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Stop Killing Games

(www.stopkillinggames.com)
253 points MYEUHD | 2 comments | 02 Jul 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.466s | 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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fvdessen ◴[02 Jul 25 19:16 UTC] No.44447716[source]▶
I developed a few commercial games on unity a while ago, here's why some of what's proposed is harder than you think,

- The original developper is not working on the game anymore, another company is maintaining it and has no capacity for making significant changes to it.

- You can't release your server source code because you will be using a lot of proprietary add ons that can't be released, and those are usually absolutely essential.

- Your server is going to be built against a now unsupported version of the engine, that you probably can't even install on current year operating systems

- stripping the source code of 'proprietary stuff' is significant work, there's no package management, code is copy pasted.

- Your protocol is based on third party commercial code and that other company doesn't like reverse engineering

- Changing the way the networking works to remove the lobby is significant development work, the networking framework is out of date, not maintained, and the devs are most likely not available anymore.

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throwuxiytayq ◴[02 Jul 25 19:21 UTC] No.44447769[source]▶
The rule won't apply retroactively to all games ever released, you know. All of these requirements can - and should - be met when new games are designed and architectured to satisfy the law.
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fvdessen ◴[02 Jul 25 19:28 UTC] No.44447839[source]▶
That would require a complete re-architecture of game engines and complete rework of how the games are developed and published. If I had to satisfy those requirements next year, I just wouldn't release in Europe, and I say that as an European.
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TheBozzCL ◴[02 Jul 25 19:55 UTC] No.44448112[source]▶
Then just keep doing things the same way, but add a disclaimer that says you are only selling a license to play the game, and it's not guaranteed to work after a certain date.
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1. fvdessen ◴[02 Jul 25 20:09 UTC] No.44448249[source]▶
Then like what happened with the cookie banners, everybody is going to put the minimum date, and the only winners will be the lawyers selling consulting in EU regulation compliance with the publishers.
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2. rfrey ◴[02 Jul 25 22:38 UTC] No.44449579[source]▶
You are begging the question, the question being whether consumers care. You believe they don't (e.g. that the expires-on date won't affect sales) and the creators of this petition believe people will care and will prefer games that do not have that expiry date.

So no, it's not inevitable that every game will just sprout an expiry date. It's possible but only if you're right that consumers don't care about owning versus renting games.