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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2436 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 2, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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A game developer has delivered an interesting rebuttal video.

Why shouldn't we have the right to the server binaries so we can keep playing these games?

Are you going to allow monetization of these servers or not?

If we don't allow monetization - Who would be the party that enforces non-monetization of that server?

If it's the government I feel like we're making an insane amount of red tape.

If it's the original company then this doesn't work if they shut down.

If we don't allow monetization - Who is going to pay for the hosting if the servers cannot be monetized?

If they cannot be monetized then these servers will also eventually shut down due to cost.

We don't up preserving games like this we just shift their death down the road.

If we do allow monetization - This leads to a really weird attack potential if people can monetize the servers.

  • You make an awesome game that has a small community.
  • I want to monetize that game and run my own servers.
  • I create a shitload of bots and constant exploits to erode the game and your business.
  • Your business closes and now I can monetize your work without anyone stopping me.

This isn't unlikely as we've seen mass attacks such as with TF2.

We actually see echoes of this in the mobile market already as well.

The only defense right now is DMCA or other takedown measures.

Devs legitimately have very little protections as-is and this would erode that further.

This creates an incentive for abuse where the abuser is protected as they are within their legal right to operate said "abandoned" games servers.

@cjet79

Looks like Ross saw it and responded, but it got deleted somehow. https://x.com/accursedfarms/status/1820776020074512657

cjet raised some pretty good points if you ask me -- third party dependencies could really trip things up. And then you never know what the legislators really are going to pass. They don't understand technology in pretty much any circumstance, so that could easily go badly. But monetization doesn't strike me as a real big concern. What do companies do already for, say, Club Penguin Rewritten, or private WoW or Runescape server? I would lean towards not allowing monetization (or rather, allowing companies to set rules for private servers beyond you-can't-have-private-servers), but also, the companies shut the servers down themselves. I can't really feel too bad for them if they see someone making money on a product they killed on purpose. As for who pays for it, that's up to the consumers. If it dies, that's on them; they can resurrect it later, anyway, if the software is out there. You don't need a huge server infrastructure to run single player Tarkov. You just launch a server locally and connect to it. Probably going to be more complicated for a lot of games, but it isn't always.

Moreover, if devs see themselves getting screwed by the EU for releasing games that they kill later, maybe they'll be a little more careful about making games and then killing them for no reason. The Crew is a great example. There is absolutely no good reason that that game is dead right now, since it had no online capabilities to speak of if I'm not mistaken, except to check that you have the game legitimately. If you know from the outset that this legislation requires you to have a game that functions after a decade, you will write the software differently. Maybe you'll whip together some single player mode. Maybe you'll write it to be more server agnostic. Mostly it's AAA companies that sell live service games and MMOs. They can think of something. Or they can stop making games they will kill. Or stop selling in the EU.

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