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cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/3751309
The Stop Killing Games campaign have revealed their support for a Californian bill related to game server shoutdowns.
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Look, I’d be happy if they just open source the server code. You don’t need to force the fucks to run the damn software. That’s like the worst idea ever.
it’s also incredibly unlikely to stick, whereas open sourcing server code might happen.
I don’t think it will.
Imagine Bethesda sharing their backend code… they won’t. As they will be using it forever, after the heat death of the universe.
lol true, or their stuff running in an overlaid modern engine, like oblivion remastered.
in the end it’ll be
creation engineGamebryo all the way downI’m no architect but couldn’t they just switch the server code to something already in circulation that’s open source, or allow the community to make its own?
Is the server code that integral that it can’t be changed?
Depends on many things.
But ideally you want some game logic on the server side, to prevent cheating.
You can just sync world state between players, but that will always cause weird glitches.
I don’t develop games, so I’m no expert, but I my backend would have the ‘one true’ state of the world, and players would only interact with it by using verified actions.
I did one such game, but it was turn-based tabletop, not very comparable to open-world games.
From the Stop Killing Games discourse, that might not be feasible because of patents/licensing, work required and companies’ protectiveness… But a suggestion I remember was that the companies could just be required to release all of the proprietary server binaries, so that somebody dedicated to the cause can figure out how to spin up their own server. This means a company doesn’t have to clean up their sources and ensure they are actually buildable, and can just dump what they were already running somewhere.
I’m actually for a law that forces them to open source server code upon release. The only reason to keep it private is to have direct control over the experience.
At that point they might as well be honest and have you pay subscription, because you don’t really fully own the product.
And before you say that could exclude any kind of live service, DRMs can and should be updated independently. They offset server processing by utilizing your processor and memory anyways, so it’ll have little effect on that dubious practice.
A third option should be release the server protocol.
Which is really the best one.
Yes please.
Cool. So then they force the subscription model.
The problem is you want your cake and you want to eat it too.
I want to eat the cake I bought. I don’t want to buy a cake and then have it taken away from me before I’m finished eating it.
I understand you don’t want to deliver cake anymore. That’s fine. You need to open the rest of the box so I can get the rest of my cake out. You don’t need to deliver anymore to me You just need to not take away the cake I already have.
There’s just too many liabilities there.
A lot of these games they have routines to update the entire software OR simply where they can run arbitrary scripts or things like that. Arbitrary code execution would be a huge problem. Even if it wasn’t an automatic thing and you could simply push a message out to people, “hey you need to update this, you know we don’t have the money Ubisoft has, but we’re making some updates anyways because we love y’all! So go download this… And please donate to keep the show going!” Bam. Pwned.
Things like maintaining usernames and passwords being passed off to Independent third parties? The users would fucking revolt at such an idea.
This is one of those things that I get sounds really good in the perfect utopian society where there’s no bad actors. But the reality is people want your cake.
Oh, come on.
Any game with a sufficiently sized community will also have, as part of that community, enough nerds to run private servers if need be.
Hell, WoW is 20 years old and still has to sue to shut down private servers. There’s plenty of ways to make this happen.
Removed by mod
Dude. I play BAR. It’s literally open source spin off of a popular video game. It updates itself. It has been running for like over a decade. It is like the iron manning of this model.
Abd it works! Its great! No problems! You act like corpos cant brick your shit with mandatory updates, which may or may not run on pure vibes. Do you remember the past two years?
BAR
?
TYVM!
I described what it was.
yes and I searched duck-duck-go for BAR game rts and got shit results. thankfully someone provided a link. Perhaps if you’d specified BAR Beyond All Reason I may have found it while walking and typing lol, but yeah, you described what it was but din’t really make it easy to find.
have a great day.
No, you have a great day, you fucking piece of shit!
You have the best day of your fucking life! Experience new heights of happiness you fucking asshole! Chart a new greater course for your life than you ever could have imagined, and experience the bliss of becoming! You fucker!
Iron manning? You mean a strongman? Like the opposite of a straw man(the fallacy, the myth, the legend?)
Abd(sic) it works!?
I act like what? Bro. You don’t know me. I’m a pirate… So miss me with your assumptions.
Again. A totally vague question. What specifically in the past 2 years could you possibly be referring to because it’s not indicated by your idiotic fucking message.
And if you don’t reply I will not in any way be disappointed and I’m certainly not holding my breath.
Im thinking of your mom. Obviously. Rest is in the thread. There is a test case of the argument you csn literally download and play at your fucking leisure. Its open source. Audit the code if you want.
You’re right that there should be concerns about connecting old games to a random server that can push software updates.
However, I think you’re misunderstanding what the SKG movement is as well as what this legislation is asking for.
It’s not asking for companies to leave the servers running indefinitely. It’s definitely not telling them to just allow a 3rd party to take over the databases with all of the information there.
It’s telling companies to provide information upfront about what consumers can expect when the game servers are officially shut down. It’s telling them to have a plan for shutting the game down.
It provides some options for what those plans could look like:
- Offline mode (and communicate what features will no longer be available)
- Allow private servers
- Refunds
The current version of this bill has an exception for free games and subscription only based games.
A refund makes no sense.
That’s eerily similar to asking for a refund at an arcade machine because you died.
Yea, exactly. This idiotic bill is trying to leverage that which has none, nor should!
The way I see it, a refund is a last resort if they are unable to follow through on the other 2 options.
Using your analogy, asking for a refund at an arcade would be more like asking for a refund for a subscription based online only game. In both of those cases you’re paying to play for a limited amount of time. This bill has an exclusion for that already, so it’s not an issue here.
Think of it this way: Imagine you bought a kitchen appliance (like a refrigerator) that has a screen on the door for creating timers, leaving notes, and checking the weather.
One day, the company says they’re shutting down the servers so that your refrigerator will no longer be able to check the weather, sync notes, etc. However, along with this update the refrigerator will no longer be able to keep food cold.
Wouldn’t you want a refund at that point so that you could buy a new one? Or better yet, maybe we need a law to tell these companies that shutting down their servers shouldn’t affect the core features of the appliance.
This is basically what’s started happening to a large number of games. Instead of just losing access to a few online features, companies are locking us out of the entire game, even if they are mainly a single player game. Just look at what happened to The Crew.
The way I see it, a refund is a last resort if they are unable to follow through on the other 2 options.
And I expect companies trying to present refund as the default option, squeezing negative PR out of it and using it for astroturfing against SKG as a whole
So do you sue MTG because no one wants to play magic anymore?
Same with the pogs people?
The other incredibly shit things people fawn over and then discard like trash?
No dude. You’re trying to sell me some bullshit and I’m not buying it. That’s what you don’t get!
I would accept that if I did pay for such a thing I would be a complete fucking moron and so -no - I wouldn’t be entitled to a refund. And that’s probably expressed in their policy - they don’t issue refunds - and so I don’t know why you would want one after you’ve read their terms and you’ve agreed to buy in their product with the expectation of no refund.
You sound completely fucking insane.
I think the refrigerator example is a much more accurate representation of what’s happening here.
It’s not about whether you can find friends to play with, its about a company remotely disabling something you bought which should be able to work whether it’s connected to the internet or not.
What if a bunch of car manufacturers start requiring an internet connection just to turn on your car (for security/safety reasons). Then after 5 years they shut down those servers and say, “buy a new one”. You’re telling me that, rather than supporting a law to deter the practice, you would rather just avoid buying cars from that company?
