Is two years period supposed to be a lot? What if a person haven't played the game for five years (which happens quite often) then comes back and sees that it's gone?
197 karma · joined June 13, 2023
Unfortunately, terms can change. Publisher can promise 10-year support for the game and then drop it after 1 year. So when we purchase the game, we don't know what will happen in the future.
No, it won't. People used to develop games without requiring publisher's services. The issue of "it's hard to do nowadays" is self made. It's only hard because you made it this way. You can design a game that will be playable when its publisher or developer close their doors.
And then I read this:
> Steering a language and its context will naturally reflect the author's world view
> There are two ways one can "figure out a person" who rarely states their beliefs explicitly, specifically a public figure:
> 2. See who they follow on Twitter
What do someone's beliefs have to do with the development of a programming language? Or with its appearance on Wikipedia? Is this a normal world view?
That used to work, but not anymore. Not because of hardware prices, but because of small gains that upgrading gets us nowadays.
I believe GTA San Andreas reverse engineering does exactly that using ASI Loader [1].
Regarding my comment, I already replied right there that I'm willing to pay more money for the games if it means they are preserved. You again misunderstand (probably on purpose) what it's all about...
Gaming industry is not poor (although they like to tell you that). They rack billions on exploitative mechanics like lootboxes, gachas and live services, but don't want to keep their games alive even though it would cost them a fraction of what they earn to do so. This confirms that this is not about money, at least not in the way you are trying to portrait it. Also remember that gaming companies love to evade taxes. Yeah, they are (totally not evil) entities who act with pure goodwill towards their consumers...
Yes, it's specifically promoted as DBMS for OLAP workload. And it's usually compared to ClickHouse, another analytical DBMS. So people who use it know why it's good.
Unfortunately, yes. Example - try getting publishing rights to No One Lives Forever franchise (GOG already tried that). It's not rare for publishers to sit on their IPs without doing anything with them. And it's not exclusive to videogames as well.
> make them last longer
You can look at it differently. "Last longer" can mean "getting support from the publisher for longer period of time". Nobody demands this. Or it can mean "have an EOL plan", but then it's a weird way to phrase that. But yes, this meaning is the one that SKG uses.
That is indeed a case, and potential solutions has been discussed. The main idea is that games that have already been made do not need to comply with this, so they don't need to change anything. Moreover, some videogames have already been released with middleware stripped out of them. From the top of my head: Doom 3, Blietzkrieg. So you can work around that.
> I don't mind if there'd be a law that would allow players to modify and even reverse engineers previous versions of the game for the sole purpose of playing the game
To my knowledge, you can already do that in most jurisdictions. That's why there are a lot of decompilation projects that started in recent years.
> This kind of regulation demands nothing from the game developers
The problem is that for games with online components you also require server binaries, which you don't always have access to. So developers would need to provide at least those binaries. So unfortunately even in this case there will be something that developers must do.
> C&C Generals
That's a good example because EA made source code available last year for most C&C games. So people have been improving unofficial versions.
> Most of the demands I've seen from the SKG crowd demand actual laws that define what developers must provide players
SKG itself does not demand anything specific, that's the idea. People who support the initiative do provide some potential options, but I don't think they are forcing it on anyone.
How so? If I'm sure that a game is not going to die, I will be more willing to pay for it. The more such games exist, the more money I will be willing to spend on them. Hence more taxes from me. Otherwise I will stick to older games that don't have this problem, which will bring less taxes from me because of the cost.
> cost of your gaming itself would be subsidized
By whom? I know there are currently tax returns (or exemptions is more correct term probably) for gaming companies. But how does having end of life plans change this?
We tried that. That didn't work.
> Making the product last longer
Once again, nobody is asking that. So you are misunderstanding SKG.
> tunnel-vision
That is very ironic and indeed dismissive.
How is this relevant? I still want to be able to play older games 10 years from now. The cost does not matter. I would even pay more money for the guarantee that the game will be always playable.
> How is it not entitled to insist that these super attractive prices should be even lower still?
Nobody suggests to lower the prices... Do you even understand what SKG is about?
> Why should games be different from a movie ticket or a streaming subscription?
Because you can buy movies on physical media and watch them whenever you want. With games that have online component that's not always the case anymore.
How did you come to this number? Something simple like giving the binaries with docs doesn't cost that much money. I'm not sure what you are referring to.
> how many hours of gameplay does that actually buy?
You seem to confuse the cost of continued support with the cost of giving it to the community. Nobody is asking publishers to continue support when they don't want to.
> But as someone who doesn't play games, why on earth would I want to encourage this?
You are not expected to support this if you don't care about it... But don't act surprised when you find out that some people do play games and they do care about them.
> You're suggesting a subsidy for gamers which everyone else would to pay for
No, that's not how it works. Not even close.
Unfortunately, it only works on paper. In reality publishers can add stuff after the release when people already paid money for it (classic bait and switch). So buying only "good" games does not guarantee that they will stay that way. Also, we did try "applying pressure", it didn't work, that's why we are here currently.
> I don't think it makes sense to regulate games to that degree
Nobody is asking to regulate the games themselves, only how they are distributed after their end of life.
> which are merely a form of entertainment and have no severe consequences on people
People make money using specific videogames. So there are consequences of shutting down games for good.
The reason why publishers don't do this is also very clear - they want us to play their newer games and spend money there. They are not doing this because it's hard for me. They just want to maximize the profit, that's it.
Yes, that's the case. But the absence of guarantees is not very specific, which opens a door for publishers to just drop support on a whim. It's not an issue with titles that have no online components, since you can just keep playing them. But a lot of games nowadays do require online connection, even singleplayer ones. So a publisher shutting down the servers for such game will render the game unplayable in any way. This is the crux, and this is what SKG is trying to solve.
> the conduct SKG is lobbying against is permitted by the contracts which game sellers and customers have agreed to, presumably
Unfortunately, publishers can change the agreements. They can promise you 10 year support for a game, and then drop support for this game one year after release (see Anthem as an example; Concord is even more obvious). This should definitely not happen.
> I don't know how to interpret SKG other than to be outlawing the sale of such revocable/spontaneously self-destructing game services
You can still sell them and deny access to the game after shutting it down, you just need to be prepared for legal actions. So no, nobody wants to outlaw the production of such games (at least nobody from the initiative talks about it in such way).
> The infamous one seems to be The Crew
Yes, it's the most popular. But there are hundreds of games like that that are already dead and cannot be played. You might think it's a very small number compared to overall number of games that have been ever released, but it will increase. Also, Ubisoft themselves told us multiple times that they don't want gamers to own the games.
> This effectively forbids some kinds of contract
It's nothing new. For instance, you cannot make a game that formats your system drive when you die in-game. Nobody is stopping you from developing such game, but you will be open to legal actions, since it can be considered malware. Even if you warn the players beforehand - it's still a malware. So the argument "they agreed to this" is not very sound. Like with real world Russian roulette - it's not OK to shoot someone just because they agreed to it.
Also contracts should not contradict the laws. But to prove if such practice contradicts the existing laws is quite hard as we can currently see.