Hacker News Reader

Did you read the article?

>The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others. >The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

It's forcing all games to be open-source. If you develop a big video game with an eight or nine figure budget and your customers are free to distribute and modify your product you will lose everything.

View on HN

All of these freedoms would only kick in after the developer shuts down official servers, after which the product is discontinued and not generating income anyway.

It wouldn't affect game developers at all, the only change would be that they have to upload the server file's code when they decide to stop supporting the game, so that players can continue it themselves.

That's not clear from the article. Even if that's the case, it still gives away the studio's IP the moment they discontinue the game. Counter strike wouldn't exist if these "freedoms" were in effect when half-life ended support.

>it still gives away the studio's IP the moment they discontinue the game

No. You don't receive any rights to use the IP when you buy the game, so you don't get them when the publisher decided to discontinue it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com