HN user
Geez man. I've seen your replies in this thread multiple times. At this point, I have to wonder: why are you so against legislating the actual sale of ownership of video games? How could enacting this theoretical legislation, that you believe is a consumer "preference" (hard disagree, but I'll allow for argument) be in any way detrimental to you? What compels you to lick the boot to a polished shine?
Rent and Subscribe would NOT be clear because they imply ongoing payment.
Yes, exactly. Video game distributors should be forced to choose a pricing model: "Sell", or "Rent". No more "License, until we or the DRM service decides to revoke access for any reason/we go out of business/the DRM service goes out of business".
Don't blame "regulation" on this, as if politicians do this because they're dogmatically "pro-regulation". That is not a real political stance, and it's childish to frame these bills in that manner.
California AB 2426 is a very deliberate and well considered bill, because it does exactly what it was designed to do: feign consumer protections, while leaving easy loopholes for those companies the bill protects. Those legislators who signed it did not have consumer protections in mind. Gavin Newsom is not interested in rocking the boat of corporate power, and neither are the lobbyists who pushed for that bill.
Don't blame "regulations". Blame, and vote out, the authors and signers, because they clearly do not have your interests in mind.
Maybe, but regularly reframing regulations that people like (consumer protections, OSHA, lemon laws, etc.) as regulations will hopefully remind/reinforce that the whole "pro/anti regulations" framing is a childish mindset.
All your examples make clear to the customer that their access is temporary and conditional on their continued and ongoing payment, and that ownership of the good/service is retained by the seller.
On the other hand, "buying a game" is given the guise of ownership, despite true ownership still being retained by the seller, obscured by the fact you're making a one-time payment. It'd be reasonable if the terminology used was "rent" or "subscribe" to a game with a periodic payment, but that's not what's advertised.
It is deceiving, unnecessary, and anti-consumer.
I think you missed the truth behind this article: private Minecraft servers are not piracy, or illegal, in any sense. The EULA that server admins must agree to in order to use the server states that other servers are allowed.
There's no reason to move to an open source client, since Minecraft is already more open that the vast majority of games, and has shown no signs of closing that access in the future.
That's right, my bad, I just meant that he's clearly doing just fine but said something very wrong instead
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.
None of those things are required to be supported by this law. It's the minimum viable product to enable multiplayer play.
- Ditch the matchmaking, players can build their own communities and use server lists for discovery - Ditch the anti-cheat if you can't distribute it, it's not necessary for online play - Ditch the metrics, of course - Let the player download their inventory save file or something, idc
The law isn't requiring that all online features of the game be available. Just a minimal viable product to play the base game online. No storefronts, no news prompts, no matchmaking servers, just server lists. You don't need AWS for that.
Second is an actual concern about this specific regulation. This is a concrete concern about the incentives it creates.
Like I said in my OP comment, the problem with saying "this regulation will push devs to subscription-based game models" is that it does not explain why that would happen. It just assumes it would.
This argument to me is like saying "forcing people to wear seatbelts will push them to take the bus instead". Why would this be such a problem that people ditch their whole mode of transit? I see it that way because I can't think of a single case where designing your game server architecture with decommissioning and redistributing to your users in mind would be difficult or costly at all, and I have seen no convincing explanations
Consider the infrastructure you're talking about. What parts of the game service would need to be implemented with micro services and/or calls to a cloud computing and storage? It would be matchmaking, storefronts, news updates, etc.
Running a single dedicated server on a home computer to play with whatever community you've curated requires none of these. Any sane game server architecture would already be essentially a single executable since you want performance and synchronicity within a single "match" or "world".
You say most games won't be able to release server software. Can you provide an example of a game which could not possibly be disentangled from its cloud architecture? I'm having trouble thinking of any
For releases you're generally building it all at once in a merge request/deployment pipeline anyway
Please reread my initial comment. That's the assumption everyone is making, but WHY would it actually cost so much more? What's so much more expensive? Some games already do this, why would it be so much more expensive for others?
Why would releasing your server executable as a standalone be difficult to impossible to comply with the law? Many games already do this
The most obvious example is pretty much any form of inviting a player/having idenities. The storage of users and inviting them is what brings in the scaling complexities in your average online game, and that's when you'd use a service harder to have a self hosting equivalent of.
A bill like this isn't asking for a 1-to-1 level of service once the company servers are turned off, it's a minimal product to make multiplayer play at all possible. The assumption is that, like with most fanbases for a product, you'll have to form a community of people to engage with it on your own.
The solution is to do what so many older games like Quake or Minecraft or TF2 have done since day 1: Release the server executable, and allow direct LAN connections (and disable login requirements).
so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.
Please reread my comment. You're doing the exact same thing. You're saying this like it's a given, but it is not. WHY would it be more attractive?
Blanket dismissal of regulations is about as silly as a blanket dismissal of laws. Some laws are "bad", some are "good", but the point is who do they hurt, and who do they serve? Regulations are tools, like laws, and can be written to serve the needs of the people, for good things.
I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement.
That seems a bit silly to my eyes, self-hosting a server seems sufficient. But not included in this bill, so not an issue here
Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.
In this specific case, it's not so hard to imagine a single home computer handling the traffic of 100 connected users for a game of battle royale, the server compute for those kinds (baked-in world, low physics) games can be cheaper than running an instance of the game. Just some physics calculations, networking, and game state.
The main point would be if you start development from the premise that your server executable will be released to the users, the architecture/performance considerations are not that different at all.
gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services?
This is what I fail to see an explanation of anywhere in these comments. WHY would this law make a subscriber-based revenue model so much more enticing? WHY would this law make single-purchase games with multiplayer servers suddenly so non-viable from a business perspective?
The latent assumption I keep seeing is that the mere existence of a regulation in an area will drive people away from that model, but that's simply not how businesses operate. It's a cost/benefit analysis. So what is the cost?
Agreed that's what they were likely trying to do with that comment, and I'd argue the problem with it is that it fear-mongers about regulations while failing to actually scrutinize what the negative effects are.
Also, we should really drop this restaurant analogy, it's ill-fitting and clearly distracting from the main point.
That is very far from the point, not only because what I meant was that some restaurants are not as good compared to others, but also because the connection between eating out vs eating at home and regulations is basically non-existent? I don't really understand what you're saying.
The point is saying "some regulations have downsides" is meaningless in conversation about a particular regulation, just like saying "some restaurants don't serve very tasty food" is meaningless in a conversation about "should we try that new Thai place on 3rd street?"
See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.
All this says is that it's possible for regulations to have negative, unintended consequences. It's about as relevant as reminding your friends that some restaurants are not very good when you're picking a place to eat. It's not relevant when we're talking about something specific and the field of things is varied.
WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it creates.
Sure. What are the negative incentives?
If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only.
Why? What is the incentive away from one-time purchases? Is it cost? Where is that cost coming from?
Well, they're not selling you the game. They're licensing you the ability to play their game.
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of what it means to "buy a game", by most people's interpretation of the word "buy".
Regardless of that, the neat thing about regulation is that we don't have to settle for that interpretation, and instead force the one that's better for the consumer!
I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk.
Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a company may use or release. What popular libraries are we concerned about no longer being usable because of this? Remember, this is server architecture. Networking libraries? ENet is distributable, so is Valve's GameNetworkingSockets.
Yes, it'd ask developers to write their servers with this possible/inevitable transition in mind. Developers will plan ahead for that, and I have a very hard time imagining the server architecture would change much at all. A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden.
This is great news!
Consumer protection laws are "weird"? I'd hate to live in your world...
Yes it's definitely the opposite of trickle down. Higher taxes on the wealthy to reduce income inequality and provide more funding for social programs
It's a label for a very real tax policy and the advertised reason behind it, it's definitely a thing (or was, at least, the argument is less common today)
Uh...
Can you name me a single job where the tradeoff is "You won't get paid much because this position is so respectable"?
There are respectable jobs where you don't get paid much because the area of work simply does not generate much money (charity), or because they're being exploited and guilt tripped into working hard because of their mission (charity), and there are jobs which are respectable primarily because they pay very well...
But there are no jobs where you're "status-compensated", where you are paid less but that's okay, because the job is so respectable so it's okay to pay you less.
Yes, but notice that the pope gets paid very well
"status-compensated"?