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Comment by nuz | Hacker News Reader

I'm absolutely against involving the government to require indefinite support or anything like this suggests. It will have the opposite effect to "ending killing games", it'll increase indie costs and basically kill development of some games rather than the opposite.

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Just release server binaries, at least when you decide to shutter support (preferably just release them with the game). Then the community can take over at zero cost to the developer.

What does the server infrastructure actually look like for these games? "Just release server binaries" kinda implies there is a simple .exe file that an average user can run to host their own server. In today's age of cloud computing, microservices, and serverless computing, I'm not sure if it is as simple as the suggestion implies. Especially for some of the bigger companies that likely have their own shared infrastructure across games. For example, is it even possible to separate the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare server code from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 server code?

Yes, it's probably complex, but if you release everything required, then a sufficiently dedicated community will figure it out. Or maybe nobody will bother because the game was bad. Either way you lose nothing.

Re: shared infra - there will probably be some testing component used for local dev, you can release that instead of the full thing. For example: just the dedicated server part that I can connect to using a dev command line flag to play a game, but not the shared infra login system, lobby server, inventory server, matchmaking etc.

Sure, there will be some edge cases where it really is impossible to disentangle from a live, profitable other game - but I would wager the vast majority of games could be covered with very low effort.

>Sure, there will be some edge cases where it really is impossible to disentangle from a live, profitable other game - but I would wager the vast majority of games could be covered with very low effort.

I don't think we should be making laws in which "there will be some edge cases where it really is impossible" to comply. I get and empathize with the spirit, but you and the people behind this campaign can't just dismiss the complexities involved here with "I would wager" type responses. It shows a lack of insight into the realities of both game development and legislation.

I don't think a youtube video is the place to iron out edge cases. that's more a thing for regulators. Requiring complex infrastructure with big ongoing costs, and requiring a constant income stream from consumers to support it is evidence that a game is a service and not a good, and as such there's no expectation of a perpetual license. The fact remains people paid a one time fee to play the crew, and now you can't play it anymore, even offline. It was sold as a good, and not as a service. Meanwhile other games with big offline and online components such as Elden Ring are completely playable offline, and mods already exist to allow online multiplayer without utilizing centralized servers. A discussion needs to happen about what is and isn't fraud.

The entire point of this campaign is to make the companies think about these kinds of decisions before making the game.

Imagine if your fridge cut out after two years because the company went bankrupt, would you really just accept "Oh well, it was designed that way! It's far too complicated to expect the company who made it in the first place to plan around that happening, that's just the way the industry works."

It's absolute madness that games are just kind of expected to die simply because its not a physical good.

That is a silly analogy. Fridges don't have an ongoing costs to the manufacturer. To be the equivalent of games, the fridge would have to come with an implicit promise that the manufacturer will pay for the electricity use of the fridge. You would then effectively be arguing that the manufacturer is obligated to send you a free generator if they went bankrupt.

The site's FAQ makes clear that they are not asking for the developer to provide ongoing support.

Also the comparison you make isn't really accurate since the fridge didn't rely on a power generator by the manufacturer in the first place.

The point is that games already rely on ongoing support. I admit my analogy isn't perfect, but I was trying to work off your analogy which completely ignores why these games break. It isn't directly because the developer went bankrupt. It is because the developer stopped providing a service that they previously provided for free.

> "Just release server binaries" kinda implies there is a simple .exe file that an average user can run to host their own server.

FWIW in an online game i worked on recently(ish), which was BTW shut down by the publisher (thus making all the work people spent on it for years go to waste), it was really just "run a single .exe" - pretty much every developer had the server running on their machine for local debugging.

> "Just release server binaries" kinda implies there is a simple .exe file that an average user can run to host their own server.

Well, it's not like they didn't make it. This could very well be part of the initial requirements.

Isn't that the first thing any development team would make for themselves for the purposes of local testing?

It does not advocate requiring indefinite support by the publisher/developer. It is about making publishers provide whatever tools are necessary to let players keep the game running without a central server.

It's basically right-to-repair for videogames.

Read the FAQ: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

The government (at least in the US) is heavily involved in supporting the status quo here by blocking preservation efforts through DMCA.

Often times asking the government to take action means asking them to take their boot off your neck. It is important to take a moment to check what the issue is before assuming that asking the government to take action implies expansion of powers.

Is there a history of indie developers running SaaS-modeled games who have shut down central servers without letting fans still play the games that they paid for?

Indie developers tend to be very OK with people running their dedicated servers. It's also cheaper for them.

The issue are the big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft, where the goal is to squeeze every cent out of players.

Ross Scott, the guy behind this campaign, addressed that in one of his Youtube videos. But I am not sure which one. But anyway, he is not in favor of requiring companies to run their servers forever. He is in favor of requiring companies to patch the games when they turn off the servers, so that the players can run the game locally, on their own servers. We know that that is possible, because Epic Games has done it before, when they shut down the servers for Unreal Tournament. Even if this does raise the cost of game development, speaking strictly as a consumer, I will gladly take a $60 game that will run long after the people who made it die, over a $50 game that will only last for 5 years.

The other video you're referring to is "Games as a service is fraud": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw

Thanks. I was thinking of one of the update videos he made later. But as long as there is proof of what he said, it still works.

Maybe it was the one called "The largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games". Check timestamp 24:55 (&t=1495s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE

Like Someone Else said, Ross also addressed this in the FAQ. https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

Wouldn't shifting online-first games to access-subscription based pricing make better accounting sense for the publishers too?

Seems like this is less an issue of actual support and more an issue of pricing/access model disconnect.

When a SaaS product ends, it can be frustrating for sure, but it rarely feels like a betrayal in the way ending access to a one-time payment product does.

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