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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
https://www.tyleo.com/blog/sunsetting-rec-room-how-to-give-a...
The sad truth is that these things have high operating costs, especially if they need moderation. I would guess this bill just makes it more risky to make the games in the first place. It’s already brutally hard to make money on games.
I feel like the effect of this might just be that shutting an online game makes it more likely to take a whole company down if you have to issue refunds. Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards other business models like ads, free-to-play, or subscription.
Servers have a real cost, nobody is denying that, but I think the people who bought the game should have an option/alternative in case the servers are down.
We basically have to get as much done on a 3/4 month timeline as possible and it isn’t a priority like saving content or refunding gift cards is. Shutting down is a lot of work.
This doesn't actually answer the question about how hard it would be. What's the specific level of effort required, and some amount of why so people can learn from your experience.
> We basically have to get as much done on a 3/4 month timeline as possible and it isn’t a priority like saving content or refunding gift cards is. Shutting down is a lot of work.
I'd rather have a working game then a refund of a gift card. Including if that means I have to stand up my own servers.
Priorities I guess
The refund thing is just there to force action by putting a dollar value on inaction. Pretty much no company is expected to actually choose refunds.
> Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards free-to-play if in-app-purchases are excluded.
Good point, the law had better not exclude those.
Take I’d for example. They released source code for genre defining extremely popular games and were fine.
And how often is code reused anyway? Every online game seem to either use mostly stock server code that comes with the engine or build anew every time.
Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation.
It would be better if they'd focus on narrower problems where they can make a positive difference. For example, mandating a freely distributable end-of-life patch to remove online activation from DRMed games. Creating a patch and uploading it once to the Internet Archive isn't a big enough burden to make companies modify their biz model or deploy armies of lawyers and MBAs to circumvent. When it comes to rapidly evolving technology, the best regulations are clearly defined, narrowly scoped and cheaper to comply with than avoid or game.
I would assume if that law passed the simplest compliance would just be to charge subscriptions and stop selling games directly. It seems like doing that would comply with that law without requiring much to change?
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Keypoint:
> would require a digital game operator to communicate specified information to purchasers and prospective purchasers of a digital game 60 days before the operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the game, and, beginning on the date an operator ceases to provide services necessary for the ordinary use of the game, require the operator to provide the purchaser with an alternate version of, a patch or update to, or a refund for, the game,
"Here's your $0 back, thanks for playing!"
That makes it a bit tricky for games like WoW that charge for expansions, as well as subscription. But I'm sure MS can figure something out.
I am indeed worried that this will push games to be subscription-based, so I would advocate making the bill apply even to subscription-based games. Though that would require some thought, of course, as it's not obvious how it should apply to such a game.
* When GameSpy announced shutdown, patches were released to use Epic released the "post-GameSpy" patch, replacing the GameSpy servers with Epic's master servers for Unreal Tournament 3 [1] * Older Unreal series games later were transferred for maintenance to OldUnreal [2], and also made free.
At the same time, they are not open source, nor source available. So, there is an entity, that owns the code and maintains it, without the hassle of opensourcing it.
This is because the series have a strong community, which was in large part formed because the standalone servers, prior to algorithmic matchmaking, allowed people to gather there and learn to be social to each other and learn gaming etiquette. You had to play strategies for repeated games and be civil to others. Modern matchmaking strips us of that - you play with others once and go separate ways, so you don't have to deal with consequences and can use one-time game strategies, which leads to poor behavior and less enjoyment. Yes, you had players of drastically different skill levels on the same servers, and that was a good thing. Skilled players could teach newbies, newbies could learn the gaming etiquette and see what's possible, instead of boiling in the same pot with others playing completely different games than on the other skill levels. You had the core game and the social game on top of it, now we are all alone in our rooms interacting with strangers we will never see or play again with nor against.
Maybe Epic is not the best or the most loved company (compared to Valve) but I respect, that they understood that "this cow has gave us enough milk already", and could part ways with it, leaving existing community satisfied.
[0]: https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/13210/view/291772582...
Bought PGA Tour 2k21 for $50. In October the servers shut down completely neutering the game. I think you're allowed to play a few courses still. But the career mode, which is why I originally bought the game, was completely turned off. Mind you that career mode had zero Internet needed features. It's like a sports franchise mode.
So good on this bill. 2K should rot for deprecating a game I bought for $50 only 5 years ago.
They did offer to transfer things to other Supercell games, but that had no value to me as I didn’t play those.
I complained to the App Store, but Apple refused to refund purchases made more than 60 days ago (IIRC).
I know things don’t necessarily last forever, especially digital assets, but to spend a lot of money on something only to have it shut down and made unusable within months really stings.
You lost the money the moment you made in-game purchases.
Or they could just demonstrate that they have an offline play capability right from the moment they sell it.
Now they want more.
If you're passionate about making games chances are you're not going to succeed financially. Set your sights on personal success in the artistic sense. Can you communicate what you wanted, can you enrich some people's lives a bit with your work? It doesn't pay the bills, and that's not really fair, but it's also not unique. Lots of valuable labor receives no reward.
None of this is really relevant to the law in question though, which is itself pretty basic consumer protection against a company yanking back something it sold.
Even back in the day, if I paid 60 bucks and spent less then 40 hours solving the game I was disappointed and felt like I paid too much. I invested in the hardware and software and I expect something out it.
Happy to pay for your game but don't hobble it or subject me to ads.
Sure, I'll spend $5 on a game I play for 10 hours, but it's still a bad value for me comparatively. When I do it, it's usually because I like what the developer did and want them to get some financial support. This is also why there are hundreds of unplayed games in my Steam account.
Your $5 game is competing with every game I have available to me and the market is _saturated_. A lot of game development is just bad investment. Like Ubisoft spending $500 million to develop Beyond Good and Evil 2. If that ever even releases, but why would you spend half a billion dollars following up a flop. A beloved flop but a flop.
Consumers of creative works generally are paying for the result, not the process.
> (b) This section does not apply to any of the following:
> (1) Any subscription-based service that advertises or offers for sale access to any digital game solely for the duration of the subscription.
This exemption NEEDS to be removed. If a game's official servers are taken down, the community needs to be given the ability to keep running it themselves. Full stop. No exceptions.
Well, I predict we'll start seeing more games offered "solely for the duration of a subscription". And also games spun out into their own subsidiary that will just go bankrupt and not comply.
> Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work
Could the game industry just side step this legislation by moving games entirely to a subscription model, with no upfront purchase? When they stop offering the subscription, you lose access to the game. Similar to how various online SaaS businesses work.
Yes. With a subscription there is already an expectation that you will lose access when you stop paying. But I doubt they'd get much buy-in from gamers for that on most games.
What I'd prefer is modders not getting sued when they try to implement the online aspect for free, heck or paid at that stage.
If the game is popular enough, the community tends to take care of it. Maybe some legal form of officially abandoning the game?
So they just make their game free two months before they want to close?
I prime example of other software this would have benefited is AutoCAD.
People who refused the conversion to a subscription, and maintained their "lifetime" licenses, where shut down after a couple of years.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46768909
JuiceSSH have since shut their site down after that last round of attention so I guess they really have no intention of open sourcing or refunding.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260116112028/https://juicessh....
Wah wah munchie wah.
This would kick in next year. You have time to make contingency plans including a kill switch to put in shitty royalty free music if you need to.
> “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance.
Go fuck yourselves.
1. If a game no longer works then the publisher loses copyright protections. This would often apply to online-only games. There are other games that are a mix of online and offline play that should be treated slightly differently;
2. If the hardware to run a game is no longer sold (eg legacy consoles), then there should be copyright protections for anyone making emulators to make the game work;
3. After a certain period of the underlying hardware and game not being sold, the game itself loses copyright protections. Say... 5 years? Maybe even less;
4. Loss of any online services sold with a game should mean that there is no copyright claim against third-parties making their own servers.
Making a game server isn't necessarily that hard. Forcing companies to open source their servers is problematic and may not even be possible if, say, the studio shuts down. Gamers are a resourceful lot however. I mean, just look at emulators. They can make their own servers if they need them. Just make the law indemnify them against copyright claims if the studio/publisher has switched off those online services and the problem will largely take care of itself.
The rest is just treating games like orphan works. There was a time when identifying a copyright holder was hard and extending copyright had to be actively done or it just expired. If they abandon a game this way, they should effectively just lose copyright (IMHO).
I expect this to be somewhat of a forcing function. If a studio really wants to maintain copyright to a game they no longer sell for a console that nobody makes anymore, then porting it to Steam and continuing to sell it is their path to maintaining copyright. And that should make it playable still.
Commiserations, California (and likely the rest of the US) - all your games will now be subscriptions.
Thank you for letting me in! Sol Roth PS: Hope you like the décor. I’m redecorating your thoughts permanently.
It's better to have more offerings on the market, even low quality ones, than fewer. Limiting the low quality offerings does not result in high quality ones naturally emerging to substitute them. It just leads to fewer offerings.
There are two things I think that low quality offerings are good at doing. First, they're good at experimenting with new features. If it's very cheap to try a new feature, because the cost of deploying a new game is quite low and you're basically pumping out a bunch of marginally valuable games, then new features get iterated on more quickly. That eventually flows back up to the better quality games. The second benefit is that it meets some niche needs, where a certain player wants something that's very unusual or otherwise non-existent on the market. And this 5x9 half-baked game provides it. Again, it's very few people who want this feature, but there are a huge number of features like that. It's a very long tail.
I moderate an online community and we introduced democratic rulemaking and people kept proposing and then voting in rules to restrict this or that kind of post because it was low quality or distracted people or whatever and eventually the forum became so much less usable because of the cumulative effect of all these small restrictions. That effect of making the forum less usable was most pronounced on newcomers, who didn't know all the rules and basically couldn't break in because of the barrier to understanding how to generate content that complied with the morass of restrictions.
Hellgate London, Paragon...
The law should go further: If an IP isn't revived within N (say 5) years, release the source code for the servers.
Of course it should be legal to reverse engineer software you own, but you have to actually have access to the software to reverse engineer it.
Lots of clearly needed specific laws. Europe is fine too, but they err on the side of caution and smother actual innovation.
Which is interesting because the Silicon Valley companies themselves incorporate in DW anyways, so it seems to be a separate consumer led legal trend.
Feels like malicious compliance, but I’m used to it now, I’ve done the same in other industries like raising or issuing capital, so I cant be mad about consumer protection style patchworks then
But in this case, even the best-case outcome is extremely dumb. Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced. And there will be side effects, ultimately including geo-fencing of games to exclude California. It's a big market, but you can't make up for a net loss with volume.
Yeah those poor companies. They should just be allowed to take our money and then stop providing a service we paid for. Won't someone please think of the corporations????
What kind of weird argument is this? If I pay for a game then I, you know, want to be able to play the game. You know what I don't care about? Whether or not it's profitable for Ubisoft to keep a cheap signing server online.
I think this can be argued with directly on its merits - 1. maybe, 2. also that's probably fine, 3. also that's not what happened with car emission standards, etc.
..things they'd be doing anyway as they developed the game??
currently there's a huge risk Marathon might get shut down like high guard or concord because of player numbers. If they shut it down, nobody could play it anymore.
If there's a system in place for us to be able to host our own servers, or... I don't know? OWN the game we bought and play it because we OWN it because we PAID for it. Then yeah, that's good and it's a good movement and I fully support it.
I genuinely don't understand the other side of this argument because it just feels like no for the sake of no.
Handing over a standalone server to the public is a massive engineering, financial, and legal headache. Modern multiplayer games rarely run on a single isolated program. They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud microservices.
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.
Disentangling the actual game logic from these third party platforms like AWS or Epic Online Services requires months of rewriting code. At that point you're basically re-inventing the wheel on so many technologies that your costs go up exponentially.
Games are rarely built entirely from scratch by a single company and are usually packed with licensed third party software like proprietary network code, commercial physics engines, or specific anti cheat software. Because the studio doesn't own the rights to distribute these proprietary tools to the public for free then releasing a standalone server forces them to spend extensive legal and development hours stripping out the restricted code and replacing it with open source alternatives.
Releasing server code also exposes the inner workings of the company's technology. If a studio uses the same proprietary engine or backend framework for their active money making games then releasing the server code for a dead game essentially hands hackers and competitors a roadmap to exploit their current profitable titles.