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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

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!"

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!"