The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact
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Whenever a large games company talks about "developer choice" you know they're referring to one of a few things:
- Think of the shareholders!
- Think of the rich CEO who adds zero value to the company!
- The people don't know what they want and therefore we need to tell them exactly what they want and need!
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That's easy have some self control and only buy games that respect you
I don't know how you could do that without staying exclusively on open source
I'm old enough that the games I'm nostalgic for are on floppy discs on my shelf, but now the games I play are downloaded and rely on whatever company keeping a server up to authenticate me
Who knows what Microsoft will do with Minecraft in 30 years
Who knows what Steam will do with the licences it's sold me
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I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them
That kind of already exists, you can buy hosting for Minecraft and other games. AFAIK, moderation isn't a part of it, but many private groups exist that run public servers and manage their own moderation. It exists already, and that should absolutely be brought up as a bill is being considered.
Minecraft has private servers (at least on Minecraft java) as well as their own server platform "Realms", also every client is also a server. Though the authentication system is a Microsoft account so that's likely to still be online well into the future
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Or buying a physical book where they printed it with ink that fades after 2 years so it is no longer readable.
Fun fact a company did this with DVDs back in the day, once you broke the seal on it the air would react with a coating on the disk which would become increasingly dark until it became unreadable.
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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?
So just don't let them join/kick them from your server?
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Imo, that should be the primary role of the government
I think providing human rights to it's citizens is definitely more important, not sure if it is necessarily the primary one though.
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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.
But you are not buying a game, you are renting it.
I absolutely agree that companies shouldn't be able to say they're selling you a game. They should make it 100% clear that you are renting it.
I'm also onboard with requiring p2p/LAN functionality for multiplayer.
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So just don't let them join/kick them from your server?
Before you can do that, you need to determine whether someone is cheating. This is the purpose of anti-cheat software.
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What you're referring to is deterrence, and it doesn't apply to online gaming the way it does to theft of property. One cheater doesn't ruin the game for one other person, they ruin the game for dozens or hundreds of other players.
And the efficacy being so bad is the reason why client-side anti-cheat keeps getting more and more invasive to the point of being literally, by definition, a type of malware and system rootkit. And yet it's still not enough to defeat cheaters, because the cheaters have full access to the system itself.
And the guys writing the cheat software just have to put in the effort once to defeat the anti-cheat and then they sell it to people who install it like any other software. The cheaters who use the cheats have it easy.
What you're referring to is deterrence, and it doesn't apply to online gaming the way it does to theft of property. One cheater doesn't ruin the game for one other person, they ruin the game for dozens or hundreds of other players.
Why are you comparing theft to game hacking out of nowhere? Did you accidentally reply to the wrong person?
And the efficacy being so bad...
Source?
full access to the system itself.
What do you mean by system in "full access to the system"? Too vague to even say anything about.
And the guys writing the cheat software just have to put in the effort once to defeat the anti-cheat and then they sell it to people who install it like any other software. The cheaters who use the cheats have it easy.
The potential guys that can write the cheat software and how quickly it can be developed is the part that matters. Much like when it's easy to use an exploit once it's already discovered. Someone still has to discover the exploit.
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I'm speaking from ignorance but isn't the server backend often licensed and they couldn't release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they'd have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
Maybe so, but that's a decision they make. Surely I as customer shouldn't be taken away what i paid for because of that? And if so they should have mentioned clearly upon sale that they would take away my product after 3-4 years (though maybe that's the case in those dense ToS?) . Everything else should be considered illegal and fraudulent if they planned/knew it from the start. Which is the case if it's a licensing issue
Besides, I'm pretty sure after those 4 years the code is outdated and they could renegotiate the license to be more open to release a binary.
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But that still means an entire industry of people are going to have to change how they make things.
Companies do that all the time in response to government regulation. You like seat belts and backup cameras in your car? No sawdust in your food? Transparent pricing when buying internet access? Government regulation. None of those companies went out of business.
This is exactly why I said:
But I think it's worth communicating that we all understand new government regulation is likely going to be a pain in the ass. We just think it's worth the pain/money.
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But they got that big by doing what the previous poster said
So did many of the other big AAA devs, then they changed. You're not making any point at all. And don't get me wrong, what Larian has done is amazing, and the response from the rest of the AAA game studios is both hilarious and depressing, but sadly not surprising. Most AAA studios got big by doing good, they wouldn't have gotten that big otherwise. But then either new people came in an fucked them up or the ones already there got greedy and lost touch with reality, it's the same with many other things.
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All games become subscription only in 3..2..
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I don't know why these companies think they can talk their way out of this. No one is buying your BS. Just STFU.
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Developer choice, ha-ha, very funny. I am not familiar with the industry and still feel safe to bet most of them (edit: actual software developers making games) just want to get enough money for doing what they can do without too much stress/disgust and also most of them don't have a desire to see their work die just because some manager decided it is time to make some other games instead
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This initiative sure would make things more complicated for the game publishers, yes.
Because they're currently not doing the bare minimum.
If they weren't so accustomed to not doing the bare minimum, maybe they would have different opinions! Just saying.
Edit: Just signed the petition. Didn't think this was necessary before because, as soon as I heard of it, Finland was already top of the list percentage wise. But I did sign it, just for the hell yeah of it.
I agree wholeheartedly and I also signed late while being Finnish.
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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.
Yeah... The abstract (sorry, will read article a bit later) is bunch of nonsense to me (in respect to what is written, no offense to you):
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online experience commercially viable? The fuck they are talking about? Yeah, I know what is meant, but they would get fucking F in school for expressing thoughts in such a nonsensical way
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protections against illegal content would not exist on private servers? Really? Like only your company's servers can run that? What, you write them in machine code directly? Or is it all done manually? Anyhow, just release source code and it will be up to community to find a way to make it run
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What you're referring to is deterrence, and it doesn't apply to online gaming the way it does to theft of property. One cheater doesn't ruin the game for one other person, they ruin the game for dozens or hundreds of other players.
Why are you comparing theft to game hacking out of nowhere? Did you accidentally reply to the wrong person?
And the efficacy being so bad...
Source?
full access to the system itself.
What do you mean by system in "full access to the system"? Too vague to even say anything about.
And the guys writing the cheat software just have to put in the effort once to defeat the anti-cheat and then they sell it to people who install it like any other software. The cheaters who use the cheats have it easy.
The potential guys that can write the cheat software and how quickly it can be developed is the part that matters. Much like when it's easy to use an exploit once it's already discovered. Someone still has to discover the exploit.
Why are you comparing theft to game hacking out of nowhere?
You made the comparison: "Much like every security system"
Source?
It's out there, my dude. It's a constant complaint in literally every competitive online game. If people are complaining about it, then it's not working well enough. This isn't an esoteric thought either. You ask anyone if cheating is a big issue in online gaming and anyone with knowledge about it will tell you it's a constant problem that's getting worse.
What do you mean by system in "full access to the system"?
If you own the hardware and have admin/root access to the OS. Then it's yours and you have "full access" to everything. And I do mean everything. You can modify the OS. You can read the values of protected parts of memory. And so on.
If you don't understand what I mean by "full access to the system" in the context of anti-cheat running on your own hardware, then there's nothing I can say in a short comment to get you up to speed.
Someone still has to discover the exploit.
The cheat and anti-cheat battle is a constant cat and mouse game. The advantage is always with the cheaters because they outnumber the developers 100:1 at the least. Plus they have the will and determination to find ways around anti-cheats. In fact, building security against exploits is by far way harder than finding exploits.
The reality is that client-side anti-cheat is a losing battle.
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They should be compelled to either make those cosmetics available for everyone or have some technical means to prove ownership (e.g. blockchain or cryptographically signed file). You can't lose stuff you bought just because the publisher shut down the servers.
You can't lose stuff you bought just because the publisher shut down the servers.
I mean that's exactly how it works right now. And depending on the exact wording of any laws passed as a result of this petition only the game itself or some or all micro transactions will have to be made available after official support ends.
Public servers will either sell micro transactions themselves to finance servers or make all in game content available to everyone for free. I can see publishers having a problem with that.
