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Comment by fidotron | Hacker News Reader

If this happened all multiplayer titles would turn F2P.

People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately.

Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.

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This is part of the beauty of such a thing being a law.

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.

how did they do it in the past? If I can put my Tony Hawks cd from the PS2 into a cd player and enjoy all the DRM music, what changed between now and then?

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.

Most of that era consoles would load level data from the CD, and then play the music as cd-da audio. There was no DRM on the music, perhaps because nobody thought of it, but more likely because there wasn't quite enough computing power to do it. PS2 games could be on CD or DVD and could have had cd quality music as a data file reasonably, but PS1 probably not, and cross platform games likely would use cd audio because it's easy.

The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not.

For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option.

We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.

The issue with most of what you're saying here is that all of that works the way it does because it can, not because it has to. Code libraries, for example, may essentially prohibit what is being requested by SKG because they can. However, if they couldn't then they wouldn't. The companies selling the libraries aren't going to simply shut up shop.

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

Those are all just decisions the companies made. For future games, the game developers and the companies licensing IP can simply make different decisions. If a large market like the EU creates strong incentives for them, they will make different decisions.

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.

All of those things are concerns. But if video game publishers really needed to figure this stuff out in order to sell units, they would. Contracts would change. But they'd still get signed. Everyone wants money too much. The only hard part is trying to fix this stuff for games which have already signed on the dotted line. Or games which have shipped and disbanded their software teams.

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.

How things are doesn’t prevent how things could be. Studios could negotiate better licensing deals.

anyone ever noticed how so many completely different restaurants food tastes almost exactly the same? it’s because so many of them use the exact same food suppliers to buy their food before they cook it. [0]

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.

> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?

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

The number of people who want that may be higher than you think. It's the only/main reason why the FIFA-games exist.

All the more reason to have games that don't have it then? We could have a modern Sensible Soccer for everyone else who only cares about the gameplay.

This isn't relevant to your points, but thought I'd pipe in to your rhetorical question anyway:

> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?

The answer is actually no.

These concerns have been raised and addressed. Firstly, I am not sure how cars getting damaged means that multiplayer games have to become F2P - but that's not steelmanning your argument.

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.

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