4 ms·

I developed a few commercial games on unity a while ago, here's why some of what's proposed is harder than you think, - The original developper is not working

I developed a few commercial games on unity a while ago, here's why some of what's proposed is harder than you think, - The original developper is not working on the game anymore, another company is maintaining it and has no capacity for making significant changes to it. - You can't release your server source code because you will be using a lot of proprietary add ons that can't be released, and those are usually absolutely essential. - Your server is going to be built against a now unsupported version of the engine, that you probably can't even install on current year operating systems - stripping the source code of 'proprietary stuff' is significant work, there's no package management, code is copy pasted. - Your protocol is based on third party commercial code and that other company doesn't like reverse engineering - Changing the way the networking works to remove the lobby is significant development work, the networking framework is out of date, not maintained, and the devs are most likely not available anymore.

throwuxiytayq 1y ago
The rule won't apply retroactively to all games ever released, you know. All of these requirements can - and should - be met when new games are designed and architectured to satisfy the law.
- fvdessen 1y ago
  That would require a complete re-architecture of game engines and complete rework of how the games are developed and published. If I had to satisfy those requirements next year, I just wouldn't release in Europe, and I say that as an European.
  - TheBozzCL 1y ago
    Then just keep doing things the same way, but add a disclaimer that says you are only selling a license to play the game, and it's not guaranteed to work after a certain date.
    - fvdessen 1y ago
      Then like what happened with the cookie banners, everybody is going to put the minimum date, and the only winners will be the lawyers selling consulting in EU regulation compliance with the publishers.
      - rfrey 1y ago
        You are begging the question, the question being whether consumers care. You believe they don't (e.g. that the expires-on date won't affect sales) and the creators of this petition believe people will care and will prefer games that do not have that expiry date. So no, it's not inevitable that every game will just sprout an expiry date. It's possible but only if you're right that consumers don't care about owning versus renting games.
  - raron 1y ago
    If that would be true, there were no new games that would comply with this proposal. But there are many.
  - DrJaws 1y ago
    fair enough, don't release it on europe and lose access to a market of 700 million people from the first world who pay the highest prices maybe your game can live only by the sales of the US
  - whoknowsidont 1y ago
    >That would require a complete re-architecture of game engines and complete rework of how the games are developed and published. No it wouldn't. Not even you believe the statement you just wrote lol.
  - stouset 1y ago
    This is not an argument for doing nothing. It is an argument for phasing in these types of rules slowly.
xboxnolifes 1y ago
> You can't release your server source code because you will be using a lot of proprietary add ons that can't be released, and those are usually absolutely essential. This hard from the developer perspective, but its solvable at the regulation level.
graynk 1y ago
1. Not a problem because it's not being applied retroactively, but it should be included in the design from the start for new games 2. It is a problem now, but the license for those can and will change if the law mandates it. Unless addon authors don't want to make any money, that is. 3. I don't get the argument. If it works at the time of release - you're good. You're not expected to keep updating it to work on modern systems. 4. This is just point 2 repeated. 5. This is still just point 2 repeated and reverse engineering is allowed in EU, whether they like it or not. 6. Why do you need to change the way networking works?
- gopher_space 1y ago
  Not op but worked on multiplayer. If your game uses matchmaking or is multi region or crossplay it’ll be depending from a lot of different services, and tightly integrated with them. Latency concerns, for example, might be handled at several points in the flow that would stop existing for a standalone server. None of the code involved is reusable because it was written for a completely different context.
  - LexiMax 1y ago
    There is nothing preventing you from writing an abstraction that supports both the fancy middleware as well as direct IP connections. I can say this with certainty because I've also worked on multiplayer in several shipped multi-region cross-platform games, and this sort of arrangement is precisely what we have shipped. Granted, Direct IP connections are usually only supported on PC, but they are there, they do work, and our PC players appreciate that piece of mind.
    - gopher_space 1y ago
      I guess we could have made two different games at once, but we just needed one game that would work all the time for everyone. If we'd had the time or money to actually do that we would have used the time and money to made a completely new game in parallel.
Dagonfly 1y ago
The initiative is not even asking you to provide the full functionality of your online-components. All you should have is a "reasonable effort" EOL plan that allows customers to continue using the parts that can work without the developers support. They even call out "Gran Turismo Sport" as a good example. Sony announced the EOL a year before, and stopped selling micro-transactions. Then they removed the online services while retaining offline support for add-ons and in-game items. A reasonable EOL plan might be: We'll support the online matchmaking for 3 years. After that we retain the rights to shut down the services providing at least a one year notice. All in-game items and add-ons will be made downloadable for all players 6 months before shut-down. All offline game modes will remain playable using those items as before.

throwuxiytayq 1y ago

The rule won't apply retroactively to all games ever released, you know. All of these requirements can - and should - be met when new games are designed and architectured to satisfy the law.

fvdessen 1y ago
That would require a complete re-architecture of game engines and complete rework of how the games are developed and published. If I had to satisfy those requirements next year, I just wouldn't release in Europe, and I say that as an European.
- TheBozzCL 1y ago
  Then just keep doing things the same way, but add a disclaimer that says you are only selling a license to play the game, and it's not guaranteed to work after a certain date.
  - fvdessen 1y ago
    Then like what happened with the cookie banners, everybody is going to put the minimum date, and the only winners will be the lawyers selling consulting in EU regulation compliance with the publishers.
    - rfrey 1y ago
      You are begging the question, the question being whether consumers care. You believe they don't (e.g. that the expires-on date won't affect sales) and the creators of this petition believe people will care and will prefer games that do not have that expiry date. So no, it's not inevitable that every game will just sprout an expiry date. It's possible but only if you're right that consumers don't care about owning versus renting games.
- raron 1y ago
  If that would be true, there were no new games that would comply with this proposal. But there are many.
- DrJaws 1y ago
  fair enough, don't release it on europe and lose access to a market of 700 million people from the first world who pay the highest prices maybe your game can live only by the sales of the US
- whoknowsidont 1y ago
  >That would require a complete re-architecture of game engines and complete rework of how the games are developed and published. No it wouldn't. Not even you believe the statement you just wrote lol.
- stouset 1y ago
  This is not an argument for doing nothing. It is an argument for phasing in these types of rules slowly.

xboxnolifes 1y ago

> You can't release your server source code because you will be using a lot of proprietary add ons that can't be released, and those are usually absolutely essential. This hard from the developer perspective, but its solvable at the regulation level.

graynk 1y ago

1. Not a problem because it's not being applied retroactively, but it should be included in the design from the start for new games 2. It is a problem now, but the license for those can and will change if the law mandates it. Unless addon authors don't want to make any money, that is. 3. I don't get the argument. If it works at the time of release - you're good. You're not expected to keep updating it to work on modern systems. 4. This is just point 2 repeated. 5. This is still just point 2 repeated and reverse engineering is allowed in EU, whether they like it or not. 6. Why do you need to change the way networking works?

gopher_space 1y ago
Not op but worked on multiplayer. If your game uses matchmaking or is multi region or crossplay it’ll be depending from a lot of different services, and tightly integrated with them. Latency concerns, for example, might be handled at several points in the flow that would stop existing for a standalone server. None of the code involved is reusable because it was written for a completely different context.
- LexiMax 1y ago
  There is nothing preventing you from writing an abstraction that supports both the fancy middleware as well as direct IP connections. I can say this with certainty because I've also worked on multiplayer in several shipped multi-region cross-platform games, and this sort of arrangement is precisely what we have shipped. Granted, Direct IP connections are usually only supported on PC, but they are there, they do work, and our PC players appreciate that piece of mind.
  - gopher_space 1y ago
    I guess we could have made two different games at once, but we just needed one game that would work all the time for everyone. If we'd had the time or money to actually do that we would have used the time and money to made a completely new game in parallel.

Dagonfly 1y ago

The initiative is not even asking you to provide the full functionality of your online-components. All you should have is a "reasonable effort" EOL plan that allows customers to continue using the parts that can work without the developers support. They even call out "Gran Turismo Sport" as a good example. Sony announced the EOL a year before, and stopped selling micro-transactions. Then they removed the online services while retaining offline support for add-ons and in-game items. A reasonable EOL plan might be: We'll support the online matchmaking for 3 years. After that we retain the rights to shut down the services providing at least a one year notice. All in-game items and add-ons will be made downloadable for all players 6 months before shut-down. All offline game modes will remain playable using those items as before.