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Comment by meheleventyone | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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