The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

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Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

• provide alternatives to any online-only content
• make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
• gracefully degrading the client experience when there's no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

• if it's a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
• if it's F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it's advertised
• if it's a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn't restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they're expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they're done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn't go far enough, and if it's pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.

Can the EvE online method be applied to dissimilar games like e.g. fps games?

Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.

There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.

honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction

They did not, they said you can be successful without corpo overhead and bullshittery.

When the law passes, the owners of proprietary functionality will adapt their licensing to meet the requirrments or go out of business when everyone stops using them.

Anti-cheat is a necessary evil for competitive online games. No one wants to play a game against cheaters since they typically have an unfair advantage. If you can't combat cheating then you might as well not make the game since no one will want to play it. Fine by me since I don't care for such games but I could imagine people who like playing them might prefer to play against as few cheaters as possible. What are the alternatives?

Anti-cheat is a necessary evil for competitive online games

Client-side anti-cheat is useless. It's not a necessary evil, it's just evil. The minute the cheater/hacker has direct access to the system, you've already lost.

It doesn't, that's why companies rarely open-source their code. If you want to publish it you have to make sure you have all the rights to do so, you have to code in a way that's readable for outside users, you have to make sure people can reproduce your build process, and ideally you provide support.

On the other hand, if you're not developing the source for publication, you can leave undocumented dirty hacks, only have to make sure it builds on your machine, and include third-party proprietary code wherever you want. That's faster and cheaper, so naturally companies will prefer it.

Because you can buy other people's code for cheaper than developing it yourself, as long as you use it within the restrictions of the license you paid for.

True. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attack predatory behavior when we see it. If they want to sell me something, I need to own it, and that means I get to use it after they've stopped supporting it.

When I pay to see a film in a theater, I don't own the film. I don't get to watch the film again after it leaves the theater.

While I pay to see a concert, a play, or a musical, I don't own those performances. I don't get to see them again. They generally aren't recorded (Although that is changing in some limited cases.)

I do think a game dying is terrible and I do think games should be clearly labeled (so people can make an education decision if they want to rent the game).

Look I get it. The planet is dying, income inequality, it seems everything is unfair and going to shit. People yearn at an opportunity to help make things better. But yelling for simple solutions is the opposite of helpful. Because there are no simple solutions.

Saying to "just open source it" does not make sense.

What do you do about:

• proprietary codecs
• proprietary software that just does not exist as open source
• the fact you need a copy of the game engine to actually build the game from sources
• assets that have been bought on asset stores. Do the people who make those for a living not have a right to continue to make a living?

Making single player games without always online DRM: yes totally doable

Running game servers of online games forever: not really doable, as soon as all the libraries etc. they depend on are unsupported they will shut down one way or another. You need staff basically forever. Not even mentioning the maintenance headache that every legacy system always turns into.

Letting people run their own dedicated servers: sometimes doable, depends on the game though. Some games do not have "a server" but a whole infrastructure of stuff, look at foxhole. Some "servers" are a house of cards barely held together by duct tape.

This initiative all comes down to the definition of "reasonable". What is reasonable, actually? Running an infrastructure at a loss until bankruptcy? Or just keeping it online until it starts making a loss.

If that's their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).

What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn't retroactive), studios can plan ahead.

It's just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.

This isn't paying to see a concert, play, or musical. This is buying a book for amazon's e-reader, and them not allowing you to read the book anymore when they put out the book's sequel.