Stop killing games and the industry response

Its why Neverwinter Nights had extensive modding, local hosted server, and more....

But Baldurs Gate 3 doesn't.

NWN will still be playable in 10 years. BG3 likely won't be, or significant reductions in game quality will take place.

Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point? "That's not what this is about. Ok, where are we heading then?

They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.

Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation.

And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys.

Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.

Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online.

Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?

Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs.

That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs.

I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves.

In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.

Some singleplayer titles from just a few years ago are no longer playable. (Hello, Ubisoft). Meanwhile there are MMOs like guild wars 1, released 20 years ago, still playable today.

Something I am noticing more and more is how stagnant the North American game industry is. Meanwhile Europe and Japan are still killing it

Larian with BG3 - Europe Cd Projekt with Witcher and Cyberpunk - Europe

Nintendo rocking on as normal Monster hunter wilds and the RE remakes? Capcom, Japan

Elden Ring and Nightreign. FromSoft, Japan

Helldivers 2. Arrowhead Studios, Sweden

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Warhorse Studios, Czech

I cannot remember the last time I bought a new game and had a blast with it from a North American studio. Certainly not a AAA studio anyways

Just keeping the games playable is a singular issue and in the noise. It's a good issue to single out for regulation.

I bought Minecraft from Mojang, years later I am forced to setup a Microsoft account to play the game, or risk downloading a cracked version. They did not offer a refund. Minecraft is a video game where you need to login even if you do not play online. (maybe things changed , I think this MS account thing was a few years back, it worked for my account but I read of people having big issues because some MS assholes ahd to force the Java edition players to use an MS account)

This behaviour should not be legal.

If your code library, licensed property etc. does not allow companies to comply with the law, then its value is zero and you won't be able to sell it. So suddenly, all providers of such libraries etc. have to make this possible.

If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.

Which is just to say, if there's money to be made then businesses will do so within the regulatory framework.

Now, this is not necessarily the case for existing games. Revisiting existing licensing deals can be needlessly difficult. But I'm assuming the proposed regulations will only apply to new games rather than trying to force changes retroactively.

But even then, can't they just opensource what they're allowed to? Even if it doesn't build, it wouldn't take the community long to rip out FMOD or whatever and replace it with working alternatives. Or submit a final patch which removed the part where games phone home before launching in singleplayer mode. Why would that interfere with the licence for 3rd party IP?

IMO if I'm "buying" the game, you can't also remotely disable the thing I bought. (And "buy" is the word they all use!). If you want to remotely disable the game at some point in the future, I'm fine with that so long as they list it very explicitly and loudly on the box. "THIS GAME ONLY PLAYABLE UNTIL 2030". Games publishers need to start being honest and upfront about what we're paying for. Its not an unreasonable ask.

> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?

The answer is actually no.

gaming over the last few years feels the same way. like they all taste almost the same.

> Simply pretending these very real concerns don’t exist is nonsense land.

i don’t believe this to be true at all.

if all of the things you listed are limiting game development so much, than this isn’t “progress” in the games space. if it’s really that bad, maybe we should regress, start from the basics and let some of the incredible indie studios or midsize studios take the lead who will A) bring us actual originality, not more IP rehashed for the thousandth time, B) not bleed gamers wallets dry and C) lets us actually own the thing we buy.

sooo many amazing games were made in the past that were able to do this and do it well, the difference is they didn’t cry if they “only” made $40 million in profit.

cod3 made like $400 million in the first 24 hours.

the difference now is the AAA studios are sucking all of the air out of the room and not leaving nearly as much room for midsize studios.

[0] sysco, us foods, and pfg supply an absolute massive number of restaurants in the US. sysco alone distributes to something like 700,000 restaurants.

Not really if it means that I wouldn't be able to play the game in 10 or 20 years.

One of the major concerns raised has been middle are: components that developers purchase and use in their server implementation. This is often the largest hurdle to many pro-consumer outcomes: the developers can't share anything related because they don't own it.

The most likely outcome after sensible laws are passed is that the industry evolves just as it did with GDPR. Developers will look to other middlewares that are SKG compliant.

Failing that, gamers have routinely shown that they are capable of clean room implementations of server software (WoW and Genshin Impact) - all that needs be done is the client being released with all server auth disabled and some way to specify the server to use. Developers might even be required to provide basic protocol specifications. Essentially, repair it yourself instructions.

This strawman argument you have provided is exactly the same one used by Pirate Software. It relies on a highly specific interpretation of the initiative. The initiative calls for "reasonably playable state," which can have a vast number of outcomes that are different to the single one that you have chosen.

And if the cars do prohibit a game from addressing server concerns and remaining in a reasonably playable state, remove them. The game will continue to be reasonably playable following that.

Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.

This isn't so much about art, more about what you deserve when you pay money for something. People are still free to make whatever they want.

Yes, absolutely. For instance, I think it's fine to prohibit artists to kill animals for the sake of making art. Or humans, but it's already outlawed.

Yes, which is precisely why they shouldn't be treated like a commodity. Nobody is telling artists what art they can make, what the initiative is about making sure public continues to have access to works of art.

Which is normal for everything that's considered to be of cultural relevance. Film studios and novelists don't get to burn libraries down the moment someone stops paying them. It's exactly because games are art that preservation and access need to be priorities. Can you imagine if Amazon started to delete books from your Kindle? (I'm pretty sure they tried that once actually, with 1984 no less)

The destruction of art is, in most civilizations, seen as completely obscene. The reason why game companies got away with it was precisely because games had a lower status.

This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.

There will always be people like myself who enjoy older (even outdated) books, but even we still buy new books because they are part of the zeitgeist and carry new ideas/developments. It'd be the same for new video games, some people would enjoy older games, but they'd likely still pick up a similar new game that developed something novel.

I guess the real problem here is that video game companies don't want to create anything novel, not least because it's a risk.

But they aren’t good for consumers.

And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections.

Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.

they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place.

the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.

opposed to absolutely nothing? yeah i think we can do with "mediocre"

>video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy

if they aren't misleading customers about it sure. make the game a subscription and you can shut it down whenever you want :)

>And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.

nobody said that. the petition explicitly leaves out the "how" because it could possibly run against existing copyright laws.

>have you tried making your own?

ad hominem and irrelevant to the topic. i don't need to have every build a roof to be against building it with asbestos.

This is such and odd thing to suggest. People want to play the games they paid for, _obviously_ they aren't going to make their own game.

No need to go that far, there's plenty of games sold with better terms of service than the ones your company offers.

Forcing companies to be upfront about this aspect will help concerned consumers choose these instead of yours.

It will essentially be the similar thing as the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes or the Parental Guidance logo on an album. The are US things, not sure if EU has similar.

The only people you're effecting are legitimate players. Pirates crack the games and have an easier time for it. Unless you're talking about multiplayer games, which wasn't the target of the proposal (though even there I'd argue it's definitely doable).

> I work for a game company

You work for a shit game company.

Game Devs only have to make a plan for when the game gets shut down to still allow the users to be able to play the game. How that is archived can be decided by the developers. Of course the law could be different in the future.

But most people do agree that it is bad to intentionally break games that people payed money for. All they are basically are asking for, is that games are built in a way that they can be enjoyed as long as possible (maybe supported by the community). Is that not also in the intention of the game developers?

It's better to have a mediocre game that one can play, than an exceptional game that one can't.

You're free to make games now, and yet it's most often hard to justify money for a game that isn't a skin on a version of solitaire (on sale).

That's how bad your industry is. So, please, with your warning. As if you have work product to bargain with.

You act as if your industry is busy. Outside of a couple of exceptional studios, and infinite sequels on literally only a few popular formulas (whether or not these formulas are good is another discussion), your industry is largely non-productive. If we are utilizing your metric of good vs mediocre.

If you wanna do a subscription or a rental, you have to call it that.

I don't see why forcing companies to stop lying is a bad idea.

It is a legitimate business strategy... for now.