our culture. We do need more focus on preservation of that culture. We currently have archives of books, music, and movies that have been published. We have no archive, and no way to feasibly archive, all of the levels created in Super Mario Maker. There's currently no obligation for Nintendo to keep the source code/assets, much less all of the user generated content. If I buy an album or a book I can be reasonably certain I can enjoy that content in 25 years. If I buy an online service video game I can be reasonably certain I cannot enjoy that content in 25 years.
- throw10920 3y ago
  This is a very good point about UGC and how it's not really present for most other types of media (like you described) and unaddressed by existing copyright law. So - additional legislation is necessary. Maybe something where the platform host has to either make the UGC available for direct download immediately, or preserve it on their own servers at their own expense until the copyright expires?