EFF asks for the right to revive “abandoned” online games

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/11/eff-asks-for-the-right-to-revive-abandoned-online-games

by sinak • 12 years ago

251 46 12 years ago

neito• 12 years ago

I'm kinda disappointed that they're carving out a huge exception for MMO-style games. If anything, I think that (if only due to the social structures that evolve within them) they're the most valuable but fragile types of online games.

Zikes• 12 years ago

Allegiance [1] is an example of this happening in the MMO space.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(video_game)

FranOntanaya2• 12 years ago

And for further reference: http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index.php?act=home

This game has really great mechanics with a really huge emphasis on teamwork. It was probably ahead of its time when it was released.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

My first instinct was that they wanted to avoid going head to head with Blizzard on this, at least initially.

mahouse2• 12 years ago

I wish this could apply to old WoW expansions.

teepo2• 12 years ago

For sure. Or offer "Vanilla" servers. I remember back in the day Ultima Online servers would pop up form time to time with the classic UI.

crazypyro• 12 years ago

FWIW, there is a long history of illegal private servers that offer Vanilla and specific xpac servers for WoW. They are especially popular with people that are into player versus player because people tend to have certain xpacs that they believe were more fun for a variety of specific reasons, mostly related to balance between different character classes.

AlyssaRowan2• 12 years ago

As worded, I think it would. Every bit of the map geometry and audiovisual content in WoW is client-side.

Server only handles chat (via hybrid-ircd, I think?), and via the main daemon (which seems like it might have been Lua-based at one point, or at least link into it like the client does), state coordination including item looting, and creep behaviour. Creep/boss behaviour and looting have been studied closely enough by tactically-minded players to be effectively black-box reverse-engineered, and fully reimplementable to a high degree of fidelity and precision.

(I'm not going to do it, I quit a while ago, but I did make a pretty popular addon, and did look into things a bit.)

teepo2• 12 years ago

I wonder if I used your add-on. There is some very interesting stuff available now, like ask Mr. Robot.

teddyh2• 12 years ago

Sadly, I don’t think the game companies are going to accept this – they are probably afraid that legitimizing this will make development of replacement server code start early (in anticipation of the shutdown of the official servers) and that the existence of working code, even though it will somehow be illegal to run, will still be run by many people, loosening the company’s iron grip of the players through the official servers.

0942v8653• 12 years ago

Which is sad considering the "iron grip" is not really going to help them much; for an extreme example look at what server mods did for Minecraft.

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

Most of the minecraft money comes from selling copies of the client, not from server subscriptions as in the case of WoW.

kruczek• 12 years ago

I don't think that would loosen the iron grip of game companies - as you mentioned it would be "illegal to run" such servers then, just as much as it is now. And they would "still be run by many people" regardless.

teddyh2• 12 years ago

No, my point is that the eventual legality of such services will make them be developed earlier than they would be developed had they been illegal indefinitely.

deanclatworthy• 12 years ago

I believe EA gave permission for xwis.net to do this for Red Alert 2. You can sign up with a legitimate key and it works as normal as the protocol was reverse engineered and DNS taken over :)

This was probably straightforward for an old game like this but I can't imagine that reverse engineering the infrastructure required for modern games is feasible. I doubt games companies will have the cash or resources spare to consider this from the beginning nor years after.

jkscm• 12 years ago

Correct me if I am wrong but the statement "game’s audiovisual content is primarily stored on the developer’s server and not in the client" is not true for any mmo.

3D models and audio are saved to the clients disk. It's the state of the persistent world that is stored on the server.

AlyssaRowan2• 12 years ago

If you consider Second Life an MMO (not sure if I'd consider it a game as such, more of an avatar chat), then I think it would apply in that case.

daeken• 12 years ago

Entropia Universe has client-side assets, but the important information (how they go together) is 99% driven by the server, AFAIK.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Hmm. This is true for WoW if you don't have a full install.

grimman• 12 years ago

This only allows for a streaming install. It's without question definitely primarily stored on the individual users' harddrives. Once you've downloaded the textures/models/whatever, you will not be requesting them from the server ever again.

abakker• 12 years ago

Bungie specifically allowed this to happen with the old Myth franchise. They open-sourced their bungie net code when they shut it down. Since then, several fan sites have kept the servers alive. The game was published in 1997.

Gracana• 12 years ago

Bungie released Marathon for free as well (including all assets and code).

madsushi• 12 years ago

There was also some work by Bungie earlier this year to keep Halo PC (11 years old) online after GameSpy shut down.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-05-12-bungie-to-updat...

(disclaimer: I work for Bungie, but not on that project)

Argorak• 12 years ago

There is a problem there: the release is Aleph 1.0 (the open source-continuation of the Marathon 2 engine) running Marathon 1,2 and Infinity.

From a historic perspective, the untouched release version of all games would be very interesting.

Not wanting to downplay the release, though, it's very kind.

djyaz1200• 12 years ago

Seizing the "moral high ground" in an attempt to get flappy birds back!

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Does anyone know if the previous abandonware allowances are still in effect?

[1] http://www.gamespot.com/articles/abandonware-now-legal/1100-...

eli• 12 years ago

Nope, that exemption for video games was not renewed in 2012. The EFF lost that round.

If you're curious, the Copyright Office discusses their reasoning for and the arguments on both sides starting on page 42 of https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/ruling2012.pdf

marvin• 12 years ago

I didn't read the reasoning, but in my opinion the requirement for giving "abandonware" special treatment has been reduced by the advent of sites like GOG.com which preserve old games. However, there are probably still games that are almost impossible to purchase in playable form, so in principle there should be an allowance for these cases.

Flenser• 12 years ago

From page 49 (emphasis mine)

The Register further found that even if proponents had satisfied their burden of establishing noninfringing uses, they nonetheless failed to demonstrate that video game console access controls have or are likely to have a substantial adverse impact on such uses. Proponents identified two broad categories of activities that were allegedly threatened by the prohibition on circumvention, scientific research and homebrew software development.

So it looks like the EFF are going at it from the abandonment angle this time having failed with the science and homebrew arguments. I'd say they have a better chance of making their case this time.

treehau5• 12 years ago

If we could get "NoX" by Westwood servers back online with clan matches and rankings I just may die a happy man

jgh• 12 years ago

Hear, hear!

austinstorm• 12 years ago

This is neat, so there's no chance it will happen.

subless• 12 years ago

I actually started a petition about this a year or two ago. Check it out and sign it: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/let-memories-live/

kissickas• 12 years ago

Am I the only one still concerned that this is all still in the power of the Library of Congress? It's certainly nice when they're promoting openness and consumer rights, but I'm not sure I like the idea of leaving these choices up to unelected bureaucrats.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

I am not a hundred percent behind this in the realm of where the game had no means to be played without the server active. This mostly concerns MMOs. If a stand alone game is hobbled by lack of authentication servers or cannot perform mulitplayer without them I see little issue with the idea of a work around.

However the sub model that most MMOs work under feels more like a lease than ownership to me

0x5f3759df-i• 12 years ago

MMO's are specifically excempt

EFF asks for the right to revive “abandoned” online games

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