Don't you know? If I cmd+S the HN front-end and throw my own backend behind it, host my own instance, and post something illegal on it, then YC is liable!
Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way.
The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases).
I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it.
I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.
Here’s hoping though!
That's intensely frustrating to be caught in the middle of. At times you end up feeling that the politicians are coopting you and your work for their ends, that they are underhandedly enveloping you in the public administration. That is in a way exactly what they are doing, but you have to remember that it's what your customers want. You are still making for your customers, they have just made their wants known though a process other than the free market.
What was passed was a petition for the EU to listen to the needs of a million EU citizens. It is not yet a law, but it might become one. Laws are the rules of the market. A 100% free market is anarchy.
The companies that develop and publish games amortize plenty of things out into multiple years. That's why live service is so increasingly common. The same developers and publishers should also factor in that they might have to remove some assets when they want to stop providing active support.
When you EOL the game and release the server, just strip the licensed content. Remove the logos. Nobody gives a flying toss anyway.
People want the community and the GAME. They don’t care whether the actual logo is there.
Heck, if the game connects to a community server, have it hide all licensed content. you’ve satisfied your contractual obligations. Whether people mod the game or not to re-add things has no bearing on you.
Steam even says that in the event of that they go out of business, measures are in place to ensure gamers' continued access to their games.
> I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic.
Then please give us some proper examples we can learn from.
> Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
GTA is hardly a "fantasy game", its entire schtick is getting as close to the real-world setting as possible, going as far as to parody real-life brands. They're quite unique in doing so, an extreme outlier.
Take a look at the current top 10 games on Steam by player count. You'll see that indeed the only real-world brands featured are potentially gun brands, and none of them have things like famous buildings. DOTA, Apex Legends, Stardew Valley, Rust, Palworld, Elden Ring and a bunch of idlers and shooters (CS2, PUBG, Delta Force).
Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such.
Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it.
To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game.
Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.
Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter?
Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought?
Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.
Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore.
Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.
If that’s what you mean then I’d say maybe but doing so would definitely increase the cost and complexity in using licensed content. Which is likely to be passed on.
Interestingly though reading the EU petition and the petition authors views it would be fine to remove the content once the licence expired.
Stop Killing Games doesn't change this in any way.
The digital equivalent would be: you get a license to sell digital copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to re-download them once your sales license has expired. (And you are allowed to provide that downloading service, but not continue to sell the games, nor make them available to people who have not purchased them.)
It's not that hard – and the existence of Steam demonstrates that many people are already doing things this way.
Looks like the possibility of regulations will fix that. That in the Year of our Lord 2025, when online channels are many times the only possibility of purchasing a game, licensing agreements do not cover that, it seems that proper regulation is very much necessary.
I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law with this then you’ll be disappointed. I also suspect that the requirement to be functional rather than complete could also mean as long as the game continued to work removing the content would be fine.
No, I only expects regulations that dictates I get to own the games I purchase. As any other consumer good.
And if that is not possible, then the agreement should be that games are leased for a set number of years, no gotchas to the consumer.
For some reason I think that the second would be much worse for the videogame industry. I don't think many people would be super excited about leasing a game for a few years for 60+ USD.
(small hint: https://www.reddit.com/r/needforspeed/comments/1ceaq0r/where...)
You start your argument from a presumption that releasing an offline game is almost an impossibility. Are you trying yo argue that offline games have zero things licensed? This sounds like a major argument in favor of offline games.
Sounds to me that the simple solution is just stop licensing things with such draconian requirements. If I play a racing game I care about it being fun. If the car I am using in-game is a BMW or a made up brand for the game is immaterial.
Never making a licensed product or using third-party IP is definitely one solution but I don’t think is the intent nor without adverse effects.
Then the solution seems simple. Making the game available offline does not seem to have any impact in terms of licensing.
To them, it is as “simple” as not using the things that require onerous licensing. Whether the game is offline or online only matters as much as the licensor might prefer one or the other; obviating the onerous licensor (making your own assets and/or doing business with more agreeable people) is a simple solution. Simple meaning the complexity to understand it, not to implement it.
In my experience, the more casual the player the more this mattered to them, but it was still a huge market
Interestingly enough, I used to be an avid Football Manager player, where real teams/players is an important deal.
I can still download Football Manager 2010 (that is not available for purchase anymore), and I can play with Borussia Dortmund with all 2010 players without any issues.
If they could figure out how to properly license those teams/players so that the game is not dead in 2025 (considering how much anal football teams/leagues are with licensing deals), I am sure that racing games (and others) can figure it out as well.
That expiration date should, of course, be on the box. The consumer deserves to know.
Before anyone says that its as simple as a switch statement, it’s not, its date enumeration and a switch statement, and an alternative codepath for testing and more assets: on every hot path, when you already only get 8ms for your frame is an annoying cost.
The expiration date properly visible is not a terrible idea though; or at least a “this edition is valid for x years” after which, updates that fix issues may remove content. Hrm.
You see? It’s not that hard. You can license music and still make a game that doesn’t die after a few years. If EU law changes to make that a _requirement_, then you simply stop signing any licensing deal that would break the requirement.
The current state of affairs is that the net result is such that consumers are stripped of their rights. I find it more unacceptable.
If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist. If no one is licensing the brands/assets/music/whatever because the licensing costs are too high, it's likely that in time the costs will come down.
Wow, who is killing games now?
I am not going to defend predatory practices. You think you threw me a gotcha, but you are actually only exposing yourself.
Only because you are being purposely obtuse, gesturing at licensing as something that makes game development impossible without making games previously purchased by consumers unavailable.
If you make cakes that are poisoned with lead, and regulations say that you cannot sell lead-poisoned food, you cannot say "but all egg suppliers only sell lead-poisoned eggs, this will kill the cake industry".
If regulations say that games should be made accessible for people that purchased them past EOL, licensing agreements will have to adapt for it. Differentiating distribution as in "new copy being sold" and "previously sold copy being available for download".
Please show me where I said that! If that’s what you think I’ve been saying it’s definitely not. And you accuse me of arguing against straw men!
For others you may not be able to license it.
Example: have you seen a street racing game with Toyota’s in it?
There’s a reason that Need For Speed games fell off after Most Wanted (original) and it’s because they themselves don’t get total artistic license on their works.
And part of the agreements is a reasonable expectation that you will not assist anyone else to violate the agreement - and, the agreements are not perpetual either.
So, depends on context. There are examples where licensing opportunities dry up.
The presumption was that sales were not perpetual- and reselling isn’t leasing a license in the same way.
Maybe there’s a way though
Yes, it is unlikely that legislators, bought and paid for by big corporations, will ever change the rules to reduce help to big corporations, but it's at least humanly possible.
Is your game not allowing the Mercedes logo to fall off intrinsically tied to it being online? Is the server code the only thing keeping the logo in place?
Or are you just making shit up because you find the initiative icky?
I find it bizarre how game developer companies try hard to antagonize the public that keeps buying their things.
Mercedes is supposed to have a trademark for automobiles and you're making a video game. That's a different industry so you shouldn't have to license anything from them -- no one is going to be confused into thinking your video game is a motor vehicle and buy it instead of a Mercedes, and that's all trademarks are supposed to be for.
Make it clear that these things don't have to be licensed for video games -- which there is absolutely no sound for them to be -- and you won't have these problems.
We had this a decade ago with Asetto Corsa, PES, and Skyrim, but it appears to be falling out of favor. Are the publishers or developers not doing this because of legal liability or because they want to get a financial piece of the mod pie?
Working with external brands is an obvious example of third party licenses that, as a consumer, you can perceive.
Games are made of hundreds (maybe even thousands) of these licenses that you will have trouble perceiving; Sound effects, certain harmonics, programatic audio cues (as a technology), procedural generation and even likenesses are non-perpetual in nature.
The landscape of artistic works is mired in copyrights, the more art the more likely you get too close to someones copyright even if you have an entirely home-built texture, it might look inspired by another texture and thus litigious individuals can request royalties: royalties which will come with their own restrictions.
I’m not saying that its impossible to comply, merely outlining the current state of things. If licenses won’t be granted but copyrights are maintained then it will be extremely burdensome for developing games that are large- as the risk and operational overhead will be quite punishing.
For what its worth; I’m all for the movement of stop killing games, but people seem to have this notion that its game developers doing it out of spite in order not to cannibalise future sales, when in reality developers would prefer to release more games with more innovative ideas. The issue is that games, by default, don’t exist; and making them exist is a perilous journey so fraught with failures that I am personally surprised we have any games, yet so many. Everyone wants a slice when its successful and eventually theres nothing left, spending time one this will come from somewhere else and in all likelihood certain things will become impossible due to license holders not permitting use of their works nor something that is similar.
You might thing you’re giving developers power to fight but we’re stuck in the middle and they don’t give a shit, they want their 30 pieces of silver and we don’t have a product if we can’t find a way to work within their parameters.