11 ms·

Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California

• woah 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • mumbisChungo 5mo ago
    go back to reddit ;_;
  • idle_zealot 5mo ago
    Funny, but I don't think HN appreciates meme comments.
  • jfengel 5mo ago
    Gamers are competitive, but so are lawyers, and you're playing on their turf. As with a boss fight, they stand a good chance of winning, especially the first time. (I would note that being called "racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists" does seem to bother you enough to bring it up in an unrelated context.)
  • ClikeX 5mo ago
    Edgelord copypasta is not suited for this platform.
• kgwxd 5mo ago
  Dumb. Just make it legal to reverse engineer the software, the community will take care of the rest, in a way the community actually wants, instead of getting just the bare minimum compliance from the original company, if they even still exist.
  • idle_zealot 5mo ago
    We can do both! This seems more viable for the moment, unfortunately. Challenging copyright gets much more pushback than even pro-consumer obligations like these.
  • rrego 5mo ago
    You want the "community" to reverse engineer the game server, where all the game logic lives, from the game client? This is the state of many online only games. Of course it should be legal to reverse engineer software you own, but you have to actually have access to the software to reverse engineer it.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • thewebguyd 5mo ago
      People did it for World of Warcraft, and continue to do so with each expansion. I can host and play a WotLK server locally, offline on my desktop with AI player bots with minimal issues thanks to the work of the community
      • account42 5mo ago
        WoW is slightly more popular than the average abandoned game. These kind of reverse engineering efforts (re-implementation really without access to the original server) are possible but require huge efforts and thus rarely happen.
  • MobiusHorizons 5mo ago
    I tend to agree with you that allowing the community to keep games running would be a more desirable outcome, but I don't believe California could make such a law. As I understand it, reverse engineering is already illegal federally because of things like the DMCA. California can't just make the DMCA not apply in this case because its not a California law. However they can pass consumer protection laws making there be consequences for abandoning a game when the consumers are in California. Given the alternative is probably do nothing this does seem good.
    • norman784 5mo ago
      I don't know about California, but AFAIK reverse engineering is legal, but breaking DRM protection isn't, so what companies did was to put DRM in their software, hence the reverse engineering became illegal.
      • MobiusHorizons 5mo ago
        yep, that is what I meant by the DMCA, but I should probably have been more clear.
• johnea 5mo ago
  Not a bad idea, but why does this only apply to games? I prime example of other software this would have benefited is AutoCAD. People who refused the conversion to a subscription, and maintained their "lifetime" licenses, where shut down after a couple of years.
  • ktallett 5mo ago
    Agreed! Far too many companies selling software as lifetime license and their renegade on that deal. A refund should be allowed. Or simply make the software offline without drm
    • scott_w 5mo ago
      To be fair, B2B sales have typically existed in a different world, even for physical goods. Take the Sale of Goods Act in the UK, offering consumer protections. A business simply can’t take advantage of many of its protections as it’s aimed specifically at B2C sales.
  • Melatonic 5mo ago
    How were they shut down? Like as in the old software refuses to start or they cant renew maintenance / no security updates?
    • k12sosse 5mo ago
      Adobe turned the license servers off that the installers used to verify your CS6 installer key. No check pass, no install. Of course, you can just use an LLM to build a patch, or pirate a copy, but it's the principle I suppose.
      • extraduder_ire 5mo ago
        CS6 verifies keys locally if it can't reach adobe's servers. Are they specifically blocking that? Blocking CS6 from accessing the internet in your firewall and using a key somoene posted online was a common practice back in the day.
• jfengel 5mo ago
  Do they need to put some funds in escrow? Or will they just shut down the entire company and let the players sue for it. (I know that big publishers won't do that, but I'm sure the lawyers could create shell corporations to solve that problem.) Or they could just demonstrate that they have an offline play capability right from the moment they sell it.
  • idle_zealot 5mo ago
    It doesn't really matter how they comply, so long as the punishment for bon-compliance is serious enough to motivate a good-faith attempt. I'm wary of jumping right into encoding specifics into legislation. That said, I'll be surprised if this actually has the necessary teeth.
    • jfengel 5mo ago
      Bankruptcy is a universal get-out-of-punishment free card. At least, if you're a corporation large enough and foresighted enough to shove your liabilities off onto a fictional subsidiary before starting.
      • Ukv 5mo ago
        If the bankruptcy process already involves identifying and administering the company's assets, I feel releasing the server software (as-is) to owners of the game could be part of that.
        • collingreen 5mo ago
          I don't think most game owners could take the server side software and assemble it into working servers their game could contact and use. This isn't realistic and needs something to change at the fundamental server design side and the game development side. A silly answer is regulations about how you can and can't make a game. Another silly answer is a cottage industry doing game server hosting that's required to be third party by law. I don't have any good, realistic ideas that aren't just trying to force game developers to build games differently (or build different games). Maybe that's the cost here but is that better than just letting angry customers influence the market?
• bitbasher 5mo ago
  Most "gamers" don't want to pay $5 for a game you spent 10,000 hours slaving to make. They will complain the game was too short when Steam shows they spent 10+ hours playing it. Now they want more.
  • idle_zealot 5mo ago
    The same is true for TV, movies, books. It's an insanely competitive market for people's time and attention. There are more games on Steam with 10,000 hours of dev time put into them than you can play in a lifetime. Standards for what's worth your limited time and money are therefore extremely high. If you're passionate about making games chances are you're not going to succeed financially. Set your sights on personal success in the artistic sense. Can you communicate what you wanted, can you enrich some people's lives a bit with your work? It doesn't pay the bills, and that's not really fair, but it's also not unique. Lots of valuable labor receives no reward. None of this is really relevant to the law in question though, which is itself pretty basic consumer protection against a company yanking back something it sold.
  • tencentshill 5mo ago
    Minecraft, GTA are still some of the largest media franchises of any kind in the world. By players and by expense. They'll continue to make it worth it.
  • annoyingnoob 5mo ago
    I'm old enough to remember a time when you bought a copy of a game and played it locally. Most games were around $60 and we paid it. It is only more recently that someone decided that viewing ads was a better way to pay for games - you got what you wanted and no one values games anymore. Even back in the day, if I paid 60 bucks and spent less then 40 hours solving the game I was disappointed and felt like I paid too much. I invested in the hardware and software and I expect something out it. Happy to pay for your game but don't hobble it or subject me to ads.
    • traderj0e 5mo ago
      They still sell plenty of games as a one-time $60 purchase. Though instead of owning a physical copy, you might only have a key to some DRM system.
• comrade1234 5mo ago
  If the government funds it I'd love to do maintenance on baldur's gate v1 for the rest of my life.
  • account42 5mo ago
    Between GemRB [0], ports to the BG2 engine (Tutu, BGT) as well as older community patches for BG1 itself, that game is already well maintained. It also doesn't have publisher operated server component though. [0] https://gemrb.org/ https://gemrb.org/
• phyzix5761 5mo ago
  So now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features. This is a huge win for big studios who will suck up all that market share. Handing over a standalone server to the public is a massive engineering, financial, and legal headache. Modern multiplayer games rarely run on a single isolated program. They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud microservices. A single match might require separate proprietary systems for matchmaking, player inventories, anti cheat, metrics tracking, and database management. Many of those come with licenses that don't allow you to just give away the code for free. Disentangling the actual game logic from these third party platforms like AWS or Epic Online Services requires months of rewriting code. At that point you're basically re-inventing the wheel on so many technologies that your costs go up exponentially. Games are rarely built entirely from scratch by a single company and are usually packed with licensed third party software like proprietary network code, commercial physics engines, or specific anti cheat software. Because the studio doesn't own the rights to distribute these proprietary tools to the public for free then releasing a standalone server forces them to spend extensive legal and development hours stripping out the restricted code and replacing it with open source alternatives. Releasing server code also exposes the inner workings of the company's technology. If a studio uses the same proprietary engine or backend framework for their active money making games then releasing the server code for a dead game essentially hands hackers and competitors a roadmap to exploit their current profitable titles.
  • chromadon 5mo ago
    Does it though? Just release the a standalone server once the game is done making money.
    • phyzix5761 5mo ago
      Updated my original post to explain why this wouldn't work.
      • ablob 5mo ago
        Somehow I highly doubt that a small game company is going to run a "huge network of interconnected cloud services". I've also yet to find a small game company running their own big online multiplayer game.
• TZubiri 5mo ago
  California seems to be a leading grounds for online law as well for the technology itself. Lots of clearly needed specific laws. Europe is fine too, but they err on the side of caution and smother actual innovation. Which is interesting because the Silicon Valley companies themselves incorporate in DW anyways, so it seems to be a separate consumer led legal trend.
  • yieldcrv 5mo ago
    California being 4th largest economy gives it some market power, just some though. Companies still make special considerations only for California - including total exclusion - as opposed to just implementing the good idea across the nation or world. Feels like malicious compliance, but I’m used to it now, I’ve done the same in other industries like raising or issuing capital, so I cant be mad about consumer protection style patchworks then
• Lonestar1440 5mo ago
  The "final boss" of bad legislation. Often, Government intrusion into the markets is worth the side effects. But in this case, even the best-case outcome is extremely dumb. Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced. And there will be side effects, ultimately including geo-fencing of games to exclude California. It's a big market, but you can't make up for a net loss with volume.
  • buellerbueller 5mo ago
    it seems like it would be good programming to parameterize the details of how to connect to a server, so really all the game developer would need to do is document the requirements for the server/make the server software. ..things they'd be doing anyway as they developed the game??
  • tombert 5mo ago
    > Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced. Yeah those poor companies. They should just be allowed to take our money and then stop providing a service we paid for. Won't someone please think of the corporations???? What kind of weird argument is this? If I pay for a game then I, you know, want to be able to play the game. You know what I don't care about? Whether or not it's profitable for Ubisoft to keep a cheap signing server online.
    • collingreen 5mo ago
      I take your point and also don't give a damn about corporate profits but it is a little bit "talking past" the parent. To me the important part of parents point was the next step: therefore the companies will just avoid selling to California which is an unintended consequence. I think this can be argued with directly on its merits - 1. maybe, 2. also that's probably fine, 3. also that's not what happened with car emission standards, etc.
      • buellerbueller 5mo ago
        Forego the 4th largest economy on the planet? Hardly. (Only US, China and Germany are bigger)
• smalley 5mo ago
  This appears to treat subscription style games and free to play with in game purchases differently than other games. I would assume if that law passed the simplest compliance would just be to charge subscriptions and stop selling games directly. It seems like doing that would comply with that law without requiring much to change?
  • norman784 5mo ago
    AFAIK the issue is with one time purchase games, where is not clear if you will be able to play forever or whenever they want to pull the plug, if they change to subscription based model or free to play, then it will be clear for the players what they are paying for.
    • sheept 5mo ago
      The distinction makes sense, but I wonder if the bill will inadvertently incentivize games to move to subscription based models, which would be ultimately be a worse experience for consumers.
      • darkwizard42 5mo ago
        Ultimately consumers can then make a better choice, to simply drop those subscription based games.
        • deleted 5mo ago
          [deleted]
        • kube-system 5mo ago
          They could, but there is very little evidence to show that a dislike for subscription models outweighs people's desire to consume quality content. Evidence is strong that people follow the content they want, and then secondarily choose the least friction delivery model.
          • 5mo ago
• traderj0e 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • galleywest200 5mo ago
    If you do not care then why did you take the time to share an opinion on the topic?
    • traderj0e 5mo ago
      I care about the topic from a legal and technical standpoint and am interested to see the outcome, just have no skin in the game and no sympathy for the industry or a bunch of children (both literal and figurative) who will whine whichever way it goes.
      • ssenssei 5mo ago
        Imagine buying a TV. The TV works perfectly, but some of its features depend on the manufacturer’s servers. Years later, the company decides those servers are no longer profitable to maintain. Instead of allowing users to keep using the product in a limited form, releasing server software, enabling community maintenance, or transferring support to another party, they remotely disable the functionality entirely. Now imagine they could physically come to your house and take the TV back because they no longer want to support it. Most people would immediately recognize how unreasonable that sounds. That is the core concern behind Stop Killing Games: consumers pay for a product, yet publishers can make it unusable after sale even when there are technically feasible alternatives that would preserve access without obligating indefinite support. The argument is not “force companies to run servers forever.” It is: when official support ends, there should be a reasonable end-of-life path that leaves what people purchased in a functional state.
        • traderj0e 5mo ago
          The answer is I wouldn't buy a TV that depends on online services. Just like I already wouldn't buy a video game like that, unless maybe it's very cheap. Some people do it anyway because it's still way less bad than the TV example.
• kkukshtel 5mo ago
  This is the road of stupid that stop killing games has paved.
  • ssenssei 5mo ago
    why do you have to be negative? currently there's a huge risk Marathon might get shut down like high guard or concord because of player numbers. If they shut it down, nobody could play it anymore. If there's a system in place for us to be able to host our own servers, or... I don't know? OWN the game we bought and play it because we OWN it because we PAID for it. Then yeah, that's good and it's a good movement and I fully support it. I genuinely don't understand the other side of this argument because it just feels like no for the sake of no.
    • 1123581321 5mo ago
      The main no argument is that it makes risky games riskier for the developer, publisher and IP holder. Games like Marathon never get approved.
      • LightHugger 5mo ago
        what's the risk? "Oh no we might have to provide the product we sold!" Lmao. That's the right kind of risk to force on sellers in a market. Sellers risk getting penalized for not providing what they have paid for. Great. Fanastic. Sounds healthy for any market and may even increase average customer confidence enough for a surge in sales, one that can't be created by one company alone.
        • 1123581321 5mo ago
          Yes, that’s the risk in the argument.
  • LorenDB 5mo ago
    Are you by chance the first second-generation Blizzard employee?
• georgeecollins 5mo ago
  It seems like the fair solution to this problem is to open source server code if you are going to cease support for an online game. That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to. I also really support giving 60 day notice if an online game is going to shut down. Places I have worked have had policies like that for games they are sun setting and I think the best game publishers think a lot about how to do that operation. It's not simple, because if people think a game is going away their behavior changes. And nothing sucks like buying online content for a game right before it shuts down. No matter what you do people will tell you they didn't know the game was shutting down. And if you give away content that you previously sold that also sometimes angers the community. The problem is when companies know a game isn't working they tend to want to shut it down right away because the money they spend keeping it up is never coming back. And maybe the company is going to die too. So I do support a law for a 60 day notice.
  • mjr00 5mo ago
    > It seems like the fair solution to this problem is to open source server code if you are going to cease support for an online game. That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to. It's nice in theory, but in practice many (most?) games are using middleware they don't have the rights to redistribute as open source. IIRC when the source code for Doom, the first major commercial game that went open source, originally came out, it had all of the sound code removed because it was dependent on a third party library. Not that you're going to have sound code in a server, but you may be using third party libraries for networking, replays, anti-cheat, etc.
    • dminik 5mo ago
      This has an easy solution. If the middleware cannot be used in a new regulatory environment then it will either die or adapt.
      • collingreen 5mo ago
        Sometimes the easy solution isn't easy for all sides or even realistic. "Fuck the publishers" is easy but not going to get a lot of publisher buy in. We all agree there is a foolproof method to fixing all bugs - delete all the code. We also all probably agree that isn't the optimal balance.
• selectively 5mo ago
  Can't say I support this. Legislative bodies should be dealing with actual problems in the world that meaningfully make the lives of regular people worse, not gamer entitlement.
  • scott_w 5mo ago
    Not being able to use a product that was purchased is an “actual problem” that “makes the lives of regular people worse.” This is going to blow your mind, but this kind of stuff is EXACTLY what people elect governments to do.
    • selectively 5mo ago
      You were able to use it. Nothing lasts forever. People need help with a world that is hell, not video game related problems.
      • scott_w 5mo ago
        I don’t know where you’re from but in the UK, consumer protection law sets requirements that your goods last a reasonable length of time. Under your logic, a TV manufacturer could have their TV self destruct after 3 months and you’d be fine with it? Governments should do nothing because “it’s just TV, you can get another.”
        • iteria 5mo ago
          If my TV costed $50 and I got 3 months out of it, I'd be like, "yeah, that's about right". We don't expect investments that low to last a generation. Just because you bought a game 5 years after release and then it shutdown 3 months later, doesn't mean it's a scam anymore than coming across an old DVD years after creation and finding that it either doesn't play media or plays it distorted.
          • scott_w 5mo ago
            When the game was released is irrelevant. I assure you that you’d be pretty pissed if you paid £50 for a TV and it stopped working after only three months. You can claim otherwise but I’ll call you a lying bullshitter. > coming across an old DVD years after creation This isn’t remotely the same thing so I don’t know why you brought it up
• braiamp 5mo ago
  Note, this law would affect less than 1% of all games _released_. Just that those happens to be the games that a sizeable part of the population plays. And even then, you spend more tying your game to a online service than not doing so in the first place.
• imzadi 5mo ago
  > As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes. So they just make their game free two months before they want to close?
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • okanat 5mo ago
    Law systems contain open-ended clauses and lawsuits analyze the intent. If you make your game free, just 2 months prior or even after selling it, just telling that you made it "free" will harm you more in the lawsuits due to obvious malicious intent.
  • Akronymus 5mo ago
    > So they just make their game free two months before they want to close? Which, afaict, wouldn't change anything in terms of liabilities, because of the people that paid for the game before it went free.
• ThrowawayR2 5mo ago
  I'd rather have legislation to give immunity from infringement to hackers who are either reverse engineering or cloning the game that has been shut down instead.
  • chadgpt3 5mo ago
    I have good news for you: everything is legal if you don't get caught.
• notJim 5mo ago
  The article is really vague and a bit misleading, but the bill text appears to be surprisingly readable, and honestly not much longer than the article. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1921 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
  • whartung 5mo ago
    The solution here is for publishers to give away the client, and simply charge a subscription. Keypoint: > would require a digital game operator to communicate specified information to purchasers and prospective purchasers of a digital game 60 days before the operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the game, and, beginning on the date an operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the game, require the operator to provide the purchaser with an alternate version of, a patch or update to, or a refund for, the game, "or a refund for the the game". "Here's your $0 back, thanks for playing!" That makes it a bit tricky for games like WoW that charge for expansions, as well as subscription. But I'm sure MS can figure something out.
    • throwawayk7h 5mo ago
      the bill explicitly doesn't apply to games that are free or are on a subscription system. (I assume free-to-play with microtransactions would be covered by this bill though, unless those microtransactions are subscription-based or time-limited.) I am indeed worried that this will push games to be subscription-based, so I would advocate making the bill apply even to subscription-based games. Though that would require some thought, of course, as it's not obvious how it should apply to such a game.
      • Gigachad 5mo ago
        A subscription is at least more honest. When you pay for an online game you aren’t buying an item, you are paying for a service for a time period. With a subscription that time period is explicitly laid out.
      • 5mo ago
• trashburger 5mo ago
  I mean, if government overreach (IP, DMCA 1201) is preventing us from using the things we pay money for in any way we might, might as well add more government overreach on top to claw some rights back?
• dbt00 5mo ago
  > The ESA also said the bill would impose unreasonable expectations on publishers regarding licensing rights for music or IP rights, which are often negotiated on a time-limited basis. “A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely could place publishers in an impossible position—forcing them to renegotiate licenses indefinitely or alter games in ways that may not be legally or technically feasible,” they wrote. Wah wah munchie wah. This would kick in next year. You have time to make contingency plans including a kill switch to put in shitty royalty free music if you need to. > “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance. Go fuck yourselves.
  • account42 5mo ago
    They shouldn't get to replace the music without a partial refund either IMO as that can be a significant part of the purchase decision. Just negotiate music licensing based on copies sold, and ideally the same for other content - then everyone is happy except for the rent seeking publisher who can't just count pure profit after the nth sale for something they didn't even create themselves.
• cube00 5mo ago
  Wish they'd extend it to all apps, I'm over paying money to developers who cut and run while using it as a way to land jobs at Microsoft and AWS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768909 JuiceSSH have since shut their site down after that last round of attention so I guess they really have no intention of open sourcing or refunding. https://web.archive.org/web/20260116112028/https://juicessh.com/about https://web.archive.org/web/20260116112028/https://juicessh....
  • Akronymus 5mo ago
    Going for all apps at once is, IMO, an impossible ask. So the better option is to tackle one area first to set a precedent then that can be used to make the fight in other areas easier.
• mrandish 5mo ago
  I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse. Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation. It would be better if they'd focus on narrower problems where they can make a positive difference. For example, mandating a freely distributable end-of-life patch to remove online activation from DRMed games. Creating a patch and uploading it once to the Internet Archive isn't a big enough burden to make companies modify their biz model or deploy armies of lawyers and MBAs to circumvent. When it comes to rapidly evolving technology, the best regulations are clearly defined, narrowly scoped and cheaper to comply with than avoid or game.
  • braiamp 5mo ago
    You know what? I'm tired of unintended consequences fear mongering. You know what else had a tons of unintended consequences? Mandating seat belts. This is the industry kicking and crying because they don't want to be told that they can't abuse the consumer blatantly. Joke Bloke would still be able to release their game without wondering if this kind of law exists because the law will never apply to them. These kind of laws are targeting a massive abuse by big companies with a bag of money to figure it out.
    • phendrenad2 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      • mzajc 5mo ago
        Please do not needlessly denigrate the poster you're responding to.
      • thomastjeffery 5mo ago
• jayd16 5mo ago
  All this will do is move all games to a subscription model with an N-day subscription waver packed in the box.
• Razengan 5mo ago
  This is the main reason I never bother playing new MMOs or online-only games, after a few that I liked shut down after barely 1 year. Hellgate London, Paragon... The law should go further: If an IP isn't revived within N (say 5) years, release the source code for the servers.
• phendrenad2 5mo ago
  I don't see any world in which these "stop killing games" laws result in anything close to what the proponents are asking for, for multiple reasons, one of the biggest being that the proponents don't have a clear, coherent, cohesive vision that takes into account all of the side-effects, and everyone you talk to in this space has a slightly different idea of what they want, and even the main proponent, Ross Scott, has a vague vision that changes from month to month, and shifts in mututally-exclusive ways depending on what objection is currently being responded to. I think what will happen is we'll get (A) a law that doesn't work due to some glaring loophole (such as being able to skirt the law by simply giving the community the server binary with no documentation) or (B) a law that DOES work but is so impossible to ahere to that companies simply accept that they'll be sued and bake it into the price of the game.
  • JacobKfromIRC 5mo ago
    I agree with most of this, but "server binary with no documentation" is an extremely good outcome compared to the status quo. People can reverse-engineer a server binary, but reverse-engineering a server that is no longer running is not guaranteed to be possible. There are worse potential loopholes you didn't mention though.
  • LightHugger 5mo ago
    Ross has had a consistent vision for years and i'm not sure where this delusion otherwise is coming from. At this point i'm wondering if people like you are just astroturf bots funded by the ESA.
    • phendrenad2 5mo ago
      Assuming people who bring new ideas to the table are bots or part of an evil conspiracy is a great way to irrelevancy. That said, I'm curious if wouldn't mind watching some interviews with him and try to suss out exactly what he thinks companies should do, and what companies should be affected. There's a lot of (and this is what it sounds like to me) "maybe publish an API spec, maybe share the binary, maybe publish full source code, I dunno!"
• Reason077 5mo ago
  This happened to me back in 2024 when Supercell abruptly shut down the game “Clash Mini”. Lost $100+ in in-game purchases. They did offer to transfer things to other Supercell games, but that had no value to me as I didn’t play those. I complained to the App Store, but Apple refused to refund purchases made more than 60 days ago (IIRC). I know things don’t necessarily last forever, especially digital assets, but to spend a lot of money on something only to have it shut down and made unusable within months really stings.
  • system2 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • ThePowerOfFuet 5mo ago
    >Lost $100+ in in-game purchases. You lost the money the moment you made in-game purchases.
    • tdeck 5mo ago
      Frankly if they kept the game up it might be $1,000 by now.
• techteach00 5mo ago
  I'm on the treadmill so this may appear jumbled. Bought PGA Tour 2k21 for $50. In October the servers shut down completely neutering the game. I think you're allowed to play a few courses still. But the career mode, which is why I originally bought the game, was completely turned off. Mind you that career mode had zero Internet needed features. It's like a sports franchise mode. So good on this bill. 2K should rot for deprecating a game I bought for $50 only 5 years ago.
  • dgellow 5mo ago
    But you knew exactly what you were buying. It’s not hidden to you that an internet connection is required when you buy the game. Game developers are generally pretty terrible and do a lot of really shady things to extract value from their players. But that one isn’t one. The terms are clearly stated before your purchase
    • rileymat2 5mo ago
      I’d debate that there are “clearly stated terms” when the result is completely unpredictable, will it work for 10 years or 3 hours? Reading the terms you have no idea. The original sin is selling a product that has an ongoing cost for a fixed price without creating an ongoing trust to pay those costs. Imagine I had a gas station that sold all you can use gasoline for a car for 4k. Then I sell a bunch of memberships and pay myself then go bankrupt. That’s straight up fraud.
      • techteach00 5mo ago
        I'll just play Civ 4 Beyond the Sword forever. Or whatever is available on the Internet archive.
        • dgellow 5mo ago
          Which is the sensible thing to do. There are a lot of local games available, if people don’t like online requirements just look at the rest of the massive catalog of games available
• varenc 5mo ago
  Found this quote from the game industry interesting and depressing: > Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work Could the game industry just side step this legislation by moving games entirely to a subscription model, with no upfront purchase? When they stop offering the subscription, you lose access to the game. Similar to how various online SaaS businesses work.
  • Akronymus 5mo ago
    > Could the game industry just side step this legislation by moving games entirely to a subscription model, with no upfront purchase? When they stop offering the subscription, you lose access to the game. Similar to how various online SaaS businesses work. Yes. With a subscription there is already an expectation that you will lose access when you stop paying. But I doubt they'd get much buy-in from gamers for that on most games.
  • okanat 5mo ago
    Yes. However gamers are not businesses who operate on cost minimization (especially employee cost minimization) that made SaaS possible. The existing purely subscription games do not have the same amount of customers/players as the ones do not admit that. So openly admitting that your game is a subscription will be quite bad marketing for your company.
  • braiamp 5mo ago
    That's a lie. Consumers buy a copy of the product. There's a bunch of legal fundamentals that make it so. Contracts that give one side a complete control of someone else are rarely (if ever) legal. If it were, then people could be pressured to give away their fundamental rights, one of which is the right to property.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  • account42 5mo ago
    They can try but there is a reason why they are selling what is effectively already a subscription for an unspecified length as a purchase - because the market mostly does not want subscriptions.
• codazoda 5mo ago
  Looks like it will just push game publishers to a subscription model.
• tyleo 5mo ago
  I happen to be shutting down an online game right now. https://www.tyleo.com/blog/sunsetting-rec-room-how-to-give-a-beloved-product-the-ending-it-deserves https://www.tyleo.com/blog/sunsetting-rec-room-how-to-give-a... The sad truth is that these things have high operating costs, especially if they need moderation. I would guess this bill just makes it more risky to make the games in the first place. It’s already brutally hard to make money on games. I feel like the effect of this might just be that shutting an online game makes it more likely to take a whole company down if you have to issue refunds. Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards other business models like ads, free-to-play, or subscription.
  • pointlessone 5mo ago
    What are the insurmountable obstacles to releasing the server code for the community to run?
    • tyleo 5mo ago
      As I understand it, the obstacles are mostly legal. Our development team would love to just throw the code on GitHub.
      • Dylan16807 5mo ago
        Sounds like if it was mandatory to make a server release, legal would mostly shut up and it would be low cost. In other words, minimal change in risk. The refund thing is just there to force action by putting a dollar value on inaction. Pretty much no company is expected to actually choose refunds. > Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards free-to-play if in-app-purchases are excluded. Good point, the law had better not exclude those.
        • summerlight 5mo ago
          This is one of the reason why that law will surely be challenged and very likely invalidated by SCOTUS. Trade secret protection is a very fundamental part and if this is forced to be broken by legally compelled speech, then it needs to have very creative interpretations over judicial precedents.
• GloriousKoji 5mo ago
  So what's preventing companies from giving games for free and requiring a subscription or one time membership fee for online play? They'd only be required to refund the full price of the game: $0.
  • rileymat2 5mo ago
    That’s an honest business model, absent in game purchases or user generated content.
• luxuryballs 5mo ago
  This makes the Minecraft model look all that much better than it already was, users pay for an account, the servers are self hosted by the community, as far as I can tell on the surface level Minecraft would already comply with this legislation.
  • Akronymus 5mo ago
    Not quite, afaict. When the auth servers are shut down, you wouldnt be able to play it anymore, even in single player.
    • ben0x539 5mo ago
      I imagine people will immediately patch out the auth requirement once the auth servers go away for good.
    • JacobKfromIRC 5mo ago
      Does Minecraft's offline mode not work indefinitely? I'm not familiar with the official launcher but this article [1] doesn't say anything about needing to reconnect occasionally. [1] https://www.practical-tips.com/games/play-minecraft-offline-how-to-enjoy-the-adventure-without-an-internet-connection/ https://www.practical-tips.com/games/play-minecraft-offline-...
      • Akronymus 5mo ago
        > First, you need to make sure Minecraft is installed on your device. Once this is complete, log in to the launcher while you are still online. This will save your login details for offline access. It still requires an initial authentication.
        • JacobKfromIRC 5mo ago
          A connection to Microsoft's servers will also be required to download the game in the first place, so I'm not sure this is really a problem (for compliance with the bill). I think the official launcher won't even let you download the game without authenticating first, but I'm not sure.
• okdood64 5mo ago
  This what California's political machinery is focused on? Rather than the colossal waste that is the high speed rail project, or rampant corrupt use of State and local funds for social welfare projects?
• bdcravens 5mo ago
  Seems to me like this will incentivize upgrades in a game being very limited time, tied to an event or season (though many games already do this)
• ChoGGi 5mo ago
  Look, patches would be nice. I don't want a refund, I want to continue playing the game. What I'd prefer is modders not getting sued when they try to implement the online aspect for free, heck or paid at that stage. If the game is popular enough, the community tends to take care of it. Maybe some legal form of officially abandoning the game?
  • account42 5mo ago
    Having the refund there is important as an anchor for determining the damages if a company refuses to comply. It's not a sustainable option for companies to rely on and that's by design.
• thayne 5mo ago
  > the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or Well, I predict we'll start seeing more games offered "solely for the duration of a subscription". And also games spun out into their own subsidiary that will just go bankrupt and not comply.
  • tyleo 5mo ago
    Subsidiary is what I was thinking too. Imagine you were just some indie dev freelancing and all of a sudden you have a big shutdown bill.
    • vasachi 5mo ago
      You wouldn’t get one if you followed the law and released the server.
    • LightHugger 5mo ago
      the idea of a "shutdown bill" is absurd and irrelevant to the law being discussed unless you are a scammer being forced to refund people.
      • tyleo 5mo ago
        I’m not sure what you mean. If you shut down a game and a law demands extra work to stand up a F2P server, who pays for that work? That’s the “shutdown bill” I’m talking about.
        • account42 5mo ago
          Yes, the law encourages you to act responsibly from the start. This is like a chemical plant complaining that they have to pay for cleanup when they shut down because they didn't follow proper procedures to prevent environmental harm while operating.
          • 5mo ago
• vivianzhe 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• aeternum 5mo ago
  California is really trying to become Europe with regulation as their primary GDP.
  • account42 5mo ago
    IKR how dare they care about the rights of their citizens. Outrageous!
• Our_Benefactors 5mo ago
  This is some remnant of the stop killing games initiative no doubt. Bad for the industry as a whole, and piratesoftware didn’t deserve to be dragged for being against it, in spite of his other flaws.
  • LightHugger 5mo ago
    He was dragged for persistently lying about it, doing everything in his power to shut down discussion of it, and being absurdly hostile on a personal level to the founder of the initiative unprovoked. Not for being against it.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• ETH_start 5mo ago
  Laws like this superficially seem good because it's not nice when online games shut down without a patch but they have the harmful effect of eliminating the long tail of — you could say — low quality offerings, that don't offer these features It's better to have more offerings on the market, even low quality ones, than fewer. Limiting the low quality offerings does not result in high quality ones naturally emerging to substitute them. It just leads to fewer offerings. There are two things I think that low quality offerings are good at doing. First, they're good at experimenting with new features. If it's very cheap to try a new feature, because the cost of deploying a new game is quite low and you're basically pumping out a bunch of marginally valuable games, then new features get iterated on more quickly. That eventually flows back up to the better quality games. The second benefit is that it meets some niche needs, where a certain player wants something that's very unusual or otherwise non-existent on the market. And this 5x9 half-baked game provides it. Again, it's very few people who want this feature, but there are a huge number of features like that. It's a very long tail. I moderate an online community and we introduced democratic rulemaking and people kept proposing and then voting in rules to restrict this or that kind of post because it was low quality or distracted people or whatever and eventually the forum became so much less usable because of the cumulative effect of all these small restrictions. That effect of making the forum less usable was most pronounced on newcomers, who didn't know all the rules and basically couldn't break in because of the barrier to understanding how to generate content that complied with the morass of restrictions.
• jmyeet 5mo ago
  My principles on this are: 1. If a game no longer works then the publisher loses copyright protections. This would often apply to online-only games. There are other games that are a mix of online and offline play that should be treated slightly differently; 2. If the hardware to run a game is no longer sold (eg legacy consoles), then there should be copyright protections for anyone making emulators to make the game work; 3. After a certain period of the underlying hardware and game not being sold, the game itself loses copyright protections. Say... 5 years? Maybe even less; 4. Loss of any online services sold with a game should mean that there is no copyright claim against third-parties making their own servers. Making a game server isn't necessarily that hard. Forcing companies to open source their servers is problematic and may not even be possible if, say, the studio shuts down. Gamers are a resourceful lot however. I mean, just look at emulators. They can make their own servers if they need them. Just make the law indemnify them against copyright claims if the studio/publisher has switched off those online services and the problem will largely take care of itself. The rest is just treating games like orphan works. There was a time when identifying a copyright holder was hard and extending copyright had to be actively done or it just expired. If they abandon a game this way, they should effectively just lose copyright (IMHO). I expect this to be somewhat of a forcing function. If a studio really wants to maintain copyright to a game they no longer sell for a console that nobody makes anymore, then porting it to Steam and continuing to sell it is their path to maintaining copyright. And that should make it playable still.
• speedylight 5mo ago
  I love California for these laws because even though their jurisdiction is technically limited, it makes no sense for the companies to not make the changes available nation wide.
  • motoxpro 5mo ago
    its such a bummer that because of laws like this, less games will be made. Most games dont ever make money and dont succeed. The alternative to companies shutting games down without supporting them is not them supporting them, it is them not making them in the first place or making them very expensive (price, ads, pay to play, etc.). The customer now has to pay a tax becasue of the cost this puts on game makers. This is not good :(
    • LightHugger 5mo ago
      this is absurd and untrue. this is like being told you have to pour a concrete pillar 2 meters to the left of where you were planning so that you're not destroying some vital infrastructure, then bemoaning the loss of the concrete pillar industry. Stop building games to self destruct. Once you fix your bad practices (which, you should not have been doing to begin with, pay for them once with some retooling and moving forward you don't need to pay more, then get some ethics and you will incur fewer costs like this going forward) there is no ongoing cost here.
      • motoxpro 5mo ago
        I am not arguing its RIGHT to stop supporting games. It's just a sad situation where people frame these things as moral/ethical debates when they have real world costs to players who get less games and game makers who will go out of business and the big business that people want to hurt will be just fine. I think your analogy is a great one. I had a plan to pour a pillar that wouldn't exist without me somewhere (lets say this is online matchmaking), and you come and tell me I cant do my plan anymore, or if I do, I have to pour a second/different one (self hosted servers or p2p) or give away the pillar I make for free. Games take money to maintain, if you make a law that forces people to maintain them for longer (or forever), that increases the costs. Higher costs -> less games. Most game makers are not Electronic Arts or Rockstar. Those companies will be 100% fine and will pass any costs onto you. It just seems crazy that a company should be forced to give a refund to all players or spend 1000s of person-hours implementing outdated multiplayer features becasue only 50 people are playing their game once a month. I won't enjoy it, and things aren't perfect as they are, but I will think back to this thread when the articles of layoffs, price hikes, ads, dark patterns, and "lack of quality games" become more and more prevalent because this law will have directly influenced it. Theres no free lunch.
• SilentM68 5mo ago
  In the case of companies or individuals that have no money, employees or assets left, how can they possibly issue refunds? It seems bill is eliminating/forcing out the little guy in favor of the more established, wealthier competitors. California laws and their legislators keep on getting stricter and weirder. Thank you for letting me in! Sol Roth PS: Hope you like the décor. I’m redecorating your thoughts permanently.
• throwaway27448 5mo ago
  Games?! can we also include infrastructure-critical software
• idorosen 5mo ago
  This bill would likely cause game studios to release games exclusively via subscription plans as an unintended consequence.
  • dalmo3 5mo ago
    It's so blatant that it's hard to call it unintended.
  • weregiraffe 5mo ago
    Nah, nobody will buy games with subscription plans.
  • account42 5mo ago
    No, it would at worst get companies how are currently selling a subscription of unspecified length as a "purchase" to be more honest.
• christkv 5mo ago
  I guess they will organize these games as separate companies now and let them go bankrupt instead?
• gib444 5mo ago
  The classic 'it's sold as pro-consumer legislation therefore it must be good' we in Europe are very, very used to. Commiserations, California (and likely the rest of the US) - all your games will now be subscriptions.
• auggierose 5mo ago
  If this law comes, why would games not just go full-subscription and circumvent this?
  • account42 5mo ago
    The games affected by this are already effectively a limited time subscription but just don't tell the players beforehand.
• petterroea 5mo ago
  One thing i think is missing from this discussion is that the problem is larger than just games, and I wish legislation was wider. It's good that games are used as an example and flag bearer due to wide appeal, but what about other software that requires online services, like the old programs that talk to activation servers?
  • Akronymus 5mo ago
    those movements can use gaming as a precedent to push foe their own legislation, at least.
    • petterroea 5mo ago
      Definitely, it's not a waste of time.
  • archargelod 5mo ago
    I believe Ross Scott from Stop Killing Games have talked about this in one of his videos. Essentially, if they try to fight for online-required software or against subscription model in general - all software companies will fight against it. That's just too ambitious and has way less chances to succeed.
• pavlus 5mo ago
  I think it's the right moment to acknowledge that Epic Games handled discontinuation of Unreal series well and responsibly [0] and how standalone servers were good for community. * When GameSpy announced shutdown, patches were released to use Epic released the "post-GameSpy" patch, replacing the GameSpy servers with Epic's master servers for Unreal Tournament 3 [1] * Older Unreal series games later were transferred for maintenance to OldUnreal [2], and also made free. At the same time, they are not open source, nor source available. So, there is an entity, that owns the code and maintains it, without the hassle of opensourcing it. This is because the series have a strong community, which was in large part formed because the standalone servers, prior to algorithmic matchmaking, allowed people to gather there and learn to be social to each other and learn gaming etiquette. You had to play strategies for repeated games and be civil to others. Modern matchmaking strips us of that - you play with others once and go separate ways, so you don't have to deal with consequences and can use one-time game strategies, which leads to poor behavior and less enjoyment. Yes, you had players of drastically different skill levels on the same servers, and that was a good thing. Skilled players could teach newbies, newbies could learn the gaming etiquette and see what's possible, instead of boiling in the same pot with others playing completely different games than on the other skill levels. You had the core game and the social game on top of it, now we are all alone in our rooms interacting with strangers we will never see or play again with nor against. Maybe Epic is not the best or the most loved company (compared to Valve) but I respect, that they understood that "this cow has gave us enough milk already", and could part ways with it, leaving existing community satisfied. [0]: https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/13210/view/2917725826581662372 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/13210/view/291772582... [2]: https://oldunreal.com/ https://oldunreal.com/
• taylodl 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• kgwxd 5mo ago
  "Think of the consumer!". Blatant government overreach is so hot right now.
• Figs 5mo ago
  I appreciate the sentiment, but this law looks counter-productive if I'm reading it right. This is OBVIOUSLY going to push companies to make games into a subscription service to bypass the law even if they wouldn't have normally: > (b) This section does not apply to any of the following: > (1) Any subscription-based service that advertises or offers for sale access to any digital game solely for the duration of the subscription. This exemption NEEDS to be removed. If a game's official servers are taken down, the community needs to be given the ability to keep running it themselves. Full stop. No exceptions.
  • account42 5mo ago
    Games that the the company is allowed to kill whenever they want already are a subscription. Forcing companies to be upfront about that when they are not willing to provide the claimed deal is not counter-productive.
• pipes 5mo ago
  To me it seems a bit childish to demand that some business must provide me with exactly what I want forever because at one point I paid for their service.
• casey2 5mo ago
  Everyone wants a forever game. This is the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century gushers. The massive wave of dead game we see is the equivalent of P&A (Plug and Abandonment) practices of early drillers. Don't expect the community to pick up the tab on your losses. If your game dies, give it a proper burial, don't just let it's carcass rot in the cultural stream.