5 ms·

California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven! If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only pu

by pibaker 5mo ago

California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven! If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.

RobotToaster 5mo ago
I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.
- fragmede 5mo ago
  Why not $0?
  - greenavocado 5mo ago
    $1 refundable subscription
- meatmanek 5mo ago
  At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)
  - paradox460 5mo ago
    Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available
    - tadfisher 5mo ago
      Quake 3 can also be played fully offline, for various measures of "play" and "fully".
    - hadlock 5mo ago
      After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of the server code, can't host truly private servers, and when the sequel MW4, BF4 comes out, those private servers won't survive and it forces everyone to move to the sequel regardless of the quality of the game. You can technically still hire a private server for games like BF3 (circa 2012) but very few people are going to pay the $70/month to host an official one via whatever terms EA has come up with, and you absolutely can't run it with plugins, mods, and especially custom maps or game modes, you have to play it "vanilla". Quake 3 the server is included with the game, anyone can run it, modify it and it's very plugin friendly, which is largely why it is still around today. Closed servers you can't directly access is a deliberate decision to kill the game when the sequel is released, by not allowing users to extend what they "bought". Otherwise we would still all be playing Battlefield 3 on custom maps with CTF and 128 v 128 player servers and everything else. You can modify a handful of things on the paid private servers but it's extremely limited and there's no community feedback on any of this.
      - RandomGerm4n 5mo ago
        > After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.
        paradox460 5mo ago
        Amusingly, all Call of Duties are still basically Quake mods. They've ALL ran on heavily modified quake engine, forked off of ioq3
  - ddtaylor 5mo ago
    It seems similar to operating an arcade or a movie theater and saying that you can have thousands of people enter but then only having space for a couple while still taking everyone's money.
cosmojg 5mo ago
I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).
gwerbin 5mo ago
It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.
- NooneAtAll3 5mo ago
  > See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?
- jnovek 5mo ago
  What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?
  - wilg 5mo ago
    No it will make everything a live service game
    - bayarearefugee 5mo ago
      Good luck with that. The industry already tried to make everything a live service game in the 2020-2022 period and it was financially disastrous because gamers rejected it. Gamers have made it clear that they don't want a market full of live service games unless they are free to play (and even then, very few will survive). They'll make rare exceptions for things like GTA6, but these will be unicorns.
      - xingped 5mo ago
        That certainly won't stop out of touch CEOs from choosing to do just that anyways. CEOs and making the stupidest possible decisions are also a match made in heaven.
        5mo ago
Akronymus 5mo ago
Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think. Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.

by pibaker 5mo ago

RobotToaster 5mo ago

I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.

fragmede 5mo ago
Why not $0?
- greenavocado 5mo ago
  $1 refundable subscription
meatmanek 5mo ago
At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)
- paradox460 5mo ago
  Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available
  - tadfisher 5mo ago
    Quake 3 can also be played fully offline, for various measures of "play" and "fully".
  - hadlock 5mo ago
    After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of the server code, can't host truly private servers, and when the sequel MW4, BF4 comes out, those private servers won't survive and it forces everyone to move to the sequel regardless of the quality of the game. You can technically still hire a private server for games like BF3 (circa 2012) but very few people are going to pay the $70/month to host an official one via whatever terms EA has come up with, and you absolutely can't run it with plugins, mods, and especially custom maps or game modes, you have to play it "vanilla". Quake 3 the server is included with the game, anyone can run it, modify it and it's very plugin friendly, which is largely why it is still around today. Closed servers you can't directly access is a deliberate decision to kill the game when the sequel is released, by not allowing users to extend what they "bought". Otherwise we would still all be playing Battlefield 3 on custom maps with CTF and 128 v 128 player servers and everything else. You can modify a handful of things on the paid private servers but it's extremely limited and there's no community feedback on any of this.
    - RandomGerm4n 5mo ago
      > After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.
      - paradox460 5mo ago
        Amusingly, all Call of Duties are still basically Quake mods. They've ALL ran on heavily modified quake engine, forked off of ioq3
- ddtaylor 5mo ago
  It seems similar to operating an arcade or a movie theater and saying that you can have thousands of people enter but then only having space for a couple while still taking everyone's money.

cosmojg 5mo ago

I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).

gwerbin 5mo ago

It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

NooneAtAll3 5mo ago
> See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?
jnovek 5mo ago
What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?
- wilg 5mo ago
  No it will make everything a live service game
  - bayarearefugee 5mo ago
    Good luck with that. The industry already tried to make everything a live service game in the 2020-2022 period and it was financially disastrous because gamers rejected it. Gamers have made it clear that they don't want a market full of live service games unless they are free to play (and even then, very few will survive). They'll make rare exceptions for things like GTA6, but these will be unicorns.
    - xingped 5mo ago
      That certainly won't stop out of touch CEOs from choosing to do just that anyways. CEOs and making the stupidest possible decisions are also a match made in heaven.
      - 5mo ago

Akronymus 5mo ago

Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think. Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.