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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

It’s more complicated than that.

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.

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I'm happy to be convinced, but so far this isn't really helping the point. What you've described applies to an extraordinarily small percentage of games. I'm looking at my Steam library with ~170 games. I see ~8 that have real brand names, 7 being shooters that contain gun brands - which have never cared about these things, given they're already appearing in the context of people killing each other in the first place - and the other 1 being Football Manager (an offline game).

> 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).

I can’t speak for them because I never worked on them, but you’d be surprised how often a piece of music or a graphic is copyrighted. One of thousands of your common textures gets a bit too close to something else and suddenly you need a license.

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.

Again, what the fuck does the licensing of music or textures have anything to do with people playing the game offline?

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.

It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive. Or in the hypothetical the content could be removed and replaced with something bespoke or cheaper to licence. But both of these options will make the game more expensive to build overall across its surface area.

How is it more permissive? The product is the same as it was before the official servers went down.

Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.

When you’re licensing content from third parties the more permissive rights you need the more expensive it is. Music is a very good example where it might not even be possible to get a perpetual license. A bunch of games have removed music as their license to it has expired for example. In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content, code and so on needs to have been licensed for that use. That is typically more permissive than licenses as mentioned up thread and so more expensive.

Stop killing games is not about forcing developers to perpetually sell games. They can still stop selling games. They just can't leave it in an unplayable state.

If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.

No I’m talking about the distribution of games. With physical media that’s all fine because once the license expires they stop making new copies. People that own a copy are fine. With digital distribution once you’ve EOL’d a product you still need to make it available right? Otherwise how do people that have paid for it get it? But that means you can’t distribute elements you no longer have the license to.

With online distribution games can be made unavailable for purchase. You are not distributing it anymore. Only people that previously purchased can still download the game.

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.

Offering the game for download but not sale is still distributing it and you’d still need licenses for all the content you’re distributing. In the cases you mention the games still hold the licenses which is common but not universal.

You've signed a pretty shoddy license agreement if it requires you to refund all your customers, in full, after a few years. That's just bad business.

If you’re saying that a change like SKG would lead to developers needing to take a perpetual license then you should say that rather than alluding to it with a non-sequitur like this.

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.

Developers already need to license whatever they're licensing in perpetuity, since they need to sublicense to the people who buy their games (regardless of format). Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to sell you the physical media. Licenses aren't yes/no affairs.

Stop Killing Games doesn't change this in any way.

No they don’t need perpetual licenses for physical copies. They just need to stop distributing physical copies when they lose the license. For example a reissue of a rhythm-action game (or a release on another platform) might be missing songs from previous releases of the same title. The issue with digital distribution is that you can’t redistribute the content once the license has expired. So if someone needs to redownload the game for whatever reason then they can’t provide content they no longer have a license for.

They need the ability to grant perpetual licenses.

We’re talking about distribution so maybe you’ve come in to the conversation in a weird way there. To be clear the developer cannot continue to distribute content they no longer have rights to. With physical media you don’t go back to the publisher to get new copies but with digital media you do. And hence falls foul of changes in distribution rights.

"Distribution rights" aren't laws of nature. If you're making physical media, you get a license to sell physical copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to keep them once your sales license has expired.

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.

If the licensing agreement does not differentiate in between "customers purchasing new copies" and "previously purchasing copies being available" then therein lies the problem.

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.

That’s because distribution is seperate from sale. For example Spotify has a license to distribute music but not sell it.

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.

> I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law

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.

That's a solvable technical problem. If your game needs a online server to work, either patch it to not need it, or distribute the server. IF your licensing prohibits you form doing it... well, don't enter that kind of licensing, negotiate different terms. There might be a small fraction of games that stop being financially viable. That's what we call a tradeoff.

Games already handled this today on Steam, Apple Store, Play Store, etc by taking down the store page preventing new copies from being sold. Users can still redownload it. That's how things work today, and is how they would still work if SKG gets what they want. This isn't a new problem and is already the industry standard for how expiring IP works for the digital distribution for games.

then why can't you buy Need for Speed: Most Wanted from 2005?

(small hint: https://www.reddit.com/r/needforspeed/comments/1ceaq0r/where...)

Did you reply to the wrong post. A publisher stop selling games when the license expires is standard practice in the industry.

> In the context of EOL of a game if you have to provide it for free to owners in perpetuity any third party content

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.

It’s about the distribution of games, doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline you need a license to distribute IP that you don’t own.

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.

> doesn’t matter whether it’s online or offline

Then the solution seems simple. Making the game available offline does not seem to have any impact in terms of licensing.

I don’t think you’ve followed the discussion then.

Only in the sense that you are arguing against strawman versions of the idea in favor of the status quo.

If you’re saying that because they said the solution is simple, then it would seem you have not followed the discussion.

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.

For some people that's true, But I've played with people that for example, slightly prefered PES Gameplay but just would refuse to play without a proper Real Madrid Team

In my experience, the more casual the player the more this mattered to them, but it was still a huge market

> just would refuse to play without a proper Real Madrid Team

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.

This seems pretty easy. If the license to the music goes for X years, then build that expiration into the game. After X years, licensed music goes away, and the game is still playable. This is completely in scope of SKG. Everyone understands that not every feature has to be retained to stay the playable game.

That expiration date should, of course, be on the box. The consumer deserves to know.

That’s absurd. I can still pop in my Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater CD from decades ago and listen to the original soundtrack. TTL licensing should be illegal.

Yea, nobody seems to be addressing this: Content never expiring was the default for many years, when games shipped on physical media. Industry defenders are acting like this is impossible, where it routinely happened for a long time.

That would be frustrating to code for.

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.

I guess that only leaves the third option: don’t license music or other assets that way. It’s really not that hard. Instead of writing a contract that promises that you won't distribute the music with your game for more than X years, write one that promises you’ll only sell the music with your game for X years, but that you might still distribute it to anyone who made their purchase before the cutoff.

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.

> It’ll make licensing more expensive because the net result is more permissive

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.

> If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist.

Wow, who is killing games now?

Absolutely, games that strip consumers of their rights should not exist.

I am not going to defend predatory practices. You think you threw me a gotcha, but you are actually only exposing yourself.

The framing was your own so it’s not the gotcha you feel it is. I also don’t know what you think I’m exposing because I’m broadly in agreement that games at their EOL, particularly single player should continue to work. I am interested in discussing where that breaks down but I think that’s probably where we differ. You seem more interested in being combative and making up gotchas.

> You seem more interested in being combative and making up gotchas.

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".

> 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.

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!

That is a separate issue from what the Stop Killing Games political movement is bringing attention to. Few people are bemoaning that they can’t play the game that was never made. The rest are complaining that games they’ve played for years are being made unavailable when the authentication servers are killed.

If the law is that you can't do this, then those terms will just disappear from licencing agreements. It's not like there's a shortage of textures and sounds in the marketplace.

That entirely depends on the content, some is fungible and some isn’t. For the majority of general content developers are already getting a perpetual license so it’s really these special cases that will remain an issue and are unlikely to be resolved in the manner you suggest.

For some things.

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.

Somehow game companies managed to deal with this when games were sold on CDs. They’ll figure it out again.

Yeah, it was easier then.

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 - they started including DRM software on the CDs. They'll figure that out again.

Yea, I think some people are acting like these "licenses" are physical constants, found in nature and can't be modified! They are made by humans and can be unmade by humans. Regulation could deem those licenses unenforceable. Regulation could force permissive licensing. Regulation could add or remove IP protection. It's all conjured up by humans.

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.

It’s really not a quagmire.

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.

The licenced design seems to include the front part of the car per the above comment, that would mean creating seperate models for EOL games.

No, even if the licensing agreement between the developer and the car maker ends, then according to first sale doctrine, the game buyers keep the licensed content. Removing it from user systems would be undue (but admittedly has happened such as with the in-game music in GTA).

The reason for that is that the game is continuing to be distributed and the nature of digital distribution is ephemeral so contents like music are removed from the distribution when the license expires. If you own the game on physical media or remove the connection to the digital distribution service (never patch it) then as a consumer you’re fine as you note with the first sale doctrine. It’s just legally the developer can no longer offer the content as part of future distributions. The same would be true for another physical media release.

I don't think anyone is asking for developers to continue to distribute their games after they EOL them. They're just asking for a way to keep games that have already been distributed running.

That is not how it works. When car licenses expire then you can still download the racing games in your library from Steam etc., even after new sales are discontinued. You are already the owner of the licensed content and you get access to it anytime.

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.

There is no first sale doctrine in Europe, and nor does the US one apply to digitally distributed content.

Directive 2009/24/EC clearly makes reference to the first sale doctrine in Article 4

The answer to that is simple, and has been used by other media (to the chagrin of fans of course). When it comes time to "kill" the game, make a final update to strip all such licensed material out of the game.

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.

So if they strip the libraries out and the server cannot run id that okay?

They shouldn't use libraries that don't allow them to release a server at the official game's sunset. There's been a lot of rhetoric from the publishers about "developer choice", which is really publisher's choice, but that's the whole problem. They are choosing to make games with a hard shelf life, and that's contrary to the copyright regimes of most jurisdictions that have some sort of eventual public domain mechanism. What's the use of a public domain if the work is intentionally destroyed by that point. I consider that theft from the public, in a way that mere copyright infringement can never equate to.

How exactly does this stop you allowing people to play the game offline?

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.

You shouldn't blame consumers that you failed to negotioate proper terms for your licenses. Maybe having legislation to point at will help you out to get more reasonable terms.

If this passes, then such stipulations become illegal, since they can't force you to create a product that would fly on the face of the law.

That probably won’t be true, or we will lose the ability to license altogether.

Here’s hoping though!

The thing about licenses is that it's overratted. No licensor makes you unable to continue supporting the product, since the licensee will make sure to include a provision that all copies of the licensed software have the ability of use the licensed work.

How is the logo falling off (or not falling off) relevant to the end of life of the game? The logos don’t automatically fall off at the end of the game’s life, do they?

Sounds like that licensing issue is curtailing developer choice, which is apparently the worst problem the industry could possibly face. If your choice is going to be curtailed either way, I’d rather it go in the consumer protection direction, no?

Honestly the "quagmire" here is created by dumb laws and/or dumb lawyers.

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.

Why would you be responsible for what other people do? Your game can already be modded to e.g. have the logo fall off.

Collaboration with real world brands seem to have real issues like this. However I don't see how your examples apply or extrapolate to the rest of games out there.

My bad, let me try to be clearer;

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.

I've often wondered why sports and sim games don't tell these trademark peddlers to pound sand and ship with robust modding tools. Eager fans can then add unofficial versions of Mercedes, Lionel Messi, and a jet in the shape of the Great Redeemer.

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?

I can easily understand why it sucks from your perspective, but European tradition dictates that we make it suck for you and then you have to make it suck for your counterparty. We don't directly intervene with your freedom to write whatever contracts you please, only what you release to consumers.

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.

There is no such thing as a 100% free market, not in America, not anywhere.

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.

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