Such bullshit. Like rolling out a patch to let it be playable without connecting to any service is the hardest thing humanity has ever faced! Hypocrites.
Yes, re-writing a hundred-million-dollar piece of software running on bespoke cloud architecture and hardware across multiple data centers so it works on a single laptop is actually a pretty difficult thing to do. And that's what gamers are demanding. This isn't about flipping a switch on a tiny indie game, it's about banning any game that cannot feasibly make that requirement.
Even if the netcode is trivial to run on consumer devices you run into situations where the server will literally run part of the physics engine. And not just for shit like anticheat, but to mitigate latency spikes.
And it's totally reasonable for a game developer to license proprietary components for that use case. And that license might be per game and not redistributable.
If you're forced to redistribute your netcode in perpetuity it changes what kinds of components you can license for it and what those licenses look like. But that's a surmountable legal and financial challenge, not technical.
The technical challenge is that game developers are actually really shitty at designing networked software. For example,
re-writing a hundred-million-dollar piece of software running on bespoke cloud architecture and hardware across multiple data centers
"Good" software engineering practices would allow an individual developer to spin up an individual instance of the server to run tests and debug issues. There are organizations that have the scale where this is impossible but those organizations are named "Google" and have quite famously released open source orchestration tools that mock their own internal tooling.
Designing systems to run in the cloud is not trivial. But running them after they've been designed is.
The bigger problem imho is that software never dies. Based on my career there’s a lot of code reuse behind the scenes at a lot of companies so “the code for the server for the game they’re not supporting is abandonware” is very likely not true, at which point you’re talking about forcing companies to publish code they’re still using in shipping products. Not all of it, certainly, but a good chunk of it. And that’s not even getting into the issues of third party libraries and licenses used in the code.
Important distinction here is that no one is seriously(*) advocating to release the source code, just make the games playable. The server itself can be closed source.
And frankly these things are so bespoke that even if the code was released it only helps people using it, it's not really a risk to future development (**). So the real problem is the licensing requirements since running something behind a network and API is completely different legally than running on client devices (***)
* some people are advocating this but if "make the game playable" means "release a binary" then that's reasonable compromise
** the real motivation by gaming companies here is that old games cannibalize sales of new games. If Hell Fucker 2: Kill God flops and everyone goes back to playing Hell Fucker on community servers it can kill the studio. This is an example where what's good for businesses is not aligned with what's good for consumers.
*** a lot of these games use GPL'd software libraries on the server that would encumber them to release the source code, which may also conflict with other libraries and you need to get creative with packaging and release to actually ship something that is functional.
Oh, there are people seriously demanding it, because unfortunately every uninformed idiot gets to speak. You can look elsewhere in the comment section to see it.
I tend to be skeptical of arguments that releasing binaries is somehow different than releasing code. That might be true of binaries intended to run on specialized hardware, but when it comes to binaries that run on off the shelf hardware I can testify that during the run up to Y2k we had people successfully reverse engineering binaries whose source had long since vanished into the ether. Given enough incentive, someone will do it.
I think the situation is a lot more nuanced that a lot of the most vocal people on both sides are capable of admitting (something about getting a man to understand something when his paycheck or gaming experience depends on not understanding it) but the first step is going to have to involve a serious discussion of what IP means in a world where the state of the art changes more rapidly than anyone who wrote the original laws could ever have envisioned and what to do about the nuclear standoffs that have resulted from patents on software that extend well beyond the reasonably expected lifespan of the software that generated them. Should you be able to copyright code when there are a limited number of ways to actually write something? Should software patents even be allowed, and if so should the lifespans really be allowed to extend well past the point where the described concept is of any use to anyone?
I’m less interested in the questions as they apply to gaming, tbh, and more interested in how the clusterfuck affects the entire software industry given how it seems to be taking over the world. Gaming is a microcosm of the much bigger problem, one that just happens to have a lot of really vocal proponents.
> people successfully reverse engineering binaries
My retort to this is "so what?" This is net good for society, arguably the business, and the fears of RE'd software vastly underestimated. It's like Coke's secret formula. It doesn't have to be secret because no business is threatening Coke.
I think a lot of this discussion is orthogonal to software IP. I understand it appears like they're tightly coupled on the surface but to me if the regulation is as simple as requiring a subset to run on 2/3p systems then you just design it to work that way from the start. Only ship code you have licenses for, just like the game on the end user's machine.
You’re allowed to believe that, but you need to convince other people you’re right. So far that hasn’t happened despite 40+ years of the open source movement.
Companies aren’t going to rewrite libraries they’re willing to pay six or seven figures for so they can hand that code away, so your “just design it to work that way” is dead in the water. Nor are they going to relicense them to hand away when that will cost seven to eight figures (or more, licensing can be stupidly, stupidly expensive). The problem is inextricably linked to the current IP systems, and we need to significantly unfuck those to really make progress without companies pulling a playstation and deciding people in your country aren’t allowed to buy their games.
I’m on the side of believing that needs to be done, in case it’s not clear. 25 years in software showed me just how completely mismatched current IP law is with the pace and forms of change in software. There are only so many ways to write hello world in a given language, which makes copyright questionable. There’s very little completely unique code and what there is is usually a communal effort. The goal of patents is supposed to be so other people can leverage those inventions, but in software current patent lifespans outlive generations of technology to the point many are obsolete by the time they’re released. Gut a lot of the laws that currently try to pretend that software is somehow more akin to writing a novel than building a skyscraper and a lot of the problems evaporate because suddenly all those super expensive licenses aren’t worth the legal fees necessary to set them up.
...I don't know what you think "hasn't happened" in open source except proof that the global software ecosystem depends on it for all critical infrastructure. In the domain I work, "closed source" means "never gonna touch it."
There are exceptions to this but after having this argument many times with that should know better, I have heard *zero* credulous arguments why video game netcode cannot be released after support ends.
There is no technical reason for it other than choosing not to build something that can be released without issues.
And the reason why this doesn't threaten software licenses is the same reason why RE'd software isn't a threat. Companies don't pay for code they pay for support contracts.
I'll give you an example. Gaming companies have good reason to keep matchmaking code private because it needs to be flexible and they don't want it to be cheesed when they reuse it for future games. The technical solution is super easy: don't support matchmaking in your community edition server.
Another example I've heard: the server implementation is a monolith that runs on a single giant machine and has direct access to a proprietary database that has a closed source driver. Technical solution: wrap the database layer in a well defined API, avoid putting application logic in the database where possible, and allow it to be disabled at compile/runtime or whatever you need to avoid linking in the driver.
And this is all stuff I do on a daily basis just to make my code easy to deploy and test. So I don't know what is so impossible about their architectures other than choosing to make their lives difficult.
Yes I think all code should be open source, essentially. The problem is that people need to be paid and intellectual property is important under capitalism. You have to restructure the whole system we live under to make it okay to force people to allow their software to be reverse engineered and open sourced for the good of society.
I don't think all code should be open source. I don't think all games should be open or even source available.
What I think regulation and law is very good at is creating and manipulating incentives to benefit industry and consumers at the same time. And Stop Killing Games presents an opportunity for creating incentives like that.
You don't need to force game developers to make their code open source to achieve the goals of SKG. It can create markets for software that benefit both gamers and game companies. I've even considered starting my own hosting business for hosting game servers (these businesses already exist and are proven!). Game developers don't need to make their code open for consumers directly, they can pay hosting companies to deliver it, and when they move on, the hosting businesses can keep it running. Or they can just release the binaries to hosting businesses, who have no incentive to crack and release the cracks.
The only thing stopping this is the lack of will, due to the lack of incentive. Regulation can therefore fix both. Game developers can design things that can be released and stay functional, and allow third or fourth parties to fill in the gaps. This is good for everyone.
Most online games don't have "a binary" that manages the online functions of the game anymore. It's not 2001. We're not talking about ID tech games that compile into a client and server binary. The problem is that you're asking companies to make entire cloud infrastructures a locally runnable thing for casual consumers. And that's not even considering the things that they literally just cannot release due to licensing restrictions which exist as the primary money making mechanism behind most software companies.
The analogy I would use is that if you get milk bottles delivered and the milk business goes under you can make an argument you're entitled to your empty milk bottles but not the truck that delivered them and milk in perpetuity.
It's not poor planning or decision making for businesses to spend large amounts of money on things that are not their core competency, and for the terms of those contracts to require whatever they purchase to not be redistributed. This is bog standard in B2B contracts including software.
They didn't poorly plan anything. The alternative is not companies pressing the "Make game perfect" button, it's companies not making games that millions of people play and love. It's killing whole genres and mechanics. You're not advocating for fixing games. You're advocating for games never being allowed to exist in the first place, killing more games than companies ever do.
This is the same argument that is trotted out for literally any consumer protection or safety regulation. And it's bullshit every time.
If you can't build games that meet the engineering requirements then fine, someone else will because that's how markets work. If your organization is filled with engineers telling you "nope can't be done" then those people will be fired and replaced with engineers that don't have shitty attitudes (or maybe not, game studios have the most toxic engineering cultures imaginable).
As an engineer myself it's enormously frustrating to read these comments. It's the attitude I get from the worst coworkers. If a new requirement comes along and the retort is you can't fulfill it because your process requires some constraint, that doesn't mean a solution doesn't exist it means your process is broken. But there's this attitude among bad engineers that process and design can't be fixed because it would be too much work. And it's not good engineering, it's laziness.
I've had these discussions with game developers and heard zero credulous arguments that they can't build games that are playable without their centralized netcode. I've heard a lot of arguments about how hard it is and how overworked they are, but a lot of that comes down to the fact their code is already shitty and they're too lazy to fix it.
This is the same argument that's trotted out when politicians claim that companies can make security loopholes for police that still keep people safe. It's like saying "We put a man on the moon, obviously engineers are just too lazy to put a man on the sun."
Just because you don't understand anything about technology doesn't mean it all must be easy. "Just fire the engineers and hire the ones that are magic" is not an argument.
I don't believe you're an engineer, because no engineer would be that dumb.
I don't believe you're an engineer, because no engineer would be that dumb.
The real engineer knows anything is possible it's just a matter of how much you want to spend on it.
And that's my beef with game developers and people believing this argument. It's absolutely possible, in fact it's shocking that game developers believe that it's impossible to ship something that doesn't require connecting to their infrastructure because how do you fucking design it in the first place?.
Whether you believe me or not isn't important, I just want to push back and say if you believe this argument you're either not an engineer, or one of the shitty engineers I'm talking about.
The real engineer knows anything is possible it's just a matter of how much you want to spend on it.
Yah so that disqualifies you. It's not. Especially with software. No actual engineer would ever say something so foolish.
And that's my beef with game developers and people believing this argument. It's absolutely possible, in fact it's shocking that game developers believe that it's impossible to ship something that doesn't require connecting to their infrastructure because how do you fucking design it in the first place?.
Again, very clear you don't understand anything about software just from that question. Are you like a marketing engineer who got the title to lie to people?
Whether you believe me or not isn't important, I just want to push back and say if you believe this argument you're either not an engineer, or one of the shitty engineers I'm talking about.
Everything you've said disqualifies you as any kind of technically competent resource.
It's actually even more complex than that, because often times a lot of the solutions used for multiplayer are a bunch of third-party licenses which have terms, conditions, and fees that most certainly state "you can't distribute our solution in perpetuity for free to whoever you want."
If every multiplayer developer suddenly needs in-house solutions for libraries, apis, anti-cheat, account management, payment processing, matchmaking, and netcode, the barrier for entry to making games is way way higher and many games may just be unprofitable to make for even large companies.
Sharing half this work would be directly illegal, you don't have the copyright to distribute software you are licensing. The amount people support SKG is pretty directly linked to their technical understanding, people will often use examples of far more simplistic games from 20+ years ago... crazy.
I've literally been told by dozens of these people that because one single MMO released their server code, literally every MMO ever could easily do the same. It's aggravating.
I mean, even then most older MMO's like WOW are leaked, and very complex to host taking years and years of reverse engineering by the community, and profiting off copyrighted works that aren't even related to Blizzard themselves, just licensees by them. (Also it's a 20+ year old game... things have changed since them in the age of microservices and distrusted hosting.)
And even then, these private servers are loaded with extra monetization because server time is fucking expensive man! (If not linked to organized crime, but that's another can of worms.)
To be fair, I think most these people just don't have any understanding of any of this, and it was pretty obvious the backer behind SKG didn't either. Failing to even provided a technical description of "Playable" made the movement DOA.
The SKG website said MMOs could just release versions for smaller computers with lower player counts. And people supported them claiming they'd "thought it through".
Yeah... I mean I don't blame them. I'm a senior computer engineering so I have a better perspective on this then most. They just don't know what they don't know I guess...
Yeah even disregarding all the immediate technical and legal challenges I don't see how the SKG movement's legislation wouldn't just lead to 3rd parties creating isolated power structures based around their own niche ability to run X game stably. Because the average joe sure as hell isn't going to be able to get these games up and running by themselves, and so if the average joe can't even access them without going through some sketchy third party, what's even the point of the legislation in the first place given all of its other implied destructive effects? "Consumer rights" my ass. Maybe in spirit, but I don't think the practice will follow.
people will often use examples of far more simplistic games from 20+ years ago... crazy.
Yea. This is one of the things I was seeing that was frustrating and made me hesitate to support the movement, even if I do agree with the idea/intent of it. That and how zealous, and at times vicious, people would be. Like, it felt that for the bulk of commenters if you didn't 100% support it or raised any criticism/worries about it you were "clearly a stupid corpo shill/bootlicker!".
They don't though. I'm not saying you're wrong about what goes into these games into their current form, but rather that they aren't necessary for the game to be "playable".
An easy example is anti cheat. The answer wouldn't be to find a way to get anti cheat to the players. The only requirement is to make it playable, so just let the game start without detecting anti cheat. People are only entitled to what they paid for, so you don't really need to keep things like payment options and what not available,or even the shop at all.
Matchmaking too. As long as players could theoretically play the game, they don't need to provide matchmaking. Let the players create their own matchmaking and ranking systems like the melee community did for Slippi, or whatever that CSGO third partyatchmaking system is called. Players could also forgo matchmaking and just set up custom server browsers or something
I think the requirements is or at least should be that the game has to be playable and that's it. Big companies wouldn't struggle with this, but the big barrier remains that smaller devs would have a hard time doing even the bare minimum.
What I envision is that it'd be like if you owned a copy of a game, but didn't pay for the online service like pso or xbl. That's what you would be entitled to when you buy the game.
You selected the few that are possible for the game to work without, but how about those that aren't? Libraries and API? Must every developer design every game from the ground up, disregarding solutions that will take them millions of dollars to design inferior versions of just to comply with a new regulation for one region of the world? These are things that are foundational to the game and incredibly common to license.
Common examples you might know about are Havok Physics (FROMsoft, ID, CAPCOM) or PathEngine (CDPR, Arkane, Avalanche.) Do you think these games will work right without a physics engine or npcs having pathfinding?
Other common uses are things like Unity Asset Store or Fab, which you are paying for a license only for you/your company - not every dude who suddenly has access to your code and can steal everything you paid for freely. These could be things like water shaders or other integral parts of your game.
I think you’re grossly misrepresenting the cause. They are not asking companies to open source their games, just leave them in a playable state. The water shaders are safe.
And if the licenses are required for server-side operations? What if virtually every simulation is server-authoritative like EVE? What if the server code is millions of lines and draws on numerous middleware solutions?
Well then obviously it’s unviable? What you were saying was that you’d have to build a physics engine from scratch to make a game playable indefinitely.
I was giving a person I assumed to be non-technical example of the kinds of things that APIs and libraries are used for because they only focused on anti-cheat.
The fact is that all kinds of middleware is used and it has only become more common over time because it saves tons of debugging and cost on already-solved problem, especially for smaller devs.
Physics can also be calculated server side as well, if you want to determine the source of truth for example in a piece of debris as the result of an explosion, and you would have to do this if the debris could cause damage.
You're really trying too hard to argue for the big devs here lol.
If there are stuff that is for some reason only licensed for a small period of time, that is also necessary for the games to function, then the obvious thing that would happen is the terms of licensing would also change along with the implementation of the law.
The idea of this law is that the industry as a whole needs to be less predatory towards gamers, and that a game, when bought, should be owned and usable, and maintainable. If that means some of the current licensing practices don't work, then looks like our big boy devs who are making too much money and cutting employees for their own profit are going to have to shell out some more money for permanent or transferable licenses or something. Boo hoo. It's not like older games that I can still pop into my XBOX or whatever didn't use proprietary licensed tech.
The exact how is not as important as the spirit behind the movement. I don't really care the exact form this takes shape in. The game should at its core, simply remain available, absolutely essential functions maintained. Certain things can be left out, but other things will require new solutions from devs.
Again, the big problem is that small devs won't be able to accommodate these changes, and this is a big problem for them. But for big companies, shit like this always works out. That's part of capitalism. Big corpo will have to shell out, or threaten to never use the tech again if the people licensing out their tech are being too greedy, and in turn, a threat of losing that business will force those companies to change their policies and terms of licensing their out their tech. You don't need to make excuses for them, these big companies absolutely have the means to make it all happen. The "possibility" of it is not the issue here.
I need you to understand that one game is not literally every game ever. Some games are different. That's like saying "Well I could add a motor to my rowboat and get it going faster, therefore you can just add a motor to an aircraft carrier to get it going faster! They're both boats, what's the difference?"
Like, citing one game is not an argument. You need to prove it for EVERY SINGLE GAME that can or will exist, or your regulation is killing more games than the companies you're arguing against.
Modders can do anything there is no expectation on if things work properly after.
Official law is a bit of different tone, even excluding the "playable" debate, whoole other another can of worms, do we need "SKG commitees" to deem games end of life worthy enough, then if it isn't fines and lawsuits I guess? Which will circle back the playable debate, but now in court!
This is accurate. The ask is a lot bigger than they're pretending it is.
Even taking away all the games that depend entirely on an online ecosystem, and assuming you can just turn off the license checks and DRM (which I do think should be done in most cases), there is still going to have to be a ton of work done by third parties on emulators and backwards compatibility, and it's not reasonable to throw that on the publisher or the studio. Publishing a piece of software would turn into a lifetime commitment.
Now, fixing copyright law and allowing the source to be public after a reasonable period of time (unlike the 100 years it currently is) would be a good idea, and a good way to un-kill some of this stuff.
It's not convenient, but companies should have some kind of end of life plan for their services. The initiative isn't demanding one specific solution, but consumer friendliness and preservation be included into the development cycle instead of being entirely ignored.
Even if it's the bare minimum checklist of the tools you need to run your own servers. Not providing any files, just instructions and a list. Framing it like there's no feasible way to compromise without making all multiplayer games impossible to make is giving a little boot-licker ngl.
Even if it's the bare minimum checklist of the tools you need to run your own servers. Not providing any files, just instructions and a list
That's not how servers work. You want consumer friendliness with a 600-page manual you can never actually use because the proprietary software isn't available? And a list of what? Thousands of names of software? In a list? Why a list, that's not how you do anything. That's your win? And no files? Of course server architecture requires some software, it's just not entirely a couple of files to run. Oh, let me break this all for you:
Instruction 1: Install the main application. You can't get it anywhere, it's licensed to ourselves from ourselves, but that's how you do it.
Everyone arguing for this fundamentally does not understand anything about regulation or complex software, and shows it.
Yeah that's pretty much how I expected you to misconstrue my comment, as you're taking my use of informal language as ignorance.
Firstly I never implied this was The solution, just an example of how the company doesn't need to do a monumental amount of additional work to make it feasible. Secondly, I used this exact example to demonstrate the solution doesn't need to be convenient or intuitive for a layman. Thirdly, was it really that unclear that I was talking about giving people enough information to reverse engineer the servers? I thought by saying "providing just instructions and a list" conveyed pretty clearly it would be up to the consumer to make their own software to run it. (Which I know is a very difficult task, but it's league's harder without any guidance from the people who made the servers)
If your issue is the initiative putting to much work on game developers, then why are you arguing against the concept of leaving the work up to the consumer? (That's rhetorical and I'm ending this conversation with a block. I don't care what else a corpo boot-licker on making things more consumer friendly)
This does not affect already released games, and wont affect any games released until an agreed reasonable date to not affect current development. Also making the servers run localy is not the only option given, just giving the tools to the community to make their own servers is already enough, even if its not economically viable for the community to host them.
So basically, imagine we agree on 2030. This means that all games released post 2030 will need to be built from the beginning with this requirement in mind. Of course no one expects blizzard to figure out how to make WoW a fully offline game. And while i agree completely that modifying an already existing game is very hard and expensive, building it from the beginning with this requirement in mind is not that much more expensive, and specially considering live service style games are almost always built by big rich studios and not indies.
Also all of those cloud servers are there to host tens of thousands of players simultaneously. If youre running only 1 match with bots it wont need that many resources.
That doesn't fix things. You just want to ban any game that can't easily be run on a laptop. That's what you're advocating for. Killing games. You can't just "build with this requirement in mind", it's a MASSIVE financial burden and expectation that will make building a ton of already-risky games an impossibility.
Also all of those cloud servers are there to host tens of thousands of players simultaneously. If youre running only 1 match with bots it wont need that many resources.
This is the take of someone profoundly ignorant about the very core of how games work. No, cloud architecture is not just "BIG COMPUTER GO BIG!". It is a fundamentally different way of architecting entire applications, and it does not just scale down easily.
I once spend a week re-architecting software to go from cloud native to running on a local server. Took a week of professional work. It was a doorbell. Just a doorbell. I had to rewrite almost all of it because the services we used to run it did not work on a laptop. And that was just a doorbell.
You don't understand how any of this works, and you're pushing to kill more games than the companies you hate.
You clearly havent fucking read what i just wrote right there. Again, it doesnt need to run locally on a laptop. An option for the devs is to just give out the requiered files or tools to run the servers to the community, and if it isnt economically viable to run them thats our problem. They dont need to run locally. I repeat, they dont need to run locally. And i re repeat, they dont need to run locally.
This is the problem with this community. You're so confident and so very uninformed.
No, you cannot just "give out the required files". There's no files to cover bespoke hardware. There are no tools that can just be given out. That's not how this works. You do not understand what you're talking about.
Do you think there's just an OverwatchServer.exe file that's all you need? Do you actually believe that?
People have gotten MMOs up and running again. A lot of them. An Overwatch-like game, Gundam Evolution, has been brought back online by fans. If people are doing this at home, usually without source code access, then the developers absolutely can make a server emulator. Especially if they can excise complex features like a microtransaction store.
Even then, let's say you're right and these developers are putting together serverside infrastructure than can only run on some bespoke hardware. That's why there's the caveat of only affecting future releases. If they are forced to design Overwatch 3 with Overwatch_3_Server.exe in mind, then they will.
Nobody said Overwatch_3_Server.exe has to run on a laptop. I doubt the Gundam Evolution or Age of Empires Online rogue servers can run on a laptop. But the community finds a way. We're just asking them to cut out the months-to-years of time spent reverse-engineering.
So again, no. Just because SOME games can do it, does not mean ALL games can. This is infuriating.
That's why there's the caveat of only affecting future releases. If they are forced to design Overwatch 3 with Overwatch_3_Server.exe in mind, then they will.
No, they won't. That is just not possible. You don't get a different software, you get cancelled games and a ban on many live services. You kill games. You don't understand what you're talking about. Yes, a lot of vehicles can fit in your garage. That doesn't mean we should ban cargo ships because they don't and could never fit in there.
Nobody said Overwatch_3_Server.exe has to run on a laptop. I doubt the Gundam Evolution or Age of Empires Online rogue servers can run on a laptop. But the community finds a way. We're just asking them to cut out the months-to-years of time spent reverse-engineering.
"We're just asking companies to spend years completely rebuilding their products for absolutely no financial benefit, often in ways that are not possible to run at all"
That's how you ACTUALLY kill games. No company would allow a project to run if that was a requirement. You're asking for the end to entire genres.
"We're just asking companies to spend years completely rebuilding their products for absolutely no financial benefit, often in ways that are not possible to run at all"
Oh, so you get it. Yeah, exactly.
When we implemented new regulations for safety, emissions, and fuel economy, we asked auto manufacturers to spend years completely rebuilding their products for absolutely no financial benefit.
And if their server infrastructure is "not possible to run at all" on home servers (which I'm still not convinced of) then yes, it will no longer be possible to make that game. Just as you can't build microcars in the US anymore.
We shouldn't keep putting up with a bad thing because regulating it will make it certain edge cases impossible. Regulations are not meant to benefit corporations. They've been making massive profit off of grey-area practices, and we're seeking to define that grey area in a way that benefits the consumer.
Also, you can't say "You're asking for the end to entire genres" in the same comment you admit that "SOME games can do it". The genres will not die. MMOs and live-service shooters will continue to be made.
All these games are being hosted on AWS most of the time.
They arent using custom hardware.
There are games that already let u have the dedicated server files like rust, and yes rust servers, community hosted ones can host up to 200 players.
The matchmaking part can be fixed using things like EOS and steam subsystem that are basically free to use (once you publish the game)
I don't know how you people don't understand this, but we're not talking about most. We're talking about all. The edge cases are all that really matters in the discussion, and if you don't explicitly carve out exceptions for every single one, this regulation will kill more games than the companies themselves.
Even if its not being hosted on AWS
Its still being hosted on SOME computer
They aren't making custom hardware
Even if they were making(which they are not), to oblige with the law all they need to do is provide the server files
First, there is custom hardware. Some games require it, and the regulation covers all games. If there's even a single game that requires it, the regulation kills more games than the companies and bans future games.
Second, they don't own the server files. Huge parts of any product are third-party, and they can't distribute those.
Third, there's no server files. That's not how any of this works. Do you think they just run an .exe file and they're good? You do not understand anything about this and you should stop embarrassing yourself by doubling down.
Please tell me about 1 single game that this law cant be applied on,1 single game, thats all.
Not to mention this law would apply to upcoming games, not current games.
Something I'd like to see is for online games that get shut down they could just release server software. Then fans could run private servers and the game could live on.
That's just not possible, from so many viewpoints. They can't release any third-party software, because they don't own it. They can't release cloud services, because they don't own them. And forcing companies to abandon their rights to their software IP means that an entire industry based off of incremental advancements in an engine become massively less financially viable.
Some games can do that. But some doesn't matter, and many games simply can't. That's just not how any of this works.
There have been instances where server software leaked which allowed private servers for an MMORPG to proliferate. One example I recall is the AEGIS server for Ragnarok Online.
Every single game ever made for all time now and forever, or just that one?
This is so exhausting. Just because ONE game can be made like that, doesn't mean every single game ever can. That's not how anything works. Just because you can fit a car in your garage doesn't mean you can fit a cargo ship in there just because they're both "vehicles". That is not how things work.
I don't think it's radical to not want games that people pay money for to become useless garbage when a company decides to kill support for it. Either implement a way for people to run the games on their own or release a patch that allows offline play. It's only complicated if they are designed as such.
Oh my god nobody is saying that it's good. Nobody is in favour of it. But the people who actually know what they're talking about are desperately trying to tell you, a person who knows absolutely nothing about any of this, that it's not as simple as "just fix it". Software regulation is insanely complicated and if not done well or pushed by people who don't understand it, will be either ineffectual or make things worse.
You're standing here demanding that every vehicle ever be able to fit in your garage, because your car can and therefore it must be easy for anything to do that, while people desperately try to explain that cargo ships just can't be made that small.
That's why you have that be a hard requirement only after 5-10 years after it goes into effect. That way that can plan for this. Other things like contractual end of service dates, and other bandaid measures can go into effect immediately. Plus it's the company's job to do this in the first place, consumer rights are more important than a company making a bad descision and surviving after the fact.
The "plan" is "No we don't make games like that anymore because we have a huge financial burden due to that regulation that killed a lot of in-development games."
So you're saying the system only works when the customer is exploited and not given the rights to what they purchased. Sounds like a broken system tbh.
Its so difficult to do that modders with no access to the game or server code manage to do it in their free time. Relevant example is the crew unlimited.
For SOME games. Not literally every single game ever. And that's what needs to be covered. The entire basis of SKG relies on just not understanding how games really work, and lying that it's easy.
It does not matter if ONE game could be easily turned into a purely offline experience. It needs to be feasible for literally every game, or the regulation will do more damage than the thing it's preventing.
Does it genuinely not embarrass you to talk out of your ass like this? Already released games would not have to follow this legislation. No re-writing needs to occur.
You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, so there are exactly two possibilities: you are either a bot/shill, or extremely fucking stupid. Choose one. Embarrassing. Stop being so fucking low iq.
That doesn't change things. It means killing any games in the future that cannot be scaled down to run on a laptop. It means we never get a new Fortnite or Overwatch, it means strangling live-service games, and it means killing far more games than any company has ever done. It means that if something just can't work on some dude's laptop, it's effectively illegal to use it in making games. It means severely limiting what can even be done in the future. No, you cannot "Just make it work in the first place", the only reason many of these games CAN exist is cloud-native architecture and services that are literally impossible to scale down.
You fundamentally do not understand how games or even the basic concept of regulation works. Just because you're a "GAMER capital-G TM" doesn't mean you understand literally anything about games.
where is that asked for again, considering EU laws aren't retroactive?
so it works on a single laptop
Where was that asked for again?
And that's what gamers are demanding.
which line in the ECI's Objectives was that?
this isn't about x, its about y
the requirement that untill ~2010 almost every single game met?
that requirement?
But i agree, we should instead apply rules like the
COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) 2023/1670 to video games.
You know, keep repair parts/updates/support going for 7 years after you stop sales.
Except, of course, that isn't what gamers are asking for. The campaign has said that even just presenting, on purchase, exactly when the game servers will go offline would be acceptable.
That's an insanely impossible ask. Nobody can predict the future. If the game needs to be shut down sooner, the company is over and any project that is online becomes financially impossible. If it can be delayed, they just need to put a date 1 month in the future and they can kill games whenever.
Again, the people supporting this fundamentally understand nothing about the things they're trying to regulate, and they're acting like they're experts because they play games.
Yes, re-writing a hundred-million-dollar piece of software running on bespoke cloud architecture and hardware across multiple data centers so it works on a single laptop is actually a pretty difficult thing to do. And that's what gamers are demanding.
No, it's not. SKG goal has never been retroactive, rather it's to prevent new software from being written to rely on cloud architecture and data centers to begin with. What you said is a complete misrepresentation, and it's been corrected and clarified so many times that it's difficult to believe it's not intentional.
So we're banning new games being created, killing more games than the companies. It doesn't matter if it's not retroactive, it's still killing future games.
Yes, it is a very uneven comparison, deliberately so. The point is that if much harsher regulation didn't destroy industries, despite constant corporate whining to the contrary, something as relatively trivial as end-of-life plans for live-service games won't either. And yet here you are, whining about it on behalf of corporations. Isn't the internet a wonderful place.
First, just because they were wrong doesn't mean it's impossible to make regulation so bad it does have serious problems. Second, nobody is talking about destroying industries. We're talking about destroying games. This half-assed regulation idea based on no knowledge whatsoever of how games actually work wouldn't kill companies. But it would kill projects that suddenly become impossible to make due to legal or financial concerns with this regulation.
Companies won't die. You'll just restrict the kinds of games that could ever be made and damage what's available.
And third, again, holy reddit brain comparing child labour to not having video games infinitely.
Wait, I thought you said you had "no notes". Now you do? Did you not understand the point until you had it spelled out to you or were/are you saying things in bad faith? Which is it?
Fun fact: 99.99% of online games can be played offline without issues.
It's just that games are made to look for a server(which can be changed pretty easily) that games are always online.
It's like a bunch of people passionately arguing that fighter jets could easily operate underwater. They'd know. They've been in planes, so obviously they're experts.
I’d quietly hope she’d do it automatically since it’s her responsibility, and having to ask for food or water after it was already requested it means the server just isn’t doing their job.
They do things yes, but aren't entirely necessary.
You can patch it so everything is doable offline.
Look at Forza Horizon 6, yes the server does stuff like synchronising traffic, weather and more when people are close together.
But it can be played 100% offline.
Virtually any online multiplayer game is going to be offloading all kinds of validation checks to the server. If you build those checks into the client, that’s how you get exploits.
Servers will also handle all kinds of stuff like rending and asset streaming to improve client performance.
It’s not like you just update a variable to server_Check == false. This would be an entire rewrite of the infrastructure code for an online game.
You can build a game from scratch which doesn’t rely open these types of methods, but it’s not just an easy thing to swap out.
I assume hes talking about the single player games which require you to have an internet connection to play despite having all the resources on your pc. The single player games are more in number than online multiplayer games regardless of number of players playing the games. So its a hyperbole to say 99.99% but may be accurate to say a majority of online access games may not necessarily require an internet connection when talking about single player games which require an internet connection.
The number of single player games which require an online connection to play is much smaller than online multiplayer games which require an internet connection to play.
I also don’t know of any single player games which require internet connection which haven’t introduced an offline mode TBH. I know SimCity required connection at first, but they did introduce an offline mode. I would say that SP games requiring internet are generally unpopular and developers know that.
I know that The Crew was a game which was shut down and caused a lot of controversy, but it was never a truly single player game — the single player missions had built in matchmaking with other players and such. Even if players played it as a SP game, it was very much an online game. The bigger issue with The Crew is probably how Ubisoft revoked the license for the game as well, which shouldn’t be a thing probably.
One famous example is the hitman trilogy which requires you to have an online connection to play even though its a single player game and the only use of the online connection is to download dlcs as they release them which doesnt require a persistent connection anyways. There are more and more single player games which require an internet connection nowadays.
Even for the crew, if youre playing as a single player, you dont utilise any of the online matchmaking, so its a pointless persistent connection? Like, even if you have an online matchmaking mode, if you're offering a single player experience, then you should allow people to play that offline. In the case of the crew, they even found an inbuilt offline mode which wasnt activated by ubisof.
AFAIK, it’s only an issue with The Crew because they actually closed the game. While it’s not a great practice to require SP games to connect to the internet, it’s not inherently problematic so long as that online connection continues to exist.
I do think that games should seek to eliminate the online requirement where possible and do release an offline mode when terminating service where feasible.
I was giving an example for single player games requiring a persistent online connection because you claimed not to have heard of one. Which is also what I was talking about in the first reply I made.
The fact that single player games are requiring a persistent online connection makes it a risk for consumers because its uncertain if, in the future when the company decides to stop paying for the servers, the game will be patched to be able to play offline or just given the crew treatment. Its a legitimate fear because we have one precedent of it happening and we know its not unlikely for it to happen again. We cant wait for them to close down the game before resisting this because it will be too late by then. So when you say its not inherently problematic, I disagree.
I mean that’s just a risk you take with those type of games. So long as the server connection requirements are disclosed, Buyers can make an informed decision.
It's not really true. There's an offline mode for the game, you just can't access the online features. It's actually basically the same situation as The Crew, the online features are just less intertwined with the actual single player content. Overall, the games are meant to be an online, live service experience where your stats are compared to other players.
The fact that shit like this has upvotes is just proof that the majority of redditors have no clue how games are made. There is a reason why a youtuber who got notoriety for making a skit comedy machinima is headlining this movement and not an actual game developer who has worked on online services.
In the early days of Black Desert I was in a group of people and they made the game work completely offline and for private servers.
And that's an MMO.
Therefore all dogs are brown and there is no such thing as a dog that is not brown.
Just because ONE thing works like that does not mean that every single thing works in the same. It does not matter that you got one game working. It doesn't matter that it's an MMO. Do you think that all MMOs are the same? That developers just take the same program, MMO.exe, and paint over it?
Yeah in the early days of FPS gaming you could drop your game's install directory in a separate folder and start up the server binary and have a live server in the server browser. Online games are a lot more complex decades later lol.
Depending how much time you want to invest in making a patch for said game to make it offline playable or on private servers.
It's absolutely doable.
The thing is that the games during development and even patch development are at their core offline games which makes it much much easier to test.
You have to change a bit of code and the game will behave like it's in online while in fact it isn't.
The original offline code of the game is never removed, because that'll break the game, they just add a layer on-top to make the game search for a server.
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u/WardenJack Jun 17 '26
Such bullshit. Like rolling out a patch to let it be playable without connecting to any service is the hardest thing humanity has ever faced! Hypocrites.