5 ms·

I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative: > This initiative calls to require publ

I think very few people (outside of the industry - important caveat) are opposed to the stated goals of the initiative: > This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be. You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with. It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors. I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.

qznc 1y ago
So don’t even try because it might be bad?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- throw10920 1y ago
  Nowhere did I say or imply that - did you respond to the wrong comment by accident?
  - conductr 1y ago
    It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
    - throw10920 1y ago
      > It’s kind of implied by your argument. No, it's absolutely not. You're reading your own thoughts into it. Nowhere is the implication that we should do nothing. > All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability? Because the authors are asking for public support for an initiative, and it now has a lot of public attention, with some specific people (mostly PirateSoftware) that are also publicly opposing it, and likely many more lurkers that don't want to sign it because of their concerns. It's also the case that the more technical the topic, the more that legislators tend to screw it up, likely because of technical incompetence. I'm elaborating the concerns so that they can get addressed. If you want more signatures, then you'd want to know what peoples' hangups are so that you can fix them.
      - conductr 1y ago
        The correct path would be to establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents in a way that held true to the spirit of what is driving this initiative. The industry will do the same to thing. So as the documents are drafted the feedback from the public’s standpoint continues to have a voice. Hopefully that happens but it’s too early in the process to say and it requires funding too. The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
        throw10920 1y ago
        > establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents Yes, that's one of the ways to address this. Active consumer participation is still necessary, though, as the consumer protection group can still lose its way. > The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing No, it's factually not. If I order soup from a restaurant, and it arrives and is terrible and I complain, I do not have to specify what the chef did wrong, or how they should fix it, for my complaint to be valid - and the fact that I'm not providing the solution does not mean that I think nothing should be done. Similarly, I don't have to point out what the solution has to be for my complaint to be valid, and that does not mean that I think nothing should be done. That's just insane.
deleted 1y ago
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theptip 1y ago
> to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation. And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys. Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.
- throw10920 1y ago
  > compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys This is almost always the case, actually. Regulation and compliance are taxes on the productivity of an organization. And the "shape" of the tax is mostly flat - the burden is sublinear in the size of the organization, so the relative effects on smaller companies are bigger. And smaller companies already have significantly less available resources, and especially less legal resources (no lawyers on retainer), to handle it. Obviously that doesn't mean that regulation shouldn't be passed, just that you have to write it very, very carefully - think embedded systems rather than web frontend - minimizing complexity and aggressively red-teaming it for loopholes and edge-cases.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
    OTOH an indie dev probably isn't running some massive server farm with 20 linked microservices that would be hard to replicate.
    - throw10920 1y ago
      Yes, that's true, but to be clear, even if the actual compliance isn't that much of a problem (as you correctly point out here), just determining how to comply is burdensome and may require expensive experts (or even lawyers) to verify - see the confusion around GDPR, for instance. Again, I'm not saying that it isn't worth regulating, just that you need to design the regulation as carefully as possible. You'd probably agree that the best regulation is that that minimizes burden on companies while maximizing positive effects for consumers, no?
Hojojo 1y ago
This vague handwringing isn't any better. None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions. That's what they're there for. Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online. Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
- dekrg 1y ago
  And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what? TO me it's just amazing how the advocates for SKG ignore any possibility that it could make things much worse that they already.
  - DrillShopper 1y ago
    > And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what? Then the industry is honest, and I can spend my money on an indie developer that doesn't do that. Companies that do that will likely be completely outcompeted by studios that give a shit.
  - techjamie 1y ago
    If that business model worked so well, they'd all be doing it already. It'd cause piracy to cease, and (mostly) render the need for anti-cheat redundant, barring external image recognition cheats that are already tough to stop anyway.
- throw10920 1y ago
  [flagged]
kmeisthax 1y ago
[dead]
mrandish 1y ago
> imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs. That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs. I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves. In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.

qznc 1y ago

So don’t even try because it might be bad?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throw10920 1y ago
Nowhere did I say or imply that - did you respond to the wrong comment by accident?
- conductr 1y ago
  It’s kind of implied by your argument. All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
  - throw10920 1y ago
    > It’s kind of implied by your argument. No, it's absolutely not. You're reading your own thoughts into it. Nowhere is the implication that we should do nothing. > All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability? Because the authors are asking for public support for an initiative, and it now has a lot of public attention, with some specific people (mostly PirateSoftware) that are also publicly opposing it, and likely many more lurkers that don't want to sign it because of their concerns. It's also the case that the more technical the topic, the more that legislators tend to screw it up, likely because of technical incompetence. I'm elaborating the concerns so that they can get addressed. If you want more signatures, then you'd want to know what peoples' hangups are so that you can fix them.
    - conductr 1y ago
      The correct path would be to establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents in a way that held true to the spirit of what is driving this initiative. The industry will do the same to thing. So as the documents are drafted the feedback from the public’s standpoint continues to have a voice. Hopefully that happens but it’s too early in the process to say and it requires funding too. The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
      - throw10920 1y ago
        > establish/find a consumer protection group to help legislative bodies craft the documents Yes, that's one of the ways to address this. Active consumer participation is still necessary, though, as the consumer protection group can still lose its way. > The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing No, it's factually not. If I order soup from a restaurant, and it arrives and is terrible and I complain, I do not have to specify what the chef did wrong, or how they should fix it, for my complaint to be valid - and the fact that I'm not providing the solution does not mean that I think nothing should be done. Similarly, I don't have to point out what the solution has to be for my complaint to be valid, and that does not mean that I think nothing should be done. That's just insane.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

theptip 1y ago

> to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation. And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys. Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.

throw10920 1y ago
> compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys This is almost always the case, actually. Regulation and compliance are taxes on the productivity of an organization. And the "shape" of the tax is mostly flat - the burden is sublinear in the size of the organization, so the relative effects on smaller companies are bigger. And smaller companies already have significantly less available resources, and especially less legal resources (no lawyers on retainer), to handle it. Obviously that doesn't mean that regulation shouldn't be passed, just that you have to write it very, very carefully - think embedded systems rather than web frontend - minimizing complexity and aggressively red-teaming it for loopholes and edge-cases.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
  OTOH an indie dev probably isn't running some massive server farm with 20 linked microservices that would be hard to replicate.
  - throw10920 1y ago
    Yes, that's true, but to be clear, even if the actual compliance isn't that much of a problem (as you correctly point out here), just determining how to comply is burdensome and may require expensive experts (or even lawyers) to verify - see the confusion around GDPR, for instance. Again, I'm not saying that it isn't worth regulating, just that you need to design the regulation as carefully as possible. You'd probably agree that the best regulation is that that minimizes burden on companies while maximizing positive effects for consumers, no?

Hojojo 1y ago

This vague handwringing isn't any better. None of us know what the law will end up turning into. But we shouldn't let that stop this being addressed properly in our political institutions. That's what they're there for. Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online. Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?

dekrg 1y ago
And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what? TO me it's just amazing how the advocates for SKG ignore any possibility that it could make things much worse that they already.
- DrillShopper 1y ago
  > And if the end result of this legislation is that videogames in EU aren't licensed or sold but are instead all streamed and you are instead just buying access to stream a game, then what? Then the industry is honest, and I can spend my money on an indie developer that doesn't do that. Companies that do that will likely be completely outcompeted by studios that give a shit.
- techjamie 1y ago
  If that business model worked so well, they'd all be doing it already. It'd cause piracy to cease, and (mostly) render the need for anti-cheat redundant, barring external image recognition cheats that are already tough to stop anyway.
throw10920 1y ago
[flagged]

kmeisthax 1y ago

[dead]

mrandish 1y ago

> imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs. That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs. I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves. In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.