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Stop Killing Games

(www.stopkillinggames.com)
253 points MYEUHD | 1 comments | 02 Jul 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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andrecarini ◴[02 Jul 25 18:29 UTC] No.44447202[source]▶
Lots of bad takes in this thread. The whole idea behind this is just to stop defrauding customers that buy your software and then are left holding the bag. Nobody is asking for developers to keep running server infra for eternity.

Any of the following options are enough to satisfy this proposal:

- Put an expiration date on the storefront and make it clear that your software is not guaranteed to continue working after date X.

- Have your server source code (stripped down of proprietary stuff) ready for public release at EoL.

- Allow customers to reverse engineer the binaries and communication protocol after EoL.

- Package dedicated server binaries with the game and allow customers to connect to it via a LAN or direct IP option.

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1. Ekaros ◴[02 Jul 25 18:46 UTC] No.44447378[source]▶
Or if I understand right if you have some online component make final version of the game to operate without it. So you might lose multiplayer, but single player components of game should still continue to function.

Which to me doesn't sound huge ask. Unless you have overly strictly coupled the game with online. Which for single player games is likely bad design anyway.