6 ms·

The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

152 points by Brajeshwar 5mo ago

superkuh 5mo ago
Good cause, but society has rapidly moved passed them just switching off games after people bought them. Now the hardware production companies for gaming are winding down and not producing gaming computer parts because megacorp datacenter parts have a much higher margin. The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud; a context in which these "stop killing games" arguments will have much less leverage.
- mpyne 5mo ago
  > The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud That might be your future. But as long as there are computing platforms that users can run in their own home there will be games for them. Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud, and their customers have proven willing to pay higher prices for the types of gaming experience Nintendo will deliver.
  - superkuh 5mo ago
    >Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud, Consoles might as well already be cloud for all you control them. But I guess I should've specified PC gaming. I thought it was indicated from the context of "stop killing games". Also, to be clear, I'll never "cloud" game or use consoles. I'll just remain in the past with old hardware and old (and new indie) games. But the "PC gaming industry" as an economic block larger than movies is dying and that's a shame.
  - jayd16 5mo ago
    Consoles already make you pay for online services. They already sunset games so I think even under the new rules they have the ability to stop that service at any time.
  - xpct 5mo ago
    Judging by the amount of people saying they've used and enjoyed cloud gaming I'm not as confident as you to make that claim. If cloud keeps making offers good enough such that people pick it instead of building their own PC, the number of personal devices will decrease. I enjoy low-latency competitive games, and I'd say those are unlikely to get replaced by cloud, because many players notice latency spikes immediately. But I'm a bit skeptical of how much market value can be sustained by people who like the feeling of owning their own hardware, or feel the need to have lower latency in games. I'm sure if someone built a data center within two blocks of my home and I was able to stream from it, many of these issues would disappear as well.
    - mpyne 5mo ago
      > If cloud keeps making offers good enough such that people pick it instead of building their own PC, the number of personal devices will decrease. Perhaps, but I never claimed otherwise. Simply that the personal devices that do exist will also have games for them. Computer games were here from the beginning, and they will be here in the end. And even personal devices that were chosen for non-gaming needs can play games, nothing requires games to run only on RGB-infested PCs. > But I'm a bit skeptical of how much market value can be sustained by Yes, the market dynamics may certainly shift, but that's been the story for decades already. And if cloud gaming were going to be this immediately-better story, things like Stadia and Luna would have performed much better in the market. I think people worry about the cost-efficiency of how to do gaming in a world where hardware is expensive, but the reason hardware is expensive is because it's being sucked up for AI usage, not for gaming usage. So cloud gaming will also necessarily be expensive by these terms, even if the average cost seems less for a cloud gaming subscription than owning your own PC or console.
- trumpdong 5mo ago
  This is a phase and data center parts are usable for gaming. (Yes even with all the rasterizer and texture units chopped off, we'll have a wrapper that does that work in compute shaders)
- tancop 5mo ago
  we still got newer companies out of china like moore threads working on gaming gpus, they had to pause new production because of the whole ai shortage but it looks like they might restart. is it usable for any serious gaming right now? no. but its already fighting the nvidia/amd monopoly together with intel. as long as there is a market the producers will come, even in a super capital intensive industry like this. and it looks like nvidia is partially going back on the whole data center push with rtx spark. its just one high end product but it shows they know a lot of people want local gaming and local inference.
- nkrisc 5mo ago
  Then I will simply stop purchasing games and continue to play old ones that I can run on my computer as I please, online server or just do something better with my time. The whole thing seems absurd when you remember that no one needs video games. This doesn’t need to be legislated. Let them kill video games and then stop buying their video games if they’re just going to kill it off. Why are people still buying games that cash be killed off? If enough people are still buying these games then clearly the game being killed off is not an important factor. If it was, they wouldn’t buy them. What does need to be legislated is how these games and services are marketed: it must be made clear latest date the service is guaranteed to be up.
- KolibriFly 5mo ago
  Hardware scarcity and cloud incentives are real, but they're also part of the same broader trend: more dependency on centralized providers, less control for the buyer
- vitalyan1234 5mo ago
  fortunately, that's been already attempted and despite the best circumstances imaginable resulted in a much welcome failure. >On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service was shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google refunded all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. even more fortunately, further attempts will fail for the same reason - input lag.
  - bpavuk 5mo ago
    some timing-sensitive games such as Clair Obscur (parry) or I Am Your Beast (movement)? sure, they depend on low latency. that said, GeForce Now is, sadly, pretty good nowadays. enough to play a moderately fast paced game such as DEATHLOOP. Ukraine, streaming from Germany. 5 GHz is basically required, but in slower-paced games, on a phone, with 720p streaming, you can get by with 4G. even games are not really a moat for owning hardware - next Gears with its timing-sensitive reloading mechanic can just get adapted for cloud. if cloud gaming gets another hype wave for one reason or another, this time I am pretty sure they will lock in a much bigger user base. me personally? still committed to owning my hardware, but I can totally imagine my mother playing some RTS on a GeForce Now-connected tablet and having zero complaints.
    - anankaie 5mo ago
      Clair Obscur was perfectly playable for me through GeForce Now, for what it is worth, even when hitting parry timing. (N = 1, but a datum nonetheless)
    - vitalyan1234 5mo ago
      it is possible to adapt to input/network lag, sure. I played Doom 3 at 10-15 FPS in 640x480 and Warcraft 3 with 300ms latency, and I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't think I could endure such underwhelming experiences after many years of much better ones.
      - bpavuk 5mo ago
        honestly I'd still throw a penny for at least a day pass if I'm e.g. traveling. getting that Duollistes or Locust fix on a train looks irresistible
dpcan 5mo ago
I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.
- RobotToaster 5mo ago
  Counterpoint: UK law gives you six years to sue if goods are faulty or otherwise not as advertised, why should software be any different?
  - knollimar 5mo ago
    6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %
- jayd16 5mo ago
  Certainly we'll just move the fig leaf so the free online component of games are now part of a subscription. Ideally a free subscription through packed in keys and such but we'll probably end up being nickel and dimed even further.
- elondaits 5mo ago
  Not everything is economic value. For gamers, an online game can be a community hub, part of their identity, a hobby. It’s not about whether they got their money’s worth, it’s about destroying a virtual “place” they’re emotionally and socially invested, and the specific skill they posses when they’re there.
  - 0x59 5mo ago
    I think this is the root of it and what the article describes in the first half. I suspect owning a copy of a game will soon be completely eliminated and replaced w the subscription model. Then when subscription dollars stop flowing, the company naturally winds down the service.
ryandrake 5mo ago
The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn down a server. As a developer or manufacturer, if your software or device absolutely requires a server that costs money to maintain, then your business plan should take that into account: You should be charging customers monthly to keep that service running. You shouldn't promise a one-time payment, take the customer's money and then yank the service away on a whim. Nobody is asking for free labor to keep services running. I'm asking that you 1. only tether your product to a server if you absolutely need to, and 2. charge for that kind of product monthly so that you can leave it running while you still have customers. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.
- cogman10 5mo ago
  Yeah, it's frankly ridiculous that "smart" devices need internet access. Why shouldn't my smart oven behave exactly like my Brother printer? There's no reason my oven needs access to the internet, it can do everything it needs to do on my local network. My phone should be able to connect directly to it via a scan of the local network subnet or using any number of service announcement technologies that already exist. And it makes these devices worse. I should be able to control my oven using a simple REST api and home assistant. The fact that in order to interact with my oven with a home assistant I first have to reach out to my manufacture servers is just insane. It's an oven. It only has so many sensors and nobs to twist. About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever. But that too should be solved with the same regulation that says "Ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, thermostats, and doorbells must not connect to the internet". We can teach the world about VPNs if they want remotely access their devices.
  - zahlman 5mo ago
ChrisArchitect 5mo ago
Related on U.S. developments: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365
KolibriFly 5mo ago
Just don't design the game so that, when the business model stops working, every paid copy becomes a brick
- rolph 5mo ago
  i remember when multiplayer games could be connected to a user operated server. the basic function of a multiplayer server is to keep the players game state synched, large numbers of players, and very fast gameplay vs connection rate and jitter is fly in ointment.
phyzix5761 5mo ago
Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-our-games-bill-could-kill-indie-studios.html https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...
- ajuc 5mo ago
  > Now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features. Good riddance. Online features suck. Make your game multiplayer or make it singleplayer. Don't add pointless online features. PS all you need to make sure it works is release the server once you stop supporting it yourself. > They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud micro services. Give people the docker file. > 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. That's more AAA stuff not indie.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - bethekidyouwant 5mo ago
    Any sufficiently popular multiplayer Indy game gets ruined by cheaters.
    - throwaway85825 5mo ago
      Not a problem with private servers and offline reputation management.
  - Rohansi 5mo ago
    > That's more AAA stuff not indie. If they run it themselves, probably. Indies are more likely to use free services like Steamworks and Firebase which can be pulled out from under them for any reason.
- zamalek 5mo ago
amazingamazing 5mo ago
I imagine the end result will be another layer of online subscription.
sph 5mo ago
A lot of “yes, but…” in this comment section. Hard to tell if it’s HN playing contrarian as it usually loves to do, or just people so brainwashed they default to defending corporate interests. Nothing makes me as hopeless for the future as reading people trying to one up the negativity about any initiative at all, and if no one did anything, they’d hit you with the snarky ‘go vote to make your voice heard instead of complaining’ It takes big balls to fight publishers and even more massive to fight the internet and the pseudo-intellectual snark of internet commenters. The entire SKG initiative has my support and perhaps it’s the only thing that might convince me that ordinary citizens actually have any say at all in directing legislation.
- junaru 5mo ago
  You can't make a person see a problem if his livelihood depends on not seeing it. In my gaming circles, people who work on SaaS solutions are against SKG even though they are avid gamers and even open source contributors. They just recoil on a thought of an EOL plan. Same on HN. "Think of the indies" is just same old "Think of the children" astroturfing.
  - knollimar 5mo ago
    Or they have an indie game theyre "making" and being forced to build an EOL plan for a game that will statistically be a flop is silly to them. I feel a carveout for total says, say $200k USD or less, would be reasonable. Otherwise you're just conscripting indie time. I was working on a game, but I'm not looking forward to releasing updates everytime steam changes their relay. Considering scrapping multiplayer completely.
    - sph 5mo ago
      Indie game devs don't care about EOL plans because they're not building a game as a service. If the indie game has multiplayer, it's much easier for everyone involved to ship a server binary like Valve has done for ages. No indie is setting up a proprietary autoscaling game server infrastructure on AWS that they will have to maintain for years and have an end-of-life plan for if the SKG initiative passes. The only companies that SKG would inconvenience are AAA/live service studios. They have enough money to find a workable solution, or more likely, spend billions in lobbying against this initiative.
emptybits 5mo ago
Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Then let gamers decide. Example: If I'm reminded, at purchase time, that this $70 game will work online for 24 months and single-player offline for 36 months, then I can make an informed decision before I buy. Studios would be forced to bring their business plan into visibility and be held to a level of service, and then gamers can't complain when a game is "switched off" according to plan. This is already implied, just not explicit and quantified in advance. Personally, I wouldn't buy a game that had early expiry of online already contemplated. And offline play should be rich and complete indefinitely. But I still live in the glorious console cartridge era in my head and in my emulators.
- DaSHacka 5mo ago
  > Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Companies would just default to saying "we reserve the right to shut off online connectivity at any time."
  - ryandrake 5mo ago
    Well, then prevent that via regulation, too. It fatalistic to say "Well, we just can't possibly regulate companies, because they will surely find loopholes and avoid the regulation!" The answer is to write better, more thorough regulation that prevents loopholes. That shouldn't be such a tall order!
    - 1123581321 5mo ago
      Just write a regulation that every game developer has to make a great game, not charge too much, support it for years, and give it away for free as soon as it's not popular. That way, we'll only have great games and archives of great free games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM
      - throwaway85825 5mo ago
customguy 5mo ago
Here's an idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's not new: instead of forcing all game devs to ensure longevity, just make clear criteria for what constitutes that longevity, and developers that meet them (or promise to meet them when they shut down) can slap a nice bright logo onto their game. Something like the rating system, except it's a line that's only there for games that claim they are "yours forever". Steam would have a filter for it, and so on. Then you can make the punishments/fines for breaking that promise draconian, since nobody has to opt in. Most single-player games would have the logo out of the box, gamers would come to expect it for those, and take a good hard look at single player games that don't have it. With multiplayer games it would be more varied, but there would now be a very clear incentive to see if it might not be possible after all to do what is needed to get that label, especially if none of your competitors have it. And most importantly when planning new games, you'd double check every decision would disqualify the game for it.
- customguy 5mo ago
  Is it just because some gamers are very irate or is this actually a bad idea? If so, how?
  - skotobaza 5mo ago
    I assume most people just want to keep playing games they paid for forever (I am among those people). Like with older titles where this wasn't an issue. So the solution to mark games that don't do that feels like a half measure, since it doesn't guarantee anything.
    - customguy 5mo ago
      Sure, but it would cut off all the excuses about it being too hard or expensive etc. How would companies run PR against such a proposal without making it blatantly obvious even to casuals that they're evil?
shmerl 5mo ago
Releasing source code for games (including server part) should help.
aogaili 5mo ago
Am I the only one finding the dependency on those videos games to be concerning?
- add-sub-mul-div 5mo ago
  No. The people in the in-group you want to be a part of feel the same way.
  - aogaili 5mo ago
    Sorry - I didn't get this comment? I mean isn't strange that people get to live in a digital reality that is dependant on a servers that could be taken down instead of being embedded in physical reality that we call life?
binkHN 5mo ago
I still miss Stadia.
datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
My lateral solution: don’t let the companies use the words “purchase” or “buy”, force them to use the words “rent” or “license”. You can only use the words “purchase” or “buy” if you can install / move the files to a device that is completely airgapped from the internet and continue to use the product indefinitely. Extend it to movies and music as well. Use established language to enable consumers to make an informed decision.
- 0x59 5mo ago
  I like where you're going and obv industry will just have you buy a license
  - datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
    My hope would be rent / license would tend to have a lower value than purchase / buy, to compensate.
- anotherevan 5mo ago
  I've been saying this about Amazon with ebooks, and DRM'd goods in general for years.
- CivBase 5mo ago
  This is a good step, but it's not enough on its own. The core issue with game licenses is that they can be terminated at any time for any reason. There needs to at least be a well-defined timespan for the license. But of course that'd be seen as an "expiration date" and no publisher wants to put that on their game.
  - datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
    Well calling it a license in the first place is a strong step towards requiring an expiration as well. Licenses are rarely indefinite in scope, if I understand correctly.
StillBored 5mo ago
Part of this is simply fixed by a tweak to copyright that if the IP isn't available for sale at a reasonable price the copyright no longer applies. Games, books, movies, music, etc.
- rendaw 5mo ago
  I think this is an important point. The point of copyright is to increase the amount of creative works available to people by making the production financially viable. If companies aren't making the works available, or taking released works and making them unavailable, copyright has failed. Even the "Copyright Alliance" acknowledges this: https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explained/copyright-basics/purpose-of-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai... > While the copyright law is intended to serve the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative work, it is important to understand that the copyright law imposes no obligation upon creators to make their copyrighted works available. As a result, an unpublished work that is never distributed to the public receives the same copyright protection that a published work would receive.
shantnutiwari 5mo ago
The article is a bit misleading-- it doesnt make it clear that par of the problem is even single player games stop working when access to a server is lost
- skotobaza 5mo ago
  Exactly! And most people who comment on this topic seem genuinely oblivious to it. Which tells me they don't play videogames and don't know the current state of the industry.

152 points by Brajeshwar 5mo ago

Good cause, but society has rapidly moved passed them just switching off games after people bought them. Now the hardware production companies for gaming are winding down and not producing gaming computer parts because megacorp datacenter parts have a much higher margin. The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud; a context in which these "stop killing games" arguments will have much less leverage.

mpyne 5mo ago
> The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud That might be your future. But as long as there are computing platforms that users can run in their own home there will be games for them. Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud, and their customers have proven willing to pay higher prices for the types of gaming experience Nintendo will deliver.
- superkuh 5mo ago
  >Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud, Consoles might as well already be cloud for all you control them. But I guess I should've specified PC gaming. I thought it was indicated from the context of "stop killing games". Also, to be clear, I'll never "cloud" game or use consoles. I'll just remain in the past with old hardware and old (and new indie) games. But the "PC gaming industry" as an economic block larger than movies is dying and that's a shame.
- jayd16 5mo ago
  Consoles already make you pay for online services. They already sunset games so I think even under the new rules they have the ability to stop that service at any time.
- xpct 5mo ago
  Judging by the amount of people saying they've used and enjoyed cloud gaming I'm not as confident as you to make that claim. If cloud keeps making offers good enough such that people pick it instead of building their own PC, the number of personal devices will decrease. I enjoy low-latency competitive games, and I'd say those are unlikely to get replaced by cloud, because many players notice latency spikes immediately. But I'm a bit skeptical of how much market value can be sustained by people who like the feeling of owning their own hardware, or feel the need to have lower latency in games. I'm sure if someone built a data center within two blocks of my home and I was able to stream from it, many of these issues would disappear as well.
  - mpyne 5mo ago
    > If cloud keeps making offers good enough such that people pick it instead of building their own PC, the number of personal devices will decrease. Perhaps, but I never claimed otherwise. Simply that the personal devices that do exist will also have games for them. Computer games were here from the beginning, and they will be here in the end. And even personal devices that were chosen for non-gaming needs can play games, nothing requires games to run only on RGB-infested PCs. > But I'm a bit skeptical of how much market value can be sustained by Yes, the market dynamics may certainly shift, but that's been the story for decades already. And if cloud gaming were going to be this immediately-better story, things like Stadia and Luna would have performed much better in the market. I think people worry about the cost-efficiency of how to do gaming in a world where hardware is expensive, but the reason hardware is expensive is because it's being sucked up for AI usage, not for gaming usage. So cloud gaming will also necessarily be expensive by these terms, even if the average cost seems less for a cloud gaming subscription than owning your own PC or console.
trumpdong 5mo ago
This is a phase and data center parts are usable for gaming. (Yes even with all the rasterizer and texture units chopped off, we'll have a wrapper that does that work in compute shaders)
tancop 5mo ago
we still got newer companies out of china like moore threads working on gaming gpus, they had to pause new production because of the whole ai shortage but it looks like they might restart. is it usable for any serious gaming right now? no. but its already fighting the nvidia/amd monopoly together with intel. as long as there is a market the producers will come, even in a super capital intensive industry like this. and it looks like nvidia is partially going back on the whole data center push with rtx spark. its just one high end product but it shows they know a lot of people want local gaming and local inference.
nkrisc 5mo ago
Then I will simply stop purchasing games and continue to play old ones that I can run on my computer as I please, online server or just do something better with my time. The whole thing seems absurd when you remember that no one needs video games. This doesn’t need to be legislated. Let them kill video games and then stop buying their video games if they’re just going to kill it off. Why are people still buying games that cash be killed off? If enough people are still buying these games then clearly the game being killed off is not an important factor. If it was, they wouldn’t buy them. What does need to be legislated is how these games and services are marketed: it must be made clear latest date the service is guaranteed to be up.
KolibriFly 5mo ago
Hardware scarcity and cloud incentives are real, but they're also part of the same broader trend: more dependency on centralized providers, less control for the buyer
vitalyan1234 5mo ago
fortunately, that's been already attempted and despite the best circumstances imaginable resulted in a much welcome failure. >On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service was shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google refunded all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores. even more fortunately, further attempts will fail for the same reason - input lag.
- bpavuk 5mo ago
  some timing-sensitive games such as Clair Obscur (parry) or I Am Your Beast (movement)? sure, they depend on low latency. that said, GeForce Now is, sadly, pretty good nowadays. enough to play a moderately fast paced game such as DEATHLOOP. Ukraine, streaming from Germany. 5 GHz is basically required, but in slower-paced games, on a phone, with 720p streaming, you can get by with 4G. even games are not really a moat for owning hardware - next Gears with its timing-sensitive reloading mechanic can just get adapted for cloud. if cloud gaming gets another hype wave for one reason or another, this time I am pretty sure they will lock in a much bigger user base. me personally? still committed to owning my hardware, but I can totally imagine my mother playing some RTS on a GeForce Now-connected tablet and having zero complaints.
  - anankaie 5mo ago
    Clair Obscur was perfectly playable for me through GeForce Now, for what it is worth, even when hitting parry timing. (N = 1, but a datum nonetheless)
  - vitalyan1234 5mo ago
    it is possible to adapt to input/network lag, sure. I played Doom 3 at 10-15 FPS in 640x480 and Warcraft 3 with 300ms latency, and I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't think I could endure such underwhelming experiences after many years of much better ones.
    - bpavuk 5mo ago
      honestly I'd still throw a penny for at least a day pass if I'm e.g. traveling. getting that Duollistes or Locust fix on a train looks irresistible

dpcan 5mo ago

I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

RobotToaster 5mo ago
Counterpoint: UK law gives you six years to sue if goods are faulty or otherwise not as advertised, why should software be any different?
- knollimar 5mo ago
  6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %
jayd16 5mo ago
Certainly we'll just move the fig leaf so the free online component of games are now part of a subscription. Ideally a free subscription through packed in keys and such but we'll probably end up being nickel and dimed even further.
elondaits 5mo ago
Not everything is economic value. For gamers, an online game can be a community hub, part of their identity, a hobby. It’s not about whether they got their money’s worth, it’s about destroying a virtual “place” they’re emotionally and socially invested, and the specific skill they posses when they’re there.
- 0x59 5mo ago
  I think this is the root of it and what the article describes in the first half. I suspect owning a copy of a game will soon be completely eliminated and replaced w the subscription model. Then when subscription dollars stop flowing, the company naturally winds down the service.

ryandrake 5mo ago

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn down a server. As a developer or manufacturer, if your software or device absolutely requires a server that costs money to maintain, then your business plan should take that into account: You should be charging customers monthly to keep that service running. You shouldn't promise a one-time payment, take the customer's money and then yank the service away on a whim. Nobody is asking for free labor to keep services running. I'm asking that you 1. only tether your product to a server if you absolutely need to, and 2. charge for that kind of product monthly so that you can leave it running while you still have customers. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.

cogman10 5mo ago
Yeah, it's frankly ridiculous that "smart" devices need internet access. Why shouldn't my smart oven behave exactly like my Brother printer? There's no reason my oven needs access to the internet, it can do everything it needs to do on my local network. My phone should be able to connect directly to it via a scan of the local network subnet or using any number of service announcement technologies that already exist. And it makes these devices worse. I should be able to control my oven using a simple REST api and home assistant. The fact that in order to interact with my oven with a home assistant I first have to reach out to my manufacture servers is just insane. It's an oven. It only has so many sensors and nobs to twist. About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever. But that too should be solved with the same regulation that says "Ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, thermostats, and doorbells must not connect to the internet". We can teach the world about VPNs if they want remotely access their devices.
- zahlman 5mo ago

ChrisArchitect 5mo ago

Related on U.S. developments: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365

KolibriFly 5mo ago

Just don't design the game so that, when the business model stops working, every paid copy becomes a brick

rolph 5mo ago
i remember when multiplayer games could be connected to a user operated server. the basic function of a multiplayer server is to keep the players game state synched, large numbers of players, and very fast gameplay vs connection rate and jitter is fly in ointment.

phyzix5761 5mo ago

Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-our-games-bill-could-kill-indie-studios.html https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...

ajuc 5mo ago
> Now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features. Good riddance. Online features suck. Make your game multiplayer or make it singleplayer. Don't add pointless online features. PS all you need to make sure it works is release the server once you stop supporting it yourself. > They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud micro services. Give people the docker file. > 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. That's more AAA stuff not indie.
- deleted 5mo ago
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- bethekidyouwant 5mo ago
  Any sufficiently popular multiplayer Indy game gets ruined by cheaters.
  - throwaway85825 5mo ago
    Not a problem with private servers and offline reputation management.
- Rohansi 5mo ago
  > That's more AAA stuff not indie. If they run it themselves, probably. Indies are more likely to use free services like Steamworks and Firebase which can be pulled out from under them for any reason.
zamalek 5mo ago

amazingamazing 5mo ago

I imagine the end result will be another layer of online subscription.

sph 5mo ago

A lot of “yes, but…” in this comment section. Hard to tell if it’s HN playing contrarian as it usually loves to do, or just people so brainwashed they default to defending corporate interests. Nothing makes me as hopeless for the future as reading people trying to one up the negativity about any initiative at all, and if no one did anything, they’d hit you with the snarky ‘go vote to make your voice heard instead of complaining’ It takes big balls to fight publishers and even more massive to fight the internet and the pseudo-intellectual snark of internet commenters. The entire SKG initiative has my support and perhaps it’s the only thing that might convince me that ordinary citizens actually have any say at all in directing legislation.

junaru 5mo ago
You can't make a person see a problem if his livelihood depends on not seeing it. In my gaming circles, people who work on SaaS solutions are against SKG even though they are avid gamers and even open source contributors. They just recoil on a thought of an EOL plan. Same on HN. "Think of the indies" is just same old "Think of the children" astroturfing.
- knollimar 5mo ago
  Or they have an indie game theyre "making" and being forced to build an EOL plan for a game that will statistically be a flop is silly to them. I feel a carveout for total says, say $200k USD or less, would be reasonable. Otherwise you're just conscripting indie time. I was working on a game, but I'm not looking forward to releasing updates everytime steam changes their relay. Considering scrapping multiplayer completely.
  - sph 5mo ago
    Indie game devs don't care about EOL plans because they're not building a game as a service. If the indie game has multiplayer, it's much easier for everyone involved to ship a server binary like Valve has done for ages. No indie is setting up a proprietary autoscaling game server infrastructure on AWS that they will have to maintain for years and have an end-of-life plan for if the SKG initiative passes. The only companies that SKG would inconvenience are AAA/live service studios. They have enough money to find a workable solution, or more likely, spend billions in lobbying against this initiative.

emptybits 5mo ago

Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Then let gamers decide. Example: If I'm reminded, at purchase time, that this $70 game will work online for 24 months and single-player offline for 36 months, then I can make an informed decision before I buy. Studios would be forced to bring their business plan into visibility and be held to a level of service, and then gamers can't complain when a game is "switched off" according to plan. This is already implied, just not explicit and quantified in advance. Personally, I wouldn't buy a game that had early expiry of online already contemplated. And offline play should be rich and complete indefinitely. But I still live in the glorious console cartridge era in my head and in my emulators.

DaSHacka 5mo ago
> Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Companies would just default to saying "we reserve the right to shut off online connectivity at any time."
- ryandrake 5mo ago
  Well, then prevent that via regulation, too. It fatalistic to say "Well, we just can't possibly regulate companies, because they will surely find loopholes and avoid the regulation!" The answer is to write better, more thorough regulation that prevents loopholes. That shouldn't be such a tall order!
  - 1123581321 5mo ago
    Just write a regulation that every game developer has to make a great game, not charge too much, support it for years, and give it away for free as soon as it's not popular. That way, we'll only have great games and archives of great free games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM
    - throwaway85825 5mo ago

customguy 5mo ago

Here's an idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's not new: instead of forcing all game devs to ensure longevity, just make clear criteria for what constitutes that longevity, and developers that meet them (or promise to meet them when they shut down) can slap a nice bright logo onto their game. Something like the rating system, except it's a line that's only there for games that claim they are "yours forever". Steam would have a filter for it, and so on. Then you can make the punishments/fines for breaking that promise draconian, since nobody has to opt in. Most single-player games would have the logo out of the box, gamers would come to expect it for those, and take a good hard look at single player games that don't have it. With multiplayer games it would be more varied, but there would now be a very clear incentive to see if it might not be possible after all to do what is needed to get that label, especially if none of your competitors have it. And most importantly when planning new games, you'd double check every decision would disqualify the game for it.

customguy 5mo ago
Is it just because some gamers are very irate or is this actually a bad idea? If so, how?
- skotobaza 5mo ago
  I assume most people just want to keep playing games they paid for forever (I am among those people). Like with older titles where this wasn't an issue. So the solution to mark games that don't do that feels like a half measure, since it doesn't guarantee anything.
  - customguy 5mo ago
    Sure, but it would cut off all the excuses about it being too hard or expensive etc. How would companies run PR against such a proposal without making it blatantly obvious even to casuals that they're evil?

shmerl 5mo ago

Releasing source code for games (including server part) should help.

aogaili 5mo ago

Am I the only one finding the dependency on those videos games to be concerning?

add-sub-mul-div 5mo ago
No. The people in the in-group you want to be a part of feel the same way.
- aogaili 5mo ago
  Sorry - I didn't get this comment? I mean isn't strange that people get to live in a digital reality that is dependant on a servers that could be taken down instead of being embedded in physical reality that we call life?

binkHN 5mo ago

I still miss Stadia.

datsci_est_2015 5mo ago

My lateral solution: don’t let the companies use the words “purchase” or “buy”, force them to use the words “rent” or “license”. You can only use the words “purchase” or “buy” if you can install / move the files to a device that is completely airgapped from the internet and continue to use the product indefinitely. Extend it to movies and music as well. Use established language to enable consumers to make an informed decision.

0x59 5mo ago
I like where you're going and obv industry will just have you buy a license
- datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
  My hope would be rent / license would tend to have a lower value than purchase / buy, to compensate.
anotherevan 5mo ago
I've been saying this about Amazon with ebooks, and DRM'd goods in general for years.
CivBase 5mo ago
This is a good step, but it's not enough on its own. The core issue with game licenses is that they can be terminated at any time for any reason. There needs to at least be a well-defined timespan for the license. But of course that'd be seen as an "expiration date" and no publisher wants to put that on their game.
- datsci_est_2015 5mo ago
  Well calling it a license in the first place is a strong step towards requiring an expiration as well. Licenses are rarely indefinite in scope, if I understand correctly.

StillBored 5mo ago

Part of this is simply fixed by a tweak to copyright that if the IP isn't available for sale at a reasonable price the copyright no longer applies. Games, books, movies, music, etc.

rendaw 5mo ago
I think this is an important point. The point of copyright is to increase the amount of creative works available to people by making the production financially viable. If companies aren't making the works available, or taking released works and making them unavailable, copyright has failed. Even the "Copyright Alliance" acknowledges this: https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explained/copyright-basics/purpose-of-copyright/ https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai... > While the copyright law is intended to serve the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative work, it is important to understand that the copyright law imposes no obligation upon creators to make their copyrighted works available. As a result, an unpublished work that is never distributed to the public receives the same copyright protection that a published work would receive.

shantnutiwari 5mo ago

The article is a bit misleading-- it doesnt make it clear that par of the problem is even single player games stop working when access to a server is lost

skotobaza 5mo ago
Exactly! And most people who comment on this topic seem genuinely oblivious to it. Which tells me they don't play videogames and don't know the current state of the industry.