8 ms·

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

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.
    - lovehashbrowns 5mo ago
      Should’ve thought of that before accepting significant amounts of money in exchange for a game they plan to kill when it’s no longer financially advantageous for the publisher. They’re so happy to rake in what, $60, now $70, soon $100 for a product they can disable access to for any reason at all or no reason at all, with no notice? How’s that fair? Why’s it only unfair when the hardship goes the other way around?
      - dminik 5mo ago
        Right, like "Oh no, this first video game related regulation in the entire history of the industry is too much for us."
    - account42 5mo ago
      A lot of "hard" solutions are only hard until there is a legal/business requirement for them. Licensing is the poster child example for that.
  - Permit 5mo ago
    This is not the only possible outcome. Another approach would be not to offer software within the affected region. U.S. local news is often not available to European visitors now due to GDPR. Similarly, Canadian news outlets are not available on Facebook due to Bill C-18. If I was an indie game developer I would consider this approach and simply avoid selling within California. Larger game studios would likely adjust as you say. However they too could adjust in such a way that they only offer subscriptions within California as that appears to exempt them from this rule. Many outcomes are possible beyond simply adjusting to the legislation in the way you are suggesting.
- Ukv 5mo ago
  If bills like this pass there'd be financial pressure for middleware providers to either license under terms that allow distribution at the game's end-of-life, or allow their middleware to be easily severed while still leaving the game playable - else they'd lose out on all customers selling games in California/EU/etc. Which is also a nice side effect to reduce intellectual property barriers for developers that do already want to distribute their server or source code.
- gsich 5mo ago
  Then don't. People will find a way to replace those.
- account42 5mo ago
  So? A) This state is not inherent but a result of there being no general requirement to release the sources. Middle ware would use different licenses if that was required to have any customers. B) Omitting the sound code did not stop the community from releasing source ports based on that release, with sound of course.
weberer 5mo ago
It doesn't need to be open source, you only need to provide server binaries to download. This was the standard until circa 2010. People were able to host dedicated servers themselves.
- bluGill 5mo ago
  I want to host a closed search server that's not being updated on today's internet. It might be good enough for home use, but definitely not if I want my friends to connect.
  - account42 5mo ago
    For playing with your friends you can use a VPN to not expose the potentially dangerous server to the wider internet. And sandbox both server and client as much as you feel needed depending on the value of "friend".
- Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
  Although I get the idea of providing server binaries but if one has to absolutely do it, then provide great modding efforts behind it. But I have found that the greatest modding efforts/community can be generated by open source. Balatro for example is easily modified in the sense that although it might not be open source but iirc its lua files are visible. There are other games as well which have something similar imo although that being said its possible to create modding efforts without open source in general too with say something like for example old versions of counter strike. Personally I would prefer open source though if its possible but I understand that some game studious might be worried about it but I don't quite understand it if they are shutting down the game anyway though. I think that @mjr00's comments are nice about third party library etc. which cause issues in open sourcing so its good to have a discussion about that too (imo)
- Terr_ 5mo ago
  That would be an improvement over nothing, but closed-source means that the game is still going to die as soon as someone finds a security vulnerability (or even just a gameplay glitch) that can't be feasibly patched. Imagine an MMO where special text in the chat causes viewers' clients to crash, or a glitch exists to duplicate items or money, or where anybody can crash the server to run arbitrary commands.
strags 5mo ago
> That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to. That might be fine for very small titles - where the "game server" is a relatively simple binary that can be run anywhere. Larger titles depend on a huge amount of infrastructure, for authentication, progression, matchmaking, etc... It's not feasible to open-source all of that, especially given that it may well still be in use for more recent titles.
- Ukv 5mo ago
  > It's not feasible to open-source all of that, especially given that it may well still be in use for more recent titles If they're still running their authentication server (for example), then they wouldn't need to release that service. Patching the game to no longer contact the authentication server would also be acceptable, for services that aren't a core part of the game. It's pretty likely the game already allows this for development/debugging. If they've accepted money from people to buy the game, and don't want to keep the authentication service running, and don't want to patch the game to no longer require the authentication service, and don't want to refund people, and don't want to release the authentication service so others can run it - I think it's fair for a regulation to force one of those.
  - knollimar 5mo ago
    So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. You wouldn't get scalability from reuse (e.g. reusing an auth library). Or what's likely cheaper is budgeting for that patch in the game. You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games than trying to play a multiplayer only game 20 years later wtih 6 people on the server.
    - Ukv 5mo ago
      > So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. They don't need to keep services running perpetually. strags's objection seemed to be that it could be infeasible to release services like authentication that they're still running, to which I'm saying they don't really need to consider any of this until they stop running it. > You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. Releasing or patching it out is largely just fulfilling their side of the deal. If I sell you a lawnmower that depends on some authentication server to start up, then shut down the server the next day (I got your money, why would I keep the cost?), and don't release the server code or a patch to work without it, then would you not say I've scammed you? The resource cost of everyone I've sold to losing access to their lawnmowers would be far greater than what it'd cost me to release a patch, just that the former is not a cost borne by me if the law allows me to ignore it. > I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games than trying to play a multiplayer only game 20 years later wtih 6 people on the server. Allowing a company to cut people off of their software (large cost) just to save having to push out a patch (small cost) will, on net, result on more expensive products - since on net you're wasting more resources. Particularly when it comes to authentication checks, this doesn't just apply to multiplayer games. Imagine if this applied to other forms of media (already kind of happening with DRM), like if we couldn't read books from over 20 years ago.
jayd16 5mo ago
Game engines/code aren't all open source. The game developer might not have the legal rights to release the source. Also, does this stop at games? Why not any online service ever? Why not any program at all?
- parliament32 5mo ago
  Gaming might be unique in the sense that it's the only industry where 1) consumers make a one-time purchase of a product, but then 2) the manufacturer remains responsible for the online component.. forever? I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry (maybe a few niche products). Maybe this is the reason MS has been pushing Game Pass so hard, to get rid of the "purchase" part entirely.
  - voidifremoved 5mo ago
    Amazon just ended support for older Kindles. Not sure how that's any different.
  - jcranmer 5mo ago
    > I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry Vehicles? Maybe not necessarily forever, but I'd expect the large car manufacturers to all still have some level of support for a 20-year-old car...
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      Large car manufacturers in the US are required to support their cars that they give warranties for by the the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which are 10 or 12 years long by this point.
    - jandrewrogers 5mo ago
      The contracts underlying the support for consumer automotive commonly run around 10 years. After that it is best effort and unofficial support by other companies if there is enough money to be made by offering it.
mrandish 5mo ago
> open source server code if you are going to cease support When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used and that we had clear, valid copyright to everything there. The project had been written over several years, merged with a project we'd acquired with a startup, some key people weren't around any more, the source control had transitioned across multiple platforms, etc. And even once we nailed all that down sufficiently, we didn't get an "all clear" from legal, we just got a formal legal opinion that any liability was probably under $1M. And then we had to convince an SVP to endorse that assumption of $1M potential liability and make a business case for approval to the CEO. For a public company, the default assumption for any online game would be "the server side code WILL be open sourced" (under threat of prosecution). That means legal would mandate "No commercially licensed libraries can be used, any open source libraries will have to be vetted to ensure the license is compatible and everything else will need to pass IP and compliance audit." That will certainly have an impact on development time frames and economics.
- gbear605 5mo ago
  That’s exactly the benefit of a law - it’s a forcing measure to require businesses to invest in processes to understand open sourcing, and to go forward when otherwise no one would make a business case for approval.
  - brobdingnagians 5mo ago
    And makes it more expensive. There is the seen benefit and then the unseen cost. Every game released will have to account for the possibility of it, and will create issues for people who really didn't want those issues. After awhile people will forget there are associated issues and costs, but they will still be there.
    - 5mo ago
SecretDreams 5mo ago
Guarantee X years of server time from launch. If you shut down early, pro rated refund and open source server code. After the launch window, close server with no penalty if desired, but just still open source code. Or keep server open if it's profitable. Or some other option. The specifics can be hammered out, but something middle ground seems sensible.
Razengan 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. Said this in another comment: In case a company or new management wants to renew an IP, maybe there should be a waiting period like 1-5 years before they are legally required to release/open-source the server code. Or how about this: what if, in order to launch a new online-only game in the first place, companies have to submit a copy of the source code as it is on launch day, to the courts or wherever. Then the courts could release it if the game hasn't been active for N years...
summerlight 5mo ago
Many developers with good will actually tried that and gave up due to lots of problems. This is not just bad ROI but also a legal minefield. Engineers usually cannot argue against this kind of risks. Enforcing this will unlikely work in higher courts. Though something like open sourcing protocols for server reimplementation may have some chances. While I see problems in the law but the spirit is reasonable. We need to push toward this direction. At least there should be difficult economical trade-off for publishers when they decide to shut down the game. Nowadays, some random executive just takes look into some excel, see some games have declining revenue and decides to "simplify the business" without much thoughts. This has to stop.
mifydev 5mo ago
Based on comments below the solution is to make the API public and publish the architecture design, along with the binaries. This way the company can avoid spending too much money on open sourcing the code, and the community can just rewrite the server while keeping the original binaries running.
roarcher 5mo ago
I think this is a more desirable solution for customers than a refund anyway--if I like a game, I don't want my $60 back in exchange for never being able to play it again. I just want to keep playing it.
- account42 5mo ago
  Yes, the $60 is nothing compared to your time investment into a game you like.
imtringued 5mo ago
This doesn't make sense. The developers should only be obligated to provide a dedicated server plus an in-game server browser that supports a standardized service discovery protocol. The players must figure out themselves how to run the software on their computer.
SkiFire13 5mo ago
> open source server code No, and requiring this will likely give the opposition counter points. You don't need the source code at all. You only need the ability to run the server yourself.
abustamam 5mo ago
When the 6 person startup I worked for shut down, the founders spent a few months of their own time to open source the product because people still liked it, they just didn't wanna pay for it. So people were allowed to selfhost. Of course this probably doesn't scale or work for every company but I thought it was nice to see.
matheusmoreira 5mo ago
Just make it a literal crime for corporations to interfere with community work on games they don't care about supporting. The problem will take care of itself. People are more than willing to put in the work themselves, it's just that hateful corporations will send them cease and desist letters if not actual lawsuits.
account42 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. For a number of reasons (licensing issues, code being lost, etc.) this will only work if source code must be escrowed long before that time.

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.
  - lovehashbrowns 5mo ago
    Should’ve thought of that before accepting significant amounts of money in exchange for a game they plan to kill when it’s no longer financially advantageous for the publisher. They’re so happy to rake in what, $60, now $70, soon $100 for a product they can disable access to for any reason at all or no reason at all, with no notice? How’s that fair? Why’s it only unfair when the hardship goes the other way around?
    - dminik 5mo ago
      Right, like "Oh no, this first video game related regulation in the entire history of the industry is too much for us."
  - account42 5mo ago
    A lot of "hard" solutions are only hard until there is a legal/business requirement for them. Licensing is the poster child example for that.
- Permit 5mo ago
  This is not the only possible outcome. Another approach would be not to offer software within the affected region. U.S. local news is often not available to European visitors now due to GDPR. Similarly, Canadian news outlets are not available on Facebook due to Bill C-18. If I was an indie game developer I would consider this approach and simply avoid selling within California. Larger game studios would likely adjust as you say. However they too could adjust in such a way that they only offer subscriptions within California as that appears to exempt them from this rule. Many outcomes are possible beyond simply adjusting to the legislation in the way you are suggesting.
Ukv 5mo ago
If bills like this pass there'd be financial pressure for middleware providers to either license under terms that allow distribution at the game's end-of-life, or allow their middleware to be easily severed while still leaving the game playable - else they'd lose out on all customers selling games in California/EU/etc. Which is also a nice side effect to reduce intellectual property barriers for developers that do already want to distribute their server or source code.
gsich 5mo ago
Then don't. People will find a way to replace those.
account42 5mo ago
So? A) This state is not inherent but a result of there being no general requirement to release the sources. Middle ware would use different licenses if that was required to have any customers. B) Omitting the sound code did not stop the community from releasing source ports based on that release, with sound of course.

weberer 5mo ago

It doesn't need to be open source, you only need to provide server binaries to download. This was the standard until circa 2010. People were able to host dedicated servers themselves.

bluGill 5mo ago
I want to host a closed search server that's not being updated on today's internet. It might be good enough for home use, but definitely not if I want my friends to connect.
- account42 5mo ago
  For playing with your friends you can use a VPN to not expose the potentially dangerous server to the wider internet. And sandbox both server and client as much as you feel needed depending on the value of "friend".
Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
Although I get the idea of providing server binaries but if one has to absolutely do it, then provide great modding efforts behind it. But I have found that the greatest modding efforts/community can be generated by open source. Balatro for example is easily modified in the sense that although it might not be open source but iirc its lua files are visible. There are other games as well which have something similar imo although that being said its possible to create modding efforts without open source in general too with say something like for example old versions of counter strike. Personally I would prefer open source though if its possible but I understand that some game studious might be worried about it but I don't quite understand it if they are shutting down the game anyway though. I think that @mjr00's comments are nice about third party library etc. which cause issues in open sourcing so its good to have a discussion about that too (imo)
Terr_ 5mo ago
That would be an improvement over nothing, but closed-source means that the game is still going to die as soon as someone finds a security vulnerability (or even just a gameplay glitch) that can't be feasibly patched. Imagine an MMO where special text in the chat causes viewers' clients to crash, or a glitch exists to duplicate items or money, or where anybody can crash the server to run arbitrary commands.

strags 5mo ago

> That way the community has the opportunity to run their own servers if they want to. That might be fine for very small titles - where the "game server" is a relatively simple binary that can be run anywhere. Larger titles depend on a huge amount of infrastructure, for authentication, progression, matchmaking, etc... It's not feasible to open-source all of that, especially given that it may well still be in use for more recent titles.

Ukv 5mo ago
> It's not feasible to open-source all of that, especially given that it may well still be in use for more recent titles If they're still running their authentication server (for example), then they wouldn't need to release that service. Patching the game to no longer contact the authentication server would also be acceptable, for services that aren't a core part of the game. It's pretty likely the game already allows this for development/debugging. If they've accepted money from people to buy the game, and don't want to keep the authentication service running, and don't want to patch the game to no longer require the authentication service, and don't want to refund people, and don't want to release the authentication service so others can run it - I think it's fair for a regulation to force one of those.
- knollimar 5mo ago
  So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. You wouldn't get scalability from reuse (e.g. reusing an auth library). Or what's likely cheaper is budgeting for that patch in the game. You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games than trying to play a multiplayer only game 20 years later wtih 6 people on the server.
  - Ukv 5mo ago
    > So do games just have to have a perpetual endowment to fund any shared component costs? This seems like a logical conclusion. They don't need to keep services running perpetually. strags's objection seemed to be that it could be infeasible to release services like authentication that they're still running, to which I'm saying they don't really need to consider any of this until they stop running it. > You may bemoan "oh they just don't want to release the auth service", but it functionally shuffles the cost math. Releasing or patching it out is largely just fulfilling their side of the deal. If I sell you a lawnmower that depends on some authentication server to start up, then shut down the server the next day (I got your money, why would I keep the cost?), and don't release the server code or a patch to work without it, then would you not say I've scammed you? The resource cost of everyone I've sold to losing access to their lawnmowers would be far greater than what it'd cost me to release a patch, just that the former is not a cost borne by me if the law allows me to ignore it. > I'd personally rather the 5% cheaper games than trying to play a multiplayer only game 20 years later wtih 6 people on the server. Allowing a company to cut people off of their software (large cost) just to save having to push out a patch (small cost) will, on net, result on more expensive products - since on net you're wasting more resources. Particularly when it comes to authentication checks, this doesn't just apply to multiplayer games. Imagine if this applied to other forms of media (already kind of happening with DRM), like if we couldn't read books from over 20 years ago.

jayd16 5mo ago

Game engines/code aren't all open source. The game developer might not have the legal rights to release the source. Also, does this stop at games? Why not any online service ever? Why not any program at all?

parliament32 5mo ago
Gaming might be unique in the sense that it's the only industry where 1) consumers make a one-time purchase of a product, but then 2) the manufacturer remains responsible for the online component.. forever? I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry (maybe a few niche products). Maybe this is the reason MS has been pushing Game Pass so hard, to get rid of the "purchase" part entirely.
- voidifremoved 5mo ago
  Amazon just ended support for older Kindles. Not sure how that's any different.
- jcranmer 5mo ago
  > I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry Vehicles? Maybe not necessarily forever, but I'd expect the large car manufacturers to all still have some level of support for a 20-year-old car...
  - fragmede 5mo ago
    Large car manufacturers in the US are required to support their cars that they give warranties for by the the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which are 10 or 12 years long by this point.
  - jandrewrogers 5mo ago
    The contracts underlying the support for consumer automotive commonly run around 10 years. After that it is best effort and unofficial support by other companies if there is enough money to be made by offering it.

mrandish 5mo ago

> open source server code if you are going to cease support When I was a senior exec at a big public tech company, there was a product we decided to discontinue and we thought would be nice to just open source. Somehow I ended up in charge of managing that process and was shocked at how complex, time-consuming and expensive it was in a multi-billion dollar, publicly-traded corp vs some code my friends and I wrote. Legal had to verify that there was no licensed library code used and that we had clear, valid copyright to everything there. The project had been written over several years, merged with a project we'd acquired with a startup, some key people weren't around any more, the source control had transitioned across multiple platforms, etc. And even once we nailed all that down sufficiently, we didn't get an "all clear" from legal, we just got a formal legal opinion that any liability was probably under $1M. And then we had to convince an SVP to endorse that assumption of $1M potential liability and make a business case for approval to the CEO. For a public company, the default assumption for any online game would be "the server side code WILL be open sourced" (under threat of prosecution). That means legal would mandate "No commercially licensed libraries can be used, any open source libraries will have to be vetted to ensure the license is compatible and everything else will need to pass IP and compliance audit." That will certainly have an impact on development time frames and economics.

gbear605 5mo ago
That’s exactly the benefit of a law - it’s a forcing measure to require businesses to invest in processes to understand open sourcing, and to go forward when otherwise no one would make a business case for approval.
- brobdingnagians 5mo ago
  And makes it more expensive. There is the seen benefit and then the unseen cost. Every game released will have to account for the possibility of it, and will create issues for people who really didn't want those issues. After awhile people will forget there are associated issues and costs, but they will still be there.
  - 5mo ago

SecretDreams 5mo ago

Guarantee X years of server time from launch. If you shut down early, pro rated refund and open source server code. After the launch window, close server with no penalty if desired, but just still open source code. Or keep server open if it's profitable. Or some other option. The specifics can be hammered out, but something middle ground seems sensible.

Razengan 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. Said this in another comment: In case a company or new management wants to renew an IP, maybe there should be a waiting period like 1-5 years before they are legally required to release/open-source the server code. Or how about this: what if, in order to launch a new online-only game in the first place, companies have to submit a copy of the source code as it is on launch day, to the courts or wherever. Then the courts could release it if the game hasn't been active for N years...

summerlight 5mo ago

Many developers with good will actually tried that and gave up due to lots of problems. This is not just bad ROI but also a legal minefield. Engineers usually cannot argue against this kind of risks. Enforcing this will unlikely work in higher courts. Though something like open sourcing protocols for server reimplementation may have some chances. While I see problems in the law but the spirit is reasonable. We need to push toward this direction. At least there should be difficult economical trade-off for publishers when they decide to shut down the game. Nowadays, some random executive just takes look into some excel, see some games have declining revenue and decides to "simplify the business" without much thoughts. This has to stop.

mifydev 5mo ago

Based on comments below the solution is to make the API public and publish the architecture design, along with the binaries. This way the company can avoid spending too much money on open sourcing the code, and the community can just rewrite the server while keeping the original binaries running.

roarcher 5mo ago

I think this is a more desirable solution for customers than a refund anyway--if I like a game, I don't want my $60 back in exchange for never being able to play it again. I just want to keep playing it.

account42 5mo ago
Yes, the $60 is nothing compared to your time investment into a game you like.

imtringued 5mo ago

This doesn't make sense. The developers should only be obligated to provide a dedicated server plus an in-game server browser that supports a standardized service discovery protocol. The players must figure out themselves how to run the software on their computer.

SkiFire13 5mo ago

> open source server code No, and requiring this will likely give the opposition counter points. You don't need the source code at all. You only need the ability to run the server yourself.

abustamam 5mo ago

When the 6 person startup I worked for shut down, the founders spent a few months of their own time to open source the product because people still liked it, they just didn't wanna pay for it. So people were allowed to selfhost. Of course this probably doesn't scale or work for every company but I thought it was nice to see.

matheusmoreira 5mo ago

Just make it a literal crime for corporations to interfere with community work on games they don't care about supporting. The problem will take care of itself. People are more than willing to put in the work themselves, it's just that hateful corporations will send them cease and desist letters if not actual lawsuits.

account42 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. For a number of reasons (licensing issues, code being lost, etc.) this will only work if source code must be escrowed long before that time.