Comment on The signatures are still coming and it's already making an impact
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
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Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:
Of course, releasing server code is an option.
The expectation is:
That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).
I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.
Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers
I don’t think this is what they mean. They say that of they provide the tools for users to deploy the servers, bad things can happen. So I think they understood SKG, they just lie about the consequences for gamers
If that’s their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).
What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn’t retroactive), studios can plan ahead.
It’s just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.
Yeah, I agree. We have been hosting servers at friend houses with consumer (mostly our own gaming PCs) forever.
The risk involved exists, but it’s far from the threat they make it be.
Another part of it is that if they discontinue support, they can’t stop the community from creating their own server software.
There are so many ways to approach this. The point is ensuring consumers retain the right to keep using what they purchased, even if they have to support it themselves.
Sort of. They need to have the tools as well. So I suppose they could release the APIs for their servers before shutting down their servers so community servers can be created, that would probably be sufficient. But they need to do something beyond just saying, “we won’t sue you if you reverse engineer it.”
Yeah… The abstract (sorry, will read article a bit later) is bunch of nonsense to me (in respect to what is written, no offense to you):
online experience commercially viable? The fuck they are talking about? Yeah, I know what is meant, but they would get fucking F in school for expressing thoughts in such a nonsensical way
protections against illegal content would not exist on private servers? Really? Like only your company’s servers can run that? What, you write them in machine code directly? Or is it all done manually? Anyhow, just release source code and it will be up to community to find a way to make it run
I basically quoted the whole thing, the last bit wasn’t really relevant. And yeah, it’s pretty much just BS.
Natanael@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
And “would leave rights holders liable” is completely false, no game would have offline modes if it did
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it’s a Microsoft hosted one.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 3 weeks ago
The argument there is if a game is left online with no studio to care for it then they believe they would be liable for community content.
I don’t think it applies to offline games at all.
Bravo@eviltoast.org 3 weeks ago
If server code is released such that people can run private servers after the official servers are shut down, then legally the people running the servers should be the ones liable for illegal activity that happens on them.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
That kind of already exists, you can buy hosting for Minecraft and other games. AFAIK, moderation isn’t a part of it, but many private groups exist that run public servers and manage their own moderation. It exists already, and that should absolutely be brought up as a bill is being considered.
Natanael@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Only applicable if they run the servers themselves, not if they let others run their own servers.
Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I understood that from a IP and trademark stand point. It could be hard to retain your copyright or trademark if you are no longer controlling a product
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
They retain copyright based on existing law, and trademark is irrelevant since it’s defended in courts, not EULAs.
Natanael@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
No, copyright isn’t relinquished from any of that (not even any effect on damages if you still require players to have bought the game to use the private servers), and trademarks wouldn’t be affected at all if you simply require that 3rd party servers are marked as unofficial