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Stop Killing Games

(www.stopkillinggames.com)
253 points MYEUHD | 10 comments | 02 Jul 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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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. tiledjinn ◴[02 Jul 25 18:51 UTC] No.44447435[source]▶
> - Put an expiration date on the storefront and make it clear that your software is not guaranteed to continue working after date X.

This software is not guaranteed beyond 0 Unix time.

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

This isn't viable, and i would expect anyone on this site to understand that. it's roughly equivalent to saying "just make facebook stripped of proprietary code and ready for the public to run"

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

This is a reasonable path forward, but likely a non-starter in the US for political reasons. I understand that "stop killing games" is an EU thing.

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

See point 2. This is nonsensical.

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2. nirava ◴[02 Jul 25 18:59 UTC] No.44447507[source]▶
> This is nonsensical.

Nope. This has been done for many "dead" games. Servers have been reverse engineered from nothing. Private servers are a common thing.

> This software is not guaranteed beyond 0 Unix time.

Imagine Apple says that about iOS. Wouldn't you want consumer protection so Apple doesn't do that? Why should anything else be any different?

3. andrecarini ◴[02 Jul 25 19:01 UTC] No.44447532[source]▶
Well, this is about software you bought in advance. The Facebook comparison doesn't really work because you're not paying in advance to use it.

> This software is not guaranteed beyond 0 Unix time.

Grandma goes to the store to buy a game for their grandkid. She sees two game boxes. One says in the front "This game will stop working tomorrow and you will not get a refund" and the other says "This game will stop working in 2030". Which one does she pick?

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4. freeone3000 ◴[02 Jul 25 20:03 UTC] No.44448196[source]▶
How is a dedicated server nonsensical? There’s a fuckton of games, ancient and modern, with them.

Shoot, how is peer-to-peer nonsensical? Elden Ring (seamless multiplayer) got it tacked on as a mod. It’s insanely doable.

I don’t accept that these are nonstarters. In the slightest.

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5. tiledjinn ◴[02 Jul 25 20:18 UTC] No.44448353[source]▶
Ok; package up Cloudflare, Facebook, or E-Trade and let people host it.
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6. tiledjinn ◴[02 Jul 25 20:19 UTC] No.44448362[source]▶
Either the one little Timmy wanted, or the one the clerk tells her is selling fast (whether or not it's selling fast).
7. dpoloncsak ◴[02 Jul 25 20:26 UTC] No.44448438{3}[source]▶
Isn't that exactly how these companies scale across multiple data centers? They write the code once, package it all together, and host it in multiple areas?

Getting back to games, I still don't see why allowing users to host private servers with their friends is impossible. If anything, it seems like its strictly a DRM issue...but at EOL for a game you no longer find profitable enough to keep the servers online, who really cares about DRM

8. secstate ◴[02 Jul 25 20:39 UTC] No.44448573{3}[source]▶
Wat? E-trade is not an application, it's probably dozens of coordinated services. Meanwhile, a game usually has a single binary and another one for the server.
9. gopher_space ◴[02 Jul 25 22:41 UTC] No.44449602[source]▶
> I don’t accept that these are nonstarters. In the slightest.

It’s a subject you know nothing about and you’re not even curious?

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10. freeone3000 ◴[02 Jul 25 23:12 UTC] No.44449814{3}[source]▶
No. Because any explanation will come from someone invested in the subject, so will all sound completely reasonable and may even contain aspects of truth.

I want to play games with my friends, not consider how the landscape of always-online services have distributed brokerage connectivity services, global banlists, and whatever powers microtransactions into what should be a game with four little dudes running a kitchen badly. I especially don’t want to consider how rising requirements for stability and cross-platform connectivity which have prompted these services means that P2PoverIP simply won’t work in the face of CGNAT or Sony’s distribution policies or fucking Comcast not having IPv6 yet; and I especially don’t want to think of the lower average technical acumen of the individual gamer has caused dedicated servers to completely fall out of fashion due to user confusion.

I really don’t want to think about the “paradox of polish”, where smaller games can get away with such things like dedicated servers and p2p networking that don’t work sometimes; whereas everything in an AAA title has to work flawlessly out of the gate or it’ll be panned despite the horse’s left testicle contracting appropriately in cold water.

Man, I don’t wanna be sad about market forces encouraging centralization for the efficiency necessary to stay competitive. I just wanna play dead or alive 2 with my bros even tho the dreamcast server’s offline.