this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Or just patch the game to fool it into thinking it's connected, and allowing offline play.
I'm sure my off-the-cuff suggestion is in no way difficult to implement! It's probably just a switch somewhere. Check under the stack of papers over there...
If players can make it work, developers can definitely make it work.
Someone tell that to Bethesda.
The difference is how much the players care. Also they aren't bogged down by any chain of command for development and can address issues however they see fit.
Pretty much why the stop killing games initiative should be called "kill games I don't like" initiative.
what
The initiative just puts all the hard work onto people who are ignorant about the topic, who then put all the work onto developers to figure out how to not go out of business while implementing whatever insane bill gets pushed. It's dropping a nuke on a city to close down a restaurant that failed a health inspection.
Ross seems like a naive child who expects "an easy win because politicians hate work" except there is no bill, so politicians still have to do work.
If the goal is to save games, it fails because companies just won't put in the overhead to make live service games if they have to make them offline available. Certainly when there is proprietary licensed technology that they legally cannot distribute that way.
If the initiative was called "kill live service games" then it would be accurate. Either Ross is dishonest about his intentions(bad) or completely ignorant.(Really bad) I'm not even against the idea of live service games dying, but this ain't it.
i mean that's the point though, to codify the will of the people.
and honestly, if that makes live service games go the way of the dodo, good riddance. it's a predatory practice that uses fomo for players retention.
These talking points sound like those of Thor from pirate software. I hope that's not who you got this opinion from, because that man is just an industry shill.
"You sound like this other guy so you're wrong" is... a take...
I disagree with Thor on a lot of things, so I wasn't influenced by his opinion on this. Since I watched Ross' video myself.
Yes. A limit on how long before announced server shutdown a game is allowed to be sold (with it otherwise having to allow refunds) would already go a long way, and that is something I'm in full support of. I'm not signing that petition though because it seems disconnected from reality.
"Just make games playable in offline" works for some games (and if planned from the start wouldn't be that hard to implement), but ranges from "define playable" to "utterly insane" for others (imagine WoW servers shut down, is it in any way sensible to require allowing offlinr access?).
A more extreme but imo still reasonable variant would be forcing the open sourcing of server code and everything required to make networking work, with the license allowing self hosting of game servers. But even this can still be obstructed, because "open source" doesn't have to mean "publically accessible code repository"
Not saying you're wrong, but how can the source code be "open" and not publicly accessible? If it's not, that's just a closed codebase that is shared with some external people, surely?
If you have to request the source code by asking for it via a form and get sent the code printed out via snail mail that is still "publicly accessible". Not saying companies would do that since it seems like it'd just cost them money for no benefit, just that there are usually ways to really hinder people's access without being closed source.
There could be lines drawn, but it'll be hard to find the medium between reasonable and preventing exploits. Forcing an upload to third party services like github seems dubious. I guess a zip file somewhere on the company website wouldn't be hard to do, provided the company isn't bankrupt (which is an entire different can of worms, what do you do then).
I'd still be heavily in favor of such legislations fwiw, perfect is the enemy of good and all that, but there's a sweet spot of "actually does something and doesn't kill all live service games" that would need to be found
Good point. And sounds like you're in a similar headspace to.me on the topic. Personally I'm not a huge fan of live service games, but I can see why a lot of people would want to avoid killing them.