Stop Killing Games

The obvious case where this makes sense are single-player games that require internet access before they even launch, like when you need to link a Microsoft account to play Forza.

But it's less obvious to me how the legislation should work for a multiplayer-only game that goes out of business. I suppose it should require a refund at some point. But at what point?

Steam only lets you refund a game that you played for less than two hours.

And if you think that's not long enough, there's surely some time period where you can agree that you've got your money's worth. Kind of like how you lose the ability to say "I didn't like it" after you ate your whole dinner at a restaurant.

Yet in the comments here someone gives an example of three years of online support which is insane. Why is multiplayer special? Should Steam also let you refund any game until three years elapse?

> But it's less obvious to me how the legislation should work for a multiplayer-only game that goes out of business

The idea is to force the companies to provide an end-of-life plan that leaves the game in a "reasonably playable state". Depending on the game the approach can differ. Releasing the binaries along with instructions for hosting dedicated servers is one approach (that some games already take). I was playing on a (pirated, but it was a long way ago and I was a child) Lineage 2 server way back in 2007 on my local ISP network, so even something like MMORPGs can be covered if it's included in the discussion at the design stage of the game.

But even if the backend is very complex and vendor-locked, releasing something like a set of Cloudformation templates and saying "you can only host this on AWS and it's going to be restrictively expensive but there you go" is also an option that would satisfy the requirements. It's still better then having nothing at all to dig at (although some fans still do reverse-engineer and spin up community servers even without having access to any of this).

It seems like it should be legal for your end of life plan for the game to be “it is over and no one gets to play it anymore”.

Only if they change the wording of the game purchasing experience to be along the lines of 'Rent' or 'Subscribe' instead of 'Buy'.

But you’re not renting or subscribing to it so that is inaccurate and confusing for a one time upfront payment business model.