3 ms·

A good way to justify games costing 100 USD/EUR or more, due to longer support period. Personally, I don't support this, just because there were a few cases wh

A good way to justify games costing 100 USD/EUR or more, due to longer support period. Personally, I don't support this, just because there were a few cases where studios closed support to an online game, doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be a rule. It is self-regulating pretty well. Games that are good, are going to be popular and don't need their servers closed. I personally don't expect mediocre games to have online support forever.

Hamuko 2y ago
>A good way to justify games costing 100 USD/EUR or more, due to longer support period. You're not required to support it longer, you just need to ensure the game is still playable after the support period for the people whose money you received. Ubisoft killed The Crew servers and then actually revoked the game license from people who've bought it, so even if you bought and "owned" the game, it would no longer actually be in your library. https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-reportedly-revoking-the-crew-from-owners-libraries-following-server-shutdown https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-reportedly-revoking-the-cr...
- ricardobayes 2y ago
  Sure. But I wonder, why this, and why now. Where were these people when car makers started to have proprietary everything, from chargers to service points, to the point where you can't even service a punctured tyre on certain makes. Or certain operating systems having a complete "walled garden". Call me a cynic but at this point, after normalizing DRM and phone-home, online DRM, it's too late. For this initiative to stick, it would have been at least 5 years ago.
tempfile 2y ago
From the link: > neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state This could not possibly mean forcing e.g. WoW to keep their servers running forever. It just means that if your game could be written without a phone home "feature", then it must be. In other words, it would not justify an increased price. Publishers may choose to increase the price, because they don't actually need a justification in order to do that. But this legal change would not be a good reason.
- keyringlight 2y ago
  One scenario I wonder about is what would be required to happen before and at the time of a company running a game closing themselves. Say you have a proprietary game/service now that could include some third party middleware they're not allowed to share, and the game relies upon an online service - right now that's allowed, and there's the scenario where the company is ongoing and want to cease the game the may be obligated to do work to make a community effort to have the game survive viable. If the company is closing, presumably they'd either be obligated to do the work for a release up-front (and maintain it over versions?) and keep it in escrow as when they won't be able to do the work later, or if any other company wants to buy their assets they either inherit the obligation to work on a free/libre release or keep the game/service running even though it may have contributed to sinking the previous company.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    The simple answer to this any server-side middleware would need to have distribution rights for end-of-life. And maintaining it is not difficult as all you're doing is essentially releasing the server side binaries. The only complexity would come in ensuring distributed systems (for load balancing) also work fine on a single system server.
    - rawbot 2y ago
      > The only complexity would come in ensuring distributed systems (for load balancing) also work fine on a single system server. This isn't part of this petition though. It would be fine to release server binaies that rely on distributed infrastructure. It would be up to fans to make it work. Which is fine by me personally.
  - tempfile 2y ago
    I think as soon as you say "the game relies on an online service" it's exempt from the provisions of this initiative. Of course anything can be pretended to be an online service (that's the whole point of SaaS) but all the initiative concretely says is "phoning home for no reason is not a service".
alexvitkov 2y ago
> Games that are good, are going to be popular Games that pass a certain quality bar and were designed with mass appeal in mind are going to be popular. I've played at least a few live-service games that I consider good, but were shutdown due to lack of popularity. Some of them I can't even find client files for to start working on a server. Value is subjective - tons of games that are now considered cult classics didn't gain any meaningful popularity on release.
- ricardobayes 2y ago
  How or why are you expecting a mediocre game to be a "forever" product then? Older, good games that are single player are sold DRM-free by the GoG project. I really struggle to see what issue this petition is trying to solve. Keeping multiplayer games have online support forever? Is this some "anti-DRM" initiative? Still unclear. I deeply believe even though this initiative looks good, but corporate will find a way to price it in, and raise prices. Like it always does.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> It is self-regulating pretty well. No it is definitely not. Companies are very abusive to consumers, especially as more games move to a live service model. Good regulation, I hope it passes. As for the price, I am not concerned. If customers reject higher price points, they will "self regulate" back to an acceptable level.

Hamuko 2y ago

>A good way to justify games costing 100 USD/EUR or more, due to longer support period. You're not required to support it longer, you just need to ensure the game is still playable after the support period for the people whose money you received. Ubisoft killed The Crew servers and then actually revoked the game license from people who've bought it, so even if you bought and "owned" the game, it would no longer actually be in your library. https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-reportedly-revoking-the-crew-from-owners-libraries-following-server-shutdown https://www.eurogamer.net/ubisoft-reportedly-revoking-the-cr...

ricardobayes 2y ago
Sure. But I wonder, why this, and why now. Where were these people when car makers started to have proprietary everything, from chargers to service points, to the point where you can't even service a punctured tyre on certain makes. Or certain operating systems having a complete "walled garden". Call me a cynic but at this point, after normalizing DRM and phone-home, online DRM, it's too late. For this initiative to stick, it would have been at least 5 years ago.

tempfile 2y ago

From the link: > neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state This could not possibly mean forcing e.g. WoW to keep their servers running forever. It just means that if your game could be written without a phone home "feature", then it must be. In other words, it would not justify an increased price. Publishers may choose to increase the price, because they don't actually need a justification in order to do that. But this legal change would not be a good reason.

keyringlight 2y ago
One scenario I wonder about is what would be required to happen before and at the time of a company running a game closing themselves. Say you have a proprietary game/service now that could include some third party middleware they're not allowed to share, and the game relies upon an online service - right now that's allowed, and there's the scenario where the company is ongoing and want to cease the game the may be obligated to do work to make a community effort to have the game survive viable. If the company is closing, presumably they'd either be obligated to do the work for a release up-front (and maintain it over versions?) and keep it in escrow as when they won't be able to do the work later, or if any other company wants to buy their assets they either inherit the obligation to work on a free/libre release or keep the game/service running even though it may have contributed to sinking the previous company.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  The simple answer to this any server-side middleware would need to have distribution rights for end-of-life. And maintaining it is not difficult as all you're doing is essentially releasing the server side binaries. The only complexity would come in ensuring distributed systems (for load balancing) also work fine on a single system server.
  - rawbot 2y ago
    > The only complexity would come in ensuring distributed systems (for load balancing) also work fine on a single system server. This isn't part of this petition though. It would be fine to release server binaies that rely on distributed infrastructure. It would be up to fans to make it work. Which is fine by me personally.
- tempfile 2y ago
  I think as soon as you say "the game relies on an online service" it's exempt from the provisions of this initiative. Of course anything can be pretended to be an online service (that's the whole point of SaaS) but all the initiative concretely says is "phoning home for no reason is not a service".

alexvitkov 2y ago

> Games that are good, are going to be popular Games that pass a certain quality bar and were designed with mass appeal in mind are going to be popular. I've played at least a few live-service games that I consider good, but were shutdown due to lack of popularity. Some of them I can't even find client files for to start working on a server. Value is subjective - tons of games that are now considered cult classics didn't gain any meaningful popularity on release.

ricardobayes 2y ago
How or why are you expecting a mediocre game to be a "forever" product then? Older, good games that are single player are sold DRM-free by the GoG project. I really struggle to see what issue this petition is trying to solve. Keeping multiplayer games have online support forever? Is this some "anti-DRM" initiative? Still unclear. I deeply believe even though this initiative looks good, but corporate will find a way to price it in, and raise prices. Like it always does.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> It is self-regulating pretty well. No it is definitely not. Companies are very abusive to consumers, especially as more games move to a live service model. Good regulation, I hope it passes. As for the price, I am not concerned. If customers reject higher price points, they will "self regulate" back to an acceptable level.