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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 cr

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.

sowbug 4mo ago
Putting on my Pollyanna hat... Or it could make it a lot cheaper, if the server were developed entirely on open-source infrastructure from the start. Hopefully the actual game logic would be developed entirely in-house, making it easier to audit before releasing.
- jurgenburgen 4mo ago
  Most likely the engine providers would spin off their server components as OSS for this express purpose so their customers can easily comply. This regulation could be a huge win for making the game industry adopt more OSS.
fluoridation 4mo ago
Every game released whose developers have chosen to complicate its design with a client-server architecture. It's not like this is going to hurt the little three-man teams making games on shoe-string budgets. Yeah, it's going to make big budget games a little more expensive, just like how cars with seatbelts are a little more expensive to build, and like how it's a little more expensive to do proper waste management instead of dumping sludge into a river.
- hparadiz 4mo ago
  What? This a mandate in law that requires a company to do work in order to comply. Studios will spin out LLCs for a game so that if it fails it doesn't end up as a liability. Unintended consequence: more dead games.
  - fluoridation 4mo ago
    It's impossible for the law to cause more games to die, because already the default fate of online games is for them to die. If, with the law, a studio chooses to use an LLC to create the game to conditionally release sources once it shuts down, that was a game that without the law would have died anyway because the studio wouldn't have chosen of its own volition to release sources.
    - hparadiz 4mo ago
      If a studio on it's last legs is required to service a failing product instead of working on a new one the studio will simply close and not comply. That's what tends to happen with forced regulations like this.
      - fluoridation 4mo ago
        And it's what would have happened anyway without the law. How is this difficult to understand? It's not like it's only a few games that shut down without recourse for the players. Ross Scott already did the research on this. Something like 95% of all online games that shut down do so without providing any way for the players to continue playing in some way or without issuing refunds.
        Defletter 4mo ago
        Different person here, it's probably because they defensively reject anything that forces anyone to do anything, or would increase prices outside of market forces. Every argument that's used against this kind of legislation was also used against putting airbrakes on trains. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
        ryandrake 4mo ago
        Seriously. If you ever want to see a discussion thread that demonstrates the difference between “reasons” and “excuses” (by being full of the latter), just propose a law forcing game companies to do literally anything and watch the replies.
- furyofantares 4mo ago
  > Every game released whose developers have chosen to complicate its design with a client-server architecture. Huh? Client-server architecture does make things more complicated to implement but it's not THAT bad. And you (usually[1]) do it in service of multiplayer, not because you're big budget or just want to complicate things. Among Us was literally a three-person team. [1] I find there are some major benefits to it, especially in post-LLM-world, and have been strongly considering it for some of my solo-dev single-player projects.
  - Folcon 4mo ago
    Agreed, I'm pretty much doing the same thing for my indie game It's now a lot more tractable to build a multiplayer game, on the other hand balancing it is a whole other kettle of fish
  - fluoridation 4mo ago
    A lot of games have tacked-on online features to excuse the existence of the server to enable DRM, and a lot of multiplayer games arbitrarily don't offer a way for clients to double as local servers like in the heyday of arena shooters.
    - furyofantares 4mo ago
      Sure, but the existence of such annoying things does not mean that's the only reason to use a client-server architecture and that it would only affect those games.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - fluoridation 4mo ago
        It's not the only reason, but that does cover the vast majority of online-required games.
      - account42 4mo ago
        It's the main reason for keeping the server part away from players though.
varispeed 4mo ago
Middle ground could be completely open API from the start, so community could build alternative server from the ground up.
- account42 4mo ago
  Having a documented API and the game actually abiding by it would probably be way more expensive than ensuring you can dump the source code on the community on end of life. The latter is only (sometimes) costly now because the industry is not built around it.
rexpop 4mo ago
Not everything that makes a product more expensive to release is the end of the world.
Dylan16807 4mo ago
If you plan for it from the start, it's a small cost. And the simpler the game development process the cheaper it gets.
- socalgal2 4mo ago
  It is not. Most of the full online game stacks are not open source and most of the open source ones are poor and under featured
  - fluoridation 4mo ago
    That could change once a law comes out requiring all new developments to be designed differently. Besides, no one is talking about open sourcing the server code. Releasing binaries and patching the client to talk to a local instance is perfectly acceptable. A developer would then just need the ability to redistribute compiled builds.
    - lowdude 4mo ago
      That was my initial thought as well, but on second thought it does not seem like such a good idea to provide binaries that will never get patched for a public-facing service. Sure, not the company’s issue anymore, but still… It might make a community rewrite of the server code easier, but that would likely only be attempted for very few games.
      - fluoridation 4mo ago
        It doesn't need to be public-facing. The point is not to be able to continue playing as if the game was still being supported, it's to be able to continue playing at all, in some way. You can set up a box at home and let two or three of your friends in through a VPN. Security is not a concern.
        lowdude 4mo ago
        That’s a fair point
hedora 4mo ago
The beauty of making it a criminal issue is that those costs go away. When the library vendor licenses some proprietary crap to a game server vendor, they take on the risk that their library may fall under the open source requirement when the game server shuts down. At shutdown, criminal law says the library vendor must open source. Since criminal law preempts contract law, no amount of weasel words in the software license change that. Even if the upstream vendor is out of business or something and did not provide source, surely, the binaries fall under the the open source clause. Problem completely solved, and no lawyers need to be paid after the fact. (Library vendors might want to pay lawyers to tell them not to license to game servers, or not. Either way, that's not the customers' problem.)
account42 4mo ago
The costs won't be high if doing things that way are industry standard as required by law so all middle ware is already certified for it. And its not like its a bad thing for a company to calculate in the full cost from the start rather than offloading it onto society when they drop the product.

sowbug 4mo ago

Putting on my Pollyanna hat... Or it could make it a lot cheaper, if the server were developed entirely on open-source infrastructure from the start. Hopefully the actual game logic would be developed entirely in-house, making it easier to audit before releasing.

jurgenburgen 4mo ago
Most likely the engine providers would spin off their server components as OSS for this express purpose so their customers can easily comply. This regulation could be a huge win for making the game industry adopt more OSS.

fluoridation 4mo ago

Every game released whose developers have chosen to complicate its design with a client-server architecture. It's not like this is going to hurt the little three-man teams making games on shoe-string budgets. Yeah, it's going to make big budget games a little more expensive, just like how cars with seatbelts are a little more expensive to build, and like how it's a little more expensive to do proper waste management instead of dumping sludge into a river.

hparadiz 4mo ago
What? This a mandate in law that requires a company to do work in order to comply. Studios will spin out LLCs for a game so that if it fails it doesn't end up as a liability. Unintended consequence: more dead games.
- fluoridation 4mo ago
  It's impossible for the law to cause more games to die, because already the default fate of online games is for them to die. If, with the law, a studio chooses to use an LLC to create the game to conditionally release sources once it shuts down, that was a game that without the law would have died anyway because the studio wouldn't have chosen of its own volition to release sources.
  - hparadiz 4mo ago
    If a studio on it's last legs is required to service a failing product instead of working on a new one the studio will simply close and not comply. That's what tends to happen with forced regulations like this.
    - fluoridation 4mo ago
      And it's what would have happened anyway without the law. How is this difficult to understand? It's not like it's only a few games that shut down without recourse for the players. Ross Scott already did the research on this. Something like 95% of all online games that shut down do so without providing any way for the players to continue playing in some way or without issuing refunds.
      - Defletter 4mo ago
        Different person here, it's probably because they defensively reject anything that forces anyone to do anything, or would increase prices outside of market forces. Every argument that's used against this kind of legislation was also used against putting airbrakes on trains. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
        ryandrake 4mo ago
        Seriously. If you ever want to see a discussion thread that demonstrates the difference between “reasons” and “excuses” (by being full of the latter), just propose a law forcing game companies to do literally anything and watch the replies.
furyofantares 4mo ago
> Every game released whose developers have chosen to complicate its design with a client-server architecture. Huh? Client-server architecture does make things more complicated to implement but it's not THAT bad. And you (usually[1]) do it in service of multiplayer, not because you're big budget or just want to complicate things. Among Us was literally a three-person team. [1] I find there are some major benefits to it, especially in post-LLM-world, and have been strongly considering it for some of my solo-dev single-player projects.
- Folcon 4mo ago
  Agreed, I'm pretty much doing the same thing for my indie game It's now a lot more tractable to build a multiplayer game, on the other hand balancing it is a whole other kettle of fish
- fluoridation 4mo ago
  A lot of games have tacked-on online features to excuse the existence of the server to enable DRM, and a lot of multiplayer games arbitrarily don't offer a way for clients to double as local servers like in the heyday of arena shooters.
  - furyofantares 4mo ago
    Sure, but the existence of such annoying things does not mean that's the only reason to use a client-server architecture and that it would only affect those games.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fluoridation 4mo ago
      It's not the only reason, but that does cover the vast majority of online-required games.
    - account42 4mo ago
      It's the main reason for keeping the server part away from players though.

varispeed 4mo ago

Middle ground could be completely open API from the start, so community could build alternative server from the ground up.

account42 4mo ago
Having a documented API and the game actually abiding by it would probably be way more expensive than ensuring you can dump the source code on the community on end of life. The latter is only (sometimes) costly now because the industry is not built around it.

rexpop 4mo ago

Not everything that makes a product more expensive to release is the end of the world.

Dylan16807 4mo ago

If you plan for it from the start, it's a small cost. And the simpler the game development process the cheaper it gets.

socalgal2 4mo ago
It is not. Most of the full online game stacks are not open source and most of the open source ones are poor and under featured
- fluoridation 4mo ago
  That could change once a law comes out requiring all new developments to be designed differently. Besides, no one is talking about open sourcing the server code. Releasing binaries and patching the client to talk to a local instance is perfectly acceptable. A developer would then just need the ability to redistribute compiled builds.
  - lowdude 4mo ago
    That was my initial thought as well, but on second thought it does not seem like such a good idea to provide binaries that will never get patched for a public-facing service. Sure, not the company’s issue anymore, but still… It might make a community rewrite of the server code easier, but that would likely only be attempted for very few games.
    - fluoridation 4mo ago
      It doesn't need to be public-facing. The point is not to be able to continue playing as if the game was still being supported, it's to be able to continue playing at all, in some way. You can set up a box at home and let two or three of your friends in through a VPN. Security is not a concern.
      - lowdude 4mo ago
        That’s a fair point

hedora 4mo ago

The beauty of making it a criminal issue is that those costs go away. When the library vendor licenses some proprietary crap to a game server vendor, they take on the risk that their library may fall under the open source requirement when the game server shuts down. At shutdown, criminal law says the library vendor must open source. Since criminal law preempts contract law, no amount of weasel words in the software license change that. Even if the upstream vendor is out of business or something and did not provide source, surely, the binaries fall under the the open source clause. Problem completely solved, and no lawyers need to be paid after the fact. (Library vendors might want to pay lawyers to tell them not to license to game servers, or not. Either way, that's not the customers' problem.)

account42 4mo ago

The costs won't be high if doing things that way are industry standard as required by law so all middle ware is already certified for it. And its not like its a bad thing for a company to calculate in the full cost from the start rather than offloading it onto society when they drop the product.