The California State Assembly Has Passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/22330/stop-killing-games-movement-gains-momentum-california-assembly-passes-game-protection-bill

50•TechTechTech•50m ago

Comments

phreack•36m ago

> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.

I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions. I think the previous cases where this act would apply are few but good thing they wouldn't increase under this act.

pibaker•31m ago

California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven!

If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.

RobotToaster•16m ago

I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.

fragmede•5m ago

Why not $0?

meatmanek•5m ago

At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)

cosmojg•5m ago

I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).

MadnessASAP•22m ago

Of course its an incentive, however the disincentives to purchasing (subscribing/spending), and thus producing, such games still exist.

wagwang•35m ago

The reasonable compromise should be to force devs to release server binaries if they are not willing to run the servers themselves.

doctorpangloss•30m ago

i don't know, do game developers have a right to sell a Remastered Multiplayer Edition later? in my opinion, yes.

kgwxd•29m ago

Government forced speech is never reasonable. If you don't like the arrangement, just don't buy the game. Tell them why you didn't buy the game. Hope for a better future where more of the industry is built on open source. That's all anyone can do. That's all anyone should be able to do.

wredcoll•27m ago

There's always someone willing to blame the victim.

The answer to companies committing fraud is not "buyer beware".

ethin•25m ago

What are you proposing then? The government is not allowed to compel speech for good reason.

Y-bar•13m ago

That’s not a Carte Blanche that forbids the government from everything.

The government can compel speech food and other producers to print content and nutritional labels on their products. The government can compel speech on a yearly basis when we file taxes. The can compel speech such as guidance maps and websites to be accessible to the blind (ADA). They can compel vehicle owners to provide insurance and ownership information, which is a kind of speech.

phendrenad2•28m ago

I think this will cause a big schism in the Stop Killing Games movement. Game devs who were sympathetic to the movement will expect that this is enough, but a lot of people in the movement will be unsatisfied with the carveouts for MMORPGs and XBOX Game Pass and the like.

ronsor•13m ago

A lot of people in the movement think game companies are the root problem when what they actually have a problem with is current copyright law.

kahrl•9m ago

So instead of whole products sold at a one time price, there will be more and more subscription based services micro-transaction slop. 10/10 California. Never change.

charcircuit•7m ago

So just make every game free to play and then require a paying to unlock the actual game.

bob1029•25m ago

I don't think forcing a person or business to divulge their intellectual property, simply because they no longer wish to provide downstream products or services, is reasonable. That said, as a consumer I really don't like when something goes away. Overwatch 1 was probably the most brutal experience for me. In the end, I don't think anyone has any kind of special entitlements here.

The server binaries will almost always include other proprietary information that the studio will not want to release. Any sanitation of this binary further condemns this as a silly idea because now you are also compelling the individual or business to do additional (presumably unpaid) work so that arbitrary consumers can use their products or services indefinitely.

circuit10•18m ago

If this was about open source software I’d agree about not forcing people to do additional work, but if you’re selling something for money you should be obligated to do the bare minimum of stripping secrets out of a binary so the product you sold can actually work (and this will be barely any work if it’s designed with this in mind in the first place)

We already obligate them to do other basic necessities for consumer protection such as refunding or replacing faulty products

duskwuff•17m ago

> The server binaries will almost always include other proprietary information that the studio will not want to release.

Or even information that they are contractually forbidden from releasing. A typical scenario would be a game developed as a fork of a proprietary codebase which was licensed from another company. Forcing the licensee to release material would infringe on the rights of the licensor.

circuit10•13m ago

It would at least be reasonable to expect this for future games, just treat the server binary the same way as the client in terms of what code you include (there way be some more involved if they have to migrate off a reusable codebase but I think it’s worth it)

bob1029•7m ago

There's also scenarios like games that depended on GameSpy being forced out into the cold. Battle for Middle Earth 2 is a good example of this. The LOTR rights expiring isn't what got them. It was another provider going away in a puff of smoke and not enough player base to justify a complete rewrite of the backend.

https://www.ea.com/news/update-on-ea-titles-hosted-on-gamesp...

wagwang•14m ago

If they dont want to release the source then just keep running the servers! I think its ridiculous that people can buy games and the games just stop working and its ok because of some legalese that literally no one reads. Alternatively, why not just align your incentives with the user and charge subscriptions.

Games are interesting because players will sink a lot of time and sometimes money in and so it goes beyond a smart alarm clock or a fitness tracker imo.

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