Comment by pibaker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pibaker | Hacker News Reader

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What is irrational in pointing out that this particular law, as it is written, gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services? The technical implementation is irrelevant. It is the business side of things that you should actually worry about.

If anything, some people seem to have this weird faith in regulation that makes them think if some politician is promising to fix something via legislation, then it will get fixed, regardless of how the law is actually written or how it will work out in practice. California in particular is full of regulations that feel good but are either ineffective or has unintended consequences. See prop 65 which litters the state with vaguely worded warning messages that provide next to zero useful information, or prop 13 which massively disincentivizes home building and effectively makes new homeowners subsidize the property taxes of those who bought before them.

You can be supportive of regulations. I am supportive of many regulations. But I don't just support a regulation because it is great news that makes me feel warm and fluffy. I want well thought out regulations that don't neuter themselves with exemptions and don't easily lead to undesirable consequences. If this makes me an irrational anti regulation crusader, then off to Antioch, CA I shall go.

> gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services?

This is what I fail to see an explanation of anywhere in these comments. WHY would this law make a subscriber-based revenue model so much more enticing? WHY would this law make single-purchase games with multiplayer servers suddenly so non-viable from a business perspective?

The latent assumption I keep seeing is that the mere existence of a regulation in an area will drive people away from that model, but that's simply not how businesses operate. It's a cost/benefit analysis. So what is the cost?

Yep, this is the "higher taxes will drive new yorkers to florida!" fear-mongering (sometime, sadly, even by people who don't actually know better but automatically shill for companies).

There are so many games (like Hitman: WoA, which I love btw) that "require" online access in order to provide the same functions that previous games by the same devs provided fully offline (e.g. keeping track of your weapon unlocks).

This is just clawing back some of the consumer protections that the "we're not selling you a product, we're selling you a temporary and arbitrary license that we reserve all rights over" BS snuck around.

In both cases, it’s true. Higher taxes will drive some New Yorkers to Florida! That’s why the state government has to research the impact of a tax increase and set the brackets at a point where the amount they bring in, after subtracting lost revenue from people who move away, is maximized. A sensible tax increase won’t drive many New Yorkers to Florida, and it’ll make up for the few who do leave.

In this case, studios will need to do the same calculation with the cost to package and release server software / the income they’ll lose from going to a subscription model.

'Some' is a meaningless non-metric. Some people do anything.

Actual studies [1] show that the rich are not moving in response to wealth taxes, and in fact when they do move, it's almost never due to taxes.

> As we get more data on the post-pandemic period, we increase our knowledge of the major upheavals that took place in New York between 2020 and 2022. Despite the state suffering a deep recession and massive out-migration during the pandemic, data show that New York’s tax base remains resilient. When taxes on millionaire earners were raised in 2021, tax revenue to the state increased by an estimated $3.6 billion and there was no detectable increase in high earner out-migration.

1: https://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251009...

I’m not sure why you’re trying to argue against the idea that people tend to gravitate toward the cheapest option.

Because they don't?

Do you eat at the cheapest restaurant every day? Do you think that every Michelin Star restaurant immediately fails and shutters? Do you think everyone buys the $80 prepaid flip phones, and no one actually buys the $700+ iPhones?

Most people don't gravitate towards the cheapest option (in fact, many people find the cheapest option automatically suspect and won't buy it), but rather want a balance of affordable and desirable. No one living in NYC is doing it because they're gravitating towards the cheapest option in the first place, they're there because it has a high level of desirability comparative to its cost, even as expensive as it is.

Your example about New York and Florida is a terrible one because it’s true statement. Why would you use that example? Are you saying it’s not true (demonstrably true with residential data)? Or are you saying it’s happening but not to the extent that the fear-mongerers express it?

You're wrong. There is no wealth-tax based mass migration of the wealthy from NYC to Florida.

1) https://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/20251009...

> As we get more data on the post-pandemic period, we increase our knowledge of the major upheavals that took place in New York between 2020 and 2022. Despite the state suffering a deep recession and massive out-migration during the pandemic, data show that New York’s tax base remains resilient. When taxes on millionaire earners were raised in 2021, tax revenue to the state increased by an estimated $3.6 billion and there was no detectable increase in high earner out-migration.

Because the law specifically exempts subscription-based revenue models, so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.

> so they become more attractive than they currently are by definition.

Please reread my comment. You're doing the exact same thing. You're saying this like it's a given, but it is not. WHY would it be more attractive?

Because doing so gets them out of obligations to release tools that may be difficult-to-impossible to release to comply with the law.

Sure, but it's not actually easy to just change your pricing model. Most gamers do not want to pay subscriptions even though they would pay for DLC and battlepasses. Free-to-play needs microtransactions that people actually buy so they tend to be pay-to-win or convenience items (inventory/bank space) that punish free players.

Why would releasing your server executable as a standalone be difficult to impossible to comply with the law? Many games already do this

Because the alternative now costs more.

That is just a basic function of human decision-making. If there are two options, and one becomes more expensive, it will become more common to pick the other. It very slightly tips the balance toward the option that hasn’t become more expensive.

Please reread my initial comment. That's the assumption everyone is making, but WHY would it actually cost so much more? What's so much more expensive? Some games already do this, why would it be so much more expensive for others?

I can only reread your initial comment so many times. You’re still incorrect.

Yes, a small subset of games have downloadable server software; the ones that do are able to do so because it’s self-contained and unencumbered by proprietary components that can’t be redistributed.

Most games don’t, and they won’t be able to.

Licensing restrictions aside, how are you supposed to package a modern microservice-based network of servers into a single package that can be run on consumer hardware? And abstract over the specifics of the cloud environment you targeted so it can be run elsewhere? It’s pretty much a nonstarter.

Consider the infrastructure you're talking about. What parts of the game service would need to be implemented with micro services and/or calls to a cloud computing and storage? It would be matchmaking, storefronts, news updates, etc.

Running a single dedicated server on a home computer to play with whatever community you've curated requires none of these. Any sane game server architecture would already be essentially a single executable since you want performance and synchronicity within a single "match" or "world".

You say most games won't be able to release server software. Can you provide an example of a game which could not possibly be disentangled from its cloud architecture? I'm having trouble thinking of any

Subscription models and micro-transactions are already infinitely attractive for those who are solely out for profit and rent-seeking, so it changes nothing material there. It doesn't make subscription models more attractive to gamers either. But it makes non-subscription games vastly more attractive:

Previously, non-subscription games were a gamble, even if the company had the best track record in the world, even if you know the whole team personally. They still could get bought or something like that, and then all of that is moot.

Now, you can be somewhat sure that the multiplayer game you buy today will be playable for as long as there are people who want to play it enough to put in the time and resources to host the infrastructure for it.

So yeah, this just seems like F.U.D. to me.

I'd like to see current regulations enforced for everyone before adding more. "Great news guys, millionaires can now sue billionaires for breaking their kid's toy," is all this ammounts to. They dont have enough bodies (physical or virtual) to uphold what's currently in place. Nor, do governing bodies care.

- It causes cancer? Make sure you add a warning label.

- they lost PII? Make sure we collect the fine. What's that; they can't afford it? Don't waste the resources, then. There's other opportunities out there.

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