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

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8e8e7g0r82o

by Brajeshwar • 2 months ago

152 165 2 months ago

superkuh2• 2 months 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.

mpyne2• 2 months 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.

superkuh2• 2 months 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.

jayd162• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

trumpdong• 2 months 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• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

KolibriFly2• 2 months 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

vitalyan12342• 2 months 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.

bpavuk3• 2 months 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.

dpcan• 2 months 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.

jayd162• 2 months 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• 2 months 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.

0x595• 2 months 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.

danaris2• 2 months ago

So who gets to be the arbiter of how much time $70 is worth?

You?

The companies making the games?

Why should they get to destroy games—gone, forever, with no chance of retrieval or resurrection—that hundreds of people put their time and love into, and millions of people want to play, just because they think it'll make this quarter's stock price numbers look better?

Copyright was created to protect the rights of the creator for a limited time to promote the useful arts. Creations are supposed to become part of the public domain once the creator is no longer getting use out of them. Game companies want to break that bargain, scorched-earth style, and ensure that no one can ever use the things that they create to make anything new.

0x595• 2 months ago

Why would you buy my new game if you're spending all your attention on the one I sold you 10 years ago?

operatingthetan• 2 months ago

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.

This example is humorously short and this is why there is backlash to game companies shutting down games. What about the people who bought it towards the end? They just get nothing? All that time and money spent just gets thrown in the trash because they don't want a cloud bill? They either need to opensource the games and servers or keep supporting them for a decade or longer.

RobotToaster• 2 months 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?

knollimar11• 2 months ago

6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %

vblanco3• 2 months ago

Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines. Any argument against SKG is lobbyst nonsense. With the very specific exception of stuff like MMOs. We are seeing cases of pirates being able to play those "turned off games" through cracks and private servers, so there is absolutely 0 reason why the publisher cant already do it.

Rohansi4• 1 month ago

Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines.

Not guaranteed. Many just run a local server, either in-process or externally. Minecraft's singleplayer mode actually runs a server in-process internally. This simplifies development because singleplayer is conceptually the same as playing alone on a server.

This gets more complicated when there are infrastructure servers in the mix for things like player state, matchmaking, etc. You would bypass that in development but they are required for normal play while being external to the game server.

ryandrake6• 2 months 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.

cogman104• 2 months 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.

zahlman2• 2 months ago

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.

If the app doesn't use the Internet then the natural way to provision it is to have it pre-loaded on the device anyway. Why should the goal of "avoid needing to hit the manufacturer's servers" involve hitting Google's servers?

cwillu• 2 months ago

Worth noting that Brother for a decade or more now often ships their printers with the USB port hidden behind a sticker, and _lots_ of other papers and stickers telling you “you need to connect to wifi!”.

mysterydip• 2 months ago

“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere

cogman104• 2 months ago

"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufacturer requires the same thing for this device class. So you can either have a washing machine or hand wash your cloths in your bathtub".

These sorts of EULA should be flat out illegal.

bpavuk3• 2 months ago

"deemed". the past tense is doing a lot of work here.

_aavaa_• 2 months ago

That’s the exact excuse used by the publisher in the article.

Kiro• 2 months ago

I don't see how the publisher is relevant here. It would be the developer saying that.

dkersten3• 2 months ago

Then they should not be allowed to use words like “buy” in the online stores.

aurareturn6• 2 months ago

  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 is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever.

Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total left. Are you saying that this developer must maintain the exact same quality of online play for 100 people?

zahlman2• 2 months ago

The comment you are replying to doesn't argue any such thing, and is pretty clear in its explanation of how your position is perfectly compatible with what is requested.

mrob• 2 months ago

Nobody has a problem with rentals. Just be up front with the terms and don't try to pretend it's a sale.

rolph3• 2 months ago

what is truly silly, is the practice of online requirements, to operate software.

junaru2• 2 months ago

That game is called World Of Warcraft.

It had its server reimplemented by enthusiasts [1] with no access to this "one of a kind cloud" for decades now. Heck it even supposedly had game client ported to new engine [2].

B-but we can't release the binaries due to licensing...

Release the source. As a developer you should be able to write code that allows to stub out all the propriety parts. The community will replace your speedtrees, matchmaking, netcode, anticheats and so on.

Change is hard we get it, but the excuses are on par with any other industry..

[1] https://www.getmangos.eu/

[2] https://turtlecraft.gg/remastered

tetha2• 2 months ago

So release the server code as OSS, data necessary to function & support community servers. Even in a crappy hard-to-support way, the community will usually figure out a way.

IMO, the move from community servers over to matchmaking & vendor only servers being the only viable option was a huge disservice to the long-levity of games. If I find the code around here, I could still get a Tremulous server running today for a few bucks, even if I haven't played that game for 20+ years.

watwut2• 2 months ago

I find this made up scenario entirely silly. What happena in reality is that games with unnecessary server components get shut down and games with small server component get shutdown. Players are not allowed to run own servers.

Accacin3• 2 months ago

No, what's silly is that you haven't even taken the time to read the initiative. You're coming out with the same incorrect arguments as PirateSoftware did.

What they're saying is (for games that would come out in the future only), is that they need to have an EoL plan for the game.

Let people host their own servers. That used to be a standard feature of multiplayer games.

matheusmoreira4• 2 months ago

There is no need for the developer to do anything. We'll do it ourselves. Just release the source code. Or actually don't, we'll reimplement the entire game if we care enough. Just don't get in our way.

RugnirViking3• 1 month ago

yes. It's very easy, and free. Don't make servers that only you can run. That's how it used to work, and theres no structural barrier to it beyond greed.

for existing services built in stupid ways, this may be impractical. After such a law is passed, services won't be built in stupid ways in the first place.

skotobaza8• 1 month ago

First of all, as other already pointed, no, nobody expects a publisher to support their game forever. Just give us the tools to do so ourselves. Second of all, it's not just multiplayer games that do that. Single-player games and modes can also be designed this way, so when the servers get shut down, you can't play the game at all. Not ever the single-player. There is no reason for this scheme to exist, plain and simple.

orev• 2 months ago

Maybe it’s better to start in a smaller, more focused and less controversial topic to set some precedents before trying to boil the ocean.

xingped• 1 month ago

This. If we try to tackle everything at once it won't work, but make inroads where you can while the winds are at your back for a particular issue.

knollimar11• 2 months ago

It's hardly a whim if a game runs 15 years, they announce "our active playerbase is 60 people" and the game shuts down.

I think we need to stop treating it as a dichotomy.

There's an understanding it won't last forever, when you buy a multiplayer game, ans making devs make offline versions in the cases where its trivial is going to bite indie game studios.

Gamers have repeatedly shown they dont like subs. Its hard to model "we want to charge you 40 cents per month, escalating with inflation" but thats what youre asking for

3eb7988a1663• 2 months ago

Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.

gosub100• 2 months ago

Effectively you're saying it's ok to steal, because "it's just from 60 people, c'mon".

Try stealing from 60 different corporations and see how that works out.

matheusmoreira4• 2 months ago

making devs make offline versions

There's no need to "make devs make" anything. We'll do it ourselves. The corporations just need to stop getting in our way with their idiotic cease and desist letters and injunctions and legal threats.

There's no need for them to spend even one cent of their money or even one second of their time on the matter. They just need to do literally nothing. That's literally all they have to do.

pbhjpbhj2• 1 month ago

Explicit information at time of sale is required, that's a cornerstone of Capitalism.

So companies should be required to either have a server release or meet the their explicit obligation given at time of sale.

So "this game for rent until 1/1/2031". If it flops, they buy out the users, release to make the game work without the company, or maintain servers until they fulfill their obligation.

Capitalism can't refine markets without full information. That means here, how much support a game will get. Whether it's a sale or rent, and so on.

skotobaza8• 1 month ago

But it's not about multiplayer games or modes. You can't play some single-player games offline as well. And some were even shut down, so you can't play them at all anymore.

teeray2• 2 months ago

Companies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say “we need to shut this down because we’re losing money on it.” On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: “but that’s our IP and it’s valuable to us.” You shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to society.

ToucanLoucan2• 2 months ago

Our society was designed from the foundations to benefit the owning class, and this is a prime, easily observed example of that. You're completely correct and it doesn't matter, because the point of IP law is to allow people who know nothing to sit on assets they own and make money for doing no work.

If someone wants to argue this position, I would challenge them to explain why anything around IP law exists as it does now if that was not the explicit goal.

pbhjpbhj2• 1 month ago

In my personal opinion, the actual problem there relating to "that's our IP" is the length of copyright.

20 years max will provide plenty of reward for creators. Some work on making copyright protect creators first, preferencing them over later owners, would also be good.

We also need works to be free to use, legislated so, after copyright expires. That would be to prevent, for example, Trade Marks being leveraged against users of works on which copyright has expired.

matheusmoreira4• 2 months ago

All this could be instantly fixed by repealing the DMCA's anti-reverse engineering provisions. Simply allow people to solve the problem, and the problem will literally take care of itself. Adversarial interoperability should be enshrined into law. If they won't support the thing, then we will. They just have to stop getting in our way.

It's also necessary to heavily punish any company that tries to leverage the legal system's expenses to financially ruin adversaries, especially individuals, by burdening them with the legal costs of defending themselves for the crime of exercising their rights.

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

Related on U.S. developments:

The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365

KolibriFly2• 2 months ago

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

rolph3• 2 months 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• 2 months ago

Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...

ajuc• 2 months 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.

bethekidyouwant• 2 months ago

Any sufficiently popular multiplayer Indy game gets ruined by cheaters.

Rohansi4• 1 month 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• 2 months ago

This the lobbyist's FUD, and SKG are so up-front with the reasonable constraints that it makes it pretty obvious that this is a paid piece.

Edit: oh, it's yours. Spend 5 minutes understanding exactly what SKG have said they are not asking for.

knollimar11• 2 months ago

California AB1921 notably doesn't match those opinions.

vblanco3• 2 months ago

Im a professional gamedev. There is pretty much no indie on earth who actually depends on cloud systems to work, because that stuff is expensive and indies dont have money. Thats a megacorp thing particularly from AAA publishers. Indies are either singleplayer (this is 0 problem) or they have local servers.

That article is paid for by the lobbysts and completely incorrect and wrong.

cm2012• 2 months ago

Two of my favorite games of all, Chivalry 2 and Hell Let Loose, are indie studio games and this law would make more expensive to make.

Rohansi4• 1 month ago

It's not just clouds systems. SKG might not cover it but what happens if Steam hypothetically shuts down? Many games are built on the Steamworks API for things like matchmaking and networking. Those will stop working if Steam is gone which could bring down many multiplayer titles with it, even if the games have local servers.

amazingamazing• 2 months ago

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

sph2• 2 months 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.

junaru2• 2 months 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.

knollimar11• 2 months 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.

Accacin3• 2 months ago

Yeah, I'm amazed that it's like that.

The "hacker" part now is completely lost on people. They just don't see the big picture, it isn't just about getting your money's worth. Some people spend their free time playing with other people they've only ever met online. Some people escape into a game after work. Relationships are built in these games, and when a game gets suddenly taken away with no recourse, it's a horrible feeling.

I can't find the best example, but this video is of a guy who plays these "dead" games and tries to find the people who are still playing, getting to know them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FEW7gxci2Q

Some of these people are just lovely, taking the time to show him around, teaching him the ropes. They're just happy that someone is playing the game. This all exists because the developers are still supporting these games. Take a look at the section about Blockland in the video I linked!

emptybits• 2 months 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• 2 months 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."

ryandrake6• 2 months 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!

YurgenJurgensen• 2 months ago

Force them to list an effective annual subscription fee more prominently displayed than any “purchase” price. If they can’t guarantee any level of service, the license is assumed to be valid for one day, and their game ‘costs’ thirty thousand dollars.

Devasta• 2 months ago

That's fine if "gamers" are my age, but 3 years for a 12 year old is an eternity. This isn't a thing which can be handled like the cookie consent popups.

dylan6042• 2 months ago

Maybe the parental unit of said 12 year old should be involved in there somewhere

customguy3• 2 months 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.

customguy3• 1 month ago

Is it just because some gamers are very irate or is this actually a bad idea? If so, how?

skotobaza8• 1 month 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.

shmerl• 2 months ago

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

aogaili2• 2 months ago

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

add-sub-mul-div• 2 months ago

No. The people in the in-group you want to be a part of feel the same way.

aogaili2• 1 month 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• 2 months ago

I still miss Stadia.

datsci_est_20153• 2 months 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.

0x595• 2 months ago

I like where you're going and obv industry will just have you buy a license

datsci_est_20153• 2 months ago

My hope would be rent / license would tend to have a lower value than purchase / buy, to compensate.

anotherevan• 2 months ago

I've been saying this about Amazon with ebooks, and DRM'd goods in general for years.

CivBase• 2 months 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_20153• 2 months 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• 1 month 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• 1 month 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-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• 1 month 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

skotobaza8• 1 month 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.

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

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