6 ms·

I can’t speak for them because I never worked on them, but you’d be surprised how often a piece of music or a graphic is copyrighted. One of thousands of your c

by dijit 1y ago

I can’t speak for them because I never worked on them, but you’d be surprised how often a piece of music or a graphic is copyrighted. One of thousands of your common textures gets a bit too close to something else and suddenly you need a license. Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such. Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it. To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game. Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.

surgical_fire 1y ago
Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline? Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter? Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought? Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.
- meheleventyone 1y ago
  It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down. Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
    - meheleventyone 1y ago
      When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on needs to have been licensed for that use. That is typically more permissive than licenses as mentioned up thread and so more expensive.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        Stop killing games is not about forcing developers to perpetually sell games. They can still stop selling games. They just can't leave it in an unplayable state. If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
        meheleventyone 1y ago
        No I’m talking about the distribution of games. With physical media that’s all fine because once the license expires they stop making new copies. People that own a copy are fine. With digital distribution once you’ve EOL’d a product you still need to make it available right? Otherwise how do people that have paid for it get it? But that means you can’t distribute elements you no longer have the license to.
        surgical_fire 1y ago
        With online distribution games can be made unavailable for purchase. You are not distributing it anymore. Only people that previously purchased can still download the game. There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore. Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.

by dijit 1y ago

surgical_fire 1y ago

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline? Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter? Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought? Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.

meheleventyone 1y ago
It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down. Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
  - meheleventyone 1y ago
    When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on needs to have been licensed for that use. That is typically more permissive than licenses as mentioned up thread and so more expensive.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      Stop killing games is not about forcing developers to perpetually sell games. They can still stop selling games. They just can't leave it in an unplayable state. If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
      - meheleventyone 1y ago
        No I’m talking about the distribution of games. With physical media that’s all fine because once the license expires they stop making new copies. People that own a copy are fine. With digital distribution once you’ve EOL’d a product you still need to make it available right? Otherwise how do people that have paid for it get it? But that means you can’t distribute elements you no longer have the license to.
        surgical_fire 1y ago
        With online distribution games can be made unavailable for purchase. You are not distributing it anymore. Only people that previously purchased can still download the game. There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore. Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.