> Games with online functionality would also be required to provide an offline mode before the servers supporting them are shut down.
For some games, like MMORPGs, an offline mode doesn't make sense.
In lieu of that, they need to make the server binaries available, along with client functionality to let you choose a server. They shouldn't be required to offer support, but the nerd community is great at figuring things out. They'll get it working and produce guides.
They should release either the server component or documentation for how it works and a way to unlock any protections around it. I’ve seen people argue before that releasing the whole backend stack would be an issue and I agree, but documentation shouldn’t be an issue.
I would prefer that this become the standard for software, as a whole, to be open source after a while. Because there is a sustainability aspect, just like the rest of the tools in our world.
For example, a manual drill has no real draw backs it will always run. An electric drill with a cord, will likely always run and electrical components can be traced and sourced rather easily. A drill that was designed to use with a battery, will not always run, and has software/firmware with some other limitations likely buried in the software.
The moment support is dropped, it should be released to open source to allow others interested to maintain it. Such as with the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 Ti... no longer supported with driver updates (outside of "security updates"). The firmware should be supported by the people if the company doesn't want to support it, it still is an excellent card even 10 years later...
MMO or not, source code should just be released. Patents are not forever, source code shouldn't be either. Though patent might be too long as well. 15/20 years worked when things developed slowly, but now days its outdated within years and could benefit other advancements.
If a company is willing to continue maintaining a piece of code their monopoly should continue. If they choose to stop (because they can't come up with a sustainable business model, can't find somebody to sell the monopoly to who will, etc) it should become, at minimum, source available (if not out right Open Source).
This should be the case, especially, for software that drives long-lived hardware devices in infrastructure roles (public works, manufacturing, etc).
But that’s not the same thing as supporting offline mode, at all.
> but documentation shouldn’t be an issue
Oh boy. I would bet that at any medium sized games company the number of people who can run the full stack of a game from client to backend locally is single digits, and that it is absolutely not documented.
I think part of the comment is related to the typically much more lackluster management of video game source code, historically.
If I recall (as an example) Final Fantasy 8 had to be redone based on the PC port rather than original source code because, well, nobody cared about that back then.
The situation has almost certainly improved since then. Still, we have to remember that cases like Doom and Quake where there was cleanish source code was an exception, not the norm.
Doubly so when there are 'licensed' libraries or middleware involved, stuff coming to mind being:
- DMX sound driver (Doom)
- RAD tools (e.x. Warcraft/Diablo for cutscene video)
- Renderware (GTA2/3 and Vice City, among others)
- Console SDKs (in the case of console games)
And, again, sure. It's possible that if the source code is clean enough, you can safely rip those things out without needing legal review. But if the source isn't clean enough (and a lot of games, its not) there is a concern.
Doubly so when it comes to console only releases and not wanting to accidentally anger a manufacturer by unintentionally exposing an undiscovered exploit.
I dunno, there’s plenty of projects that turn MMORPGs into self-contained single player RPGs and/or simulate other players with bots, so I don’t really see any reason why they should be excluded.
That's never going to happen. Game companies are not going to give you their source code. Usually the source of any game that gets shut down is shared with games that are still live. Example: if Fallout 76 is shut down, Bethesda giving you their source would essentially be giving you the source to Skyrim also. I'm not saying that I have the solution or that your idea isn't good on some level, but we have to be realistic.
Counterpoint: maybe we could make proprietary software illegal, and make everything GPL so we can just request the source code to anything we want. With enough eyes all bugs are shallow, so why wouldn't banks and nuclear reactors want their source to be audited by the public? lol
(Software might become de facto open source with AI decomp anyway)
I’ve worked on games where the server code is python, or there’s “core logic” in SQL, or we’ve used third party libraries that aren’t suitable for binary redistribution. Most studios will share code between games and server code isn’t intended to be redistributed so will contain “secret sauce” for multiple games. I’m not saying these are deal breakers but saying “just give them server binaries” isn’t a handwave solution for most of the games that these sorts of acts target.
Yeah, the idea of game companies (especially MMO or live service ones) being mandated to release server binaries or code is completely unworkable. Companies are not going to want to give away their main proprietary advantage that they've invested into. Games are already a high-risk investment and this would make it even higher risk because the little competitive moat between studios would be eliminated. The industry has been hit hard by layoffs and making gaming even less desirable for investment will further accelerate that. Any failed game (which is most games, because gaming is a hits driven industry) would be saddled with even more liability. Not to mention most commercial middleware is under NDA, so having their source become public would likely destroy those companies, too.
I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc. But straight up requiring server binaries is not going to be viable for a whole swath of online-only game studios like MMO/live service/subscription games etc.
How about "you need to release the binaries for the servers if you turn them off"? The intent of this sort of regulation is to prevent bait-and-switches were games become unplayable after players have invested their time and money.
Binaries are slightly less contentious, but still problematic for MMOs and other titles where they're just not designed to run on consumer gear, might have credentials baked in or might reveal trade secrets to competitors.
Fundamentally, entertainment and technology both are time limited experiences and can't reasonably be expected to last forever. Usually games get shut off when the playerbase has already moved on -- even if the binaries are available, you'd likely be playing in a ghost town.
> Binaries are slightly less contentious, but still problematic for MMOs and other titles where they're just not designed to run on consumer gear, might have credentials baked in or might reveal trade secrets to competitors
They are expected to run for at least a certain amount of time though, so maybe the solution is a requirement to post how many years it's guaranteed to be around, and if it isn't kept around that long, the server needs to be made available.
I don't think it's particularly relevant what hardware it's supposed to run on. Trade secrets are a legal privilege, so it's totally fair for society to say that certain other factors are more important in this extraordinarily limited set of circumstances, and if you're baking credentials into your server code directly, that's kind of your own fault, and I don't see "intentionally doing things in a riskier way" as something valuable to preserve.
The intent of the EU privacy directive was to clarify when websites were storing your data, instead every website has a click through banner that says they use cookies.
I don't see the parallel here. You're saying you think that if companies are required to make the server binaries available after shutting down a live service game, people are going to be spammed by banners? Or is there some other emergent effect you're concerned about that you expect me to be able to infer?
> Or is there some other emergent effect you're concerned about that you expect me to be able to infer?
Removing the unneeded snark, yes. A well intended, but poorly implemented law will not have the desired effect. If the law states that F2P games are exempt, for example (as Stop Killing Games has suggested), you'll find a massive swing towards free games with $60/80/100 in-game purchases to access the actual content.
I don't think your comment was in good faith either, hence the snark in my reply. When someone says "this is bad and I think it shouldn't be allowed", responding "solving the problem in a poor way is bad" isn't a meaningful comment. You went out of your way to describe what I was saying as bad without explaining what you thought was bad about it while maintaining an air of intellectual superiority. If you're surprised that leads people to respond negatively, I'm not sure what to tell you.
One general difficulty with implementing this is dealing with the case of a company going under. It's hard to compel performance out of a bankrupt organisation, so in a lot of cases it might still fall through. (And if this becomes a thing, you might see video game studios setting up companies to operate each game to exploit this).
I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that this would lead to a rush to the Hollywood model of a studio per project with contractors jumping between them. It work(s/ed) for movies because it was all in Hollywood but there isn’t really an equivalent for game developers.
Nobody is eliminating all IP rights. This is about games that are shutdown that they aren't making any money off of anyway.
Additionally, IP rights are already way too strict, and with technology we don't need nearly as much investment into it to make games. Productivity is massively improving. Huge R&D simply isn't needed anymore.
> I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc.
The problem _here_ is if you use steam, or psn, or epic, or any third party provider you need that. It’s a bit like the California cancer label.
I think if there was a better criteria for “multiplayer”, “single player” , “required”, “online”, and “offline” it would help, but I’m not sure if that’s really feasible either.
That sounds like an argument around also enforcing some sort of consumer protections when shutting down a storefront, not an argument against protections for consumers when live service games are shut down
Funcom released a single player update for Dune: Awakening (not quite MMO but close) just a few weeks ago. They have simulated player economy and end game systems and flexible rules+progression for the game itself ... it's been great.
For many online games the same could be done. Simulate the systems, give players the ability to tweak the rules and just have fun.
This bill seems to be aimed at the situation where your purchase a copy of some game, and then the game becomes unplayable because some online service it depends on goes away.
For most MMORPGs nowadays the game client is a free download. You only pay for the online service. I seriously doubt they will draft this in a way that would cover that.
I would argue that server binaries are less important now in the age of AI. The ability to reverse engineer them is so accessible now.
I think more importantly / more digestible is that you can't pursue legislation against people running their own game servers if you no longer offer the game yourself.
This is definitely the most defensible position. I'm sure others want stronger protections, but taking lawsuits off the table for any item no longer for sale (be it a game, other software, hardware, media, etc) would make a ton of sense.
No one can reasonably claim to be harmed in such a scenario. Enshrine abandonware into law.
I find myself in general agreement but I wonder what second order issues would come about. Will we see companies listing an old game for a trillion dollars a copy just to keep rights?
Bob Dylan pulled some shenanigans like this. He "released" an album which only had like 100 copies, but in doing so he maintained copyright of all his old work (and let's be real that's all that anyone would ever listen to anyway).
I think Japan has an interesting model though for abandonware, at least when the copyright owner can't be tracked down: anyone can sell an old game, but a portion of the income goes into an escrow account in case the copyright holder is located.
It's currently accessible, but I'm sure they will start adding whatever roadblocks they can. e.g. Requiring attestation before running game, keeping some logic in server side which will be sent only to clients which pass the attestation, requiring platforms which grant more protections etc.
Hundreds of years ago, nothing was easy to copy, until the printing press. Early copyright surrounding that wasn’t about “IP protection” but rather who had the right to operate a printing press at all
You’re missing the point of the parent comment. IP exists BECAUSE things are easy to copy. If Apple REA’d Windows and sold it, Microsoft will get paid BECAUSE of IP. The system is working as designed.
You're dreaming. Prepare for DMCA2, where it will be illegal to run an LLM on a compiled binary for the purposes of decompiling under penalty of jail time.
As long as it is legal in at least one country, the code will be out there and models will train on it. The ship on IP has already sailed. The moat is gone.
Which models? Of Iranian Army or what? (this was sarcasm)
AI companies tend to discriminate against a lot of data they gather when it comes to training phases, usually for legal reason. Do you have any concrete proof that game decompilation efforts influenced any "mainstream" models?
How is that working out for the mp3 algorithm or bluray decryption?
The OSS community just laughs at algo patents. There was never any ability to enforce them at the pre-AI scale. Post-AI the corpos have no chance. They lost.
Notice the word new, novel and proprietary. Would you like to ask your AI pipeline to duplicate ours? Unless someone knows what we do to parameterize, create and optimize new, proprietary and novel algorithm sets, it remains as part of any new scientific or engineering moat associated to an AI pipeline. This also include deep knowledge domain expertise and human decision trees applied along the way.
So if I am understanding you correctly, the final moat will be private AI optimizations hidden behind closed doors so the public has nothing to reverse engineer.
That moat will hold so long as no one cares about what you built enough to ask a model of similar power to yours "get me similar results to X" until they learn their own path to do so. Maybe one even more efficient than yours.
It will just take one of those people to Open Source something good enough and game over.
I already have built multiple confidential compute operating systems from 386 bytes of machine code all the way up with many novel and world-first features using exclusively consumer hardware I personally own, without any internet reliance, on my own property. Low level kernel and compiler debugging all with models that will run on old GPUs you can buy on ebay right now for under $500.
The way most people use AI, lighting money on fire, is a skill issue. You can build anything cheaply now if you generally know how computers work at a low level and can tell models exactly what to do.
If I could run SoTA models on my desktop, you would be onto something. While it's a subscription, the big guys who own the data centers will do whatever the guys in government tell them to. TLDR: you'll start getting the "I can't assist you with this task" reply to all your prompts.
I’d want a revenue floor before this took effect. An indie developer should not have to worry about getting sued because they didn’t properly turn off a hobby project.
Indie developers can probably avoid killing games the most easily, they're unlikely to have 3rd party tech or IP that's only temporarily licensed, or elaborate DRM, mandatory connectivity/accounts etc, and may even have complete autonomy/power to do what they want.
> Indie developers can probably avoid killing games the most easily
They can and they should. I wouldn't want someone to lose their livelihood because they didn't rigorously test a product they made and released for fun.
Anyone using AWS managed services has 3rd party tech that is temporarily licensed. Any dependence on steam, EOS, google, apple, is a third party dependency.
Please Jesus. Making a ton of online games as an indie would be suicide. Not to mention the obligations going on a balance sheet when they need funding.
Like functionally should probably be like that 200k revenue or more since it’s potentially a few weeks of labor obligation
This wouldn't have helped with my latest run in with artificial Product Existence failure*, but I'm glad to see it anyhow.
*Hey, remember how Neal Stephenson's last project was writing for a nascent shared sci-fi universe? Did you get a chance to play the visual novel that was its first entry, which was hosted on a crypto project's website? Well, I sure hope you did, because the crypto project rugpulled and took the VN down with it, effectively turning a Neal Stephenson novella into lost media less than a year after its initial release.
I am a gamer who has played around with private servers and emulators to revisit my gaming past - one thing I wonder about is how laws would handle game-changing updates? World of Warcraft famously does major renovations to game mechanics each expansion and minor changes each patch. What is to prevent a company from releasing an “update patch” that essentially cripples the game, then shutting down the game at that point and releasing the crippled code as the only available version?
Consumer protection is already clearly the focus of Congress, and with the demise of the Chevron deference in 2024, it seems that Congress needs to bind (such that they can) groups operated by the Executive Branch to uphold consumer rights explicitly instead of allowing regulators to navigate the commercial market.
The answer to Why is Congress concerned with details like this? is that the Supreme Court of the United States made it their concern by rejecting an established practice of deferring to expert regulators instead of electable people who probably lack the relevant knowledge and experience.
> is that the Supreme Court of the United States made it their concern by rejecting an established practice of deferring to expert regulators instead of electable people who probably lack the relevant knowledge and experience
The current Supreme Court unfortunately unfortunately seems to lack the knowledge and experience to recognize the logic in this thinking (or just doesn't care because it doesn't fit their agenda)
Tis a silly question. This has the combination of being something that the populace either doesn't care about at all (so no opposition from _constituents_) or rapidly supports (basically any gamer with some form of nostalgia that has gone unmet). As an added bonus it has the potential to set a legal precedent over similar more serious software such as SaaS offerings with a client component.
I could use the same argument to oppose pretty much any legislation that isn't like, solving healthcare or preventing climate change. For any given issue, there's almost always something more important than it to at least some people, so if the best argument against fixing a problem is "there are other problems that should be fixed", that's a pretty strong argument in favor of the fix.
:) You can argue almost all software is a video game in some way, just gotta argue yourself a way that the definition of "video game" would include your software in some way: https://excel-esports.com/
Congress.gov says Rep. Ritchie Torres has sponsored 171 bills since 2021 and only one became a law, five passed the House and most of those were under Democrat majority. [1]
I would say that it can be pretty simple to solve these problems. If a software company is going to implement a license server or a time limited certificate into a piece of software that will prevent the software from working, then they should be mandated to keep all customer payments in escrow and within 5 minutes of the software becoming unusable by the users, the money has to be returned, with interest and adjusted for inflation.
So every week when World of Warcraft goes down for maintenance for a couple of hours. Blizzard should have to forfeit all of the subscribers money, since it is unusable for more than 5 minutes?
If a server runs for 30 years, and then shuts down. It should have to return 30 years of revenue, plus interest?
> So every week when World of Warcraft goes down for maintenance for a couple of hours. Blizzard should have to forfeit all of the subscribers money, since it is unusable for more than 5 minutes?
I own a Stephen King novel. I'm looking at it right now. Your contention is that I can sell or give away as many copies as I want of it, and if not, why?
No, there is only one physical copy for you to sell, and you’re not granted ownership of the music itself. However, if a law were to be passed that grants ownership of the music on the CD, you would be able to sell unlimited copies of the music.
I was wondering how many bad faith questions you were going to ask before something like that. They were still good clarifying questions, though, even though intended otherwise. Hopefully you understand the issue with the word ownership better now.
You sound dismissive, but gamers as a whole is a demographic that is hard to be ignored and happens to span groups otherwise counter to one another. Any politician who would not take advantage does it to their own detriment.
So, to be clear, you believe government should focus on one problem at a time to the exclusion of anything else or am I missing something? That's never been how government, of any form up to and including the utopian visions that people keep in their dreams, has functioned.
I agree, we have much bigger fish to fry, but "I don't care about this issue so nobody should" isn't how you build a coalition to get the poverty addressed. A lot of politics is "hey Gamers, remember how I got you that thing you wanted? Well now I need support as I take on a bigger, more important topic". Inversely, saying "I don't care about your problem until another problem is resolved" tends to fray the group because you're quite literally telling people you don't respect them or their needs/wants.
You should check out the book "Let This Radicalize You", great primer on how to organize and get actual results vs doomering on the internet.
Addendum (reason for edit): Here's a list of other policy proposals and stances this guy is making: https://ritchietorres.house.gov/resources Draw your own conclusions, but he doesn't seem like he's 100% focused on gamer issues at present...
If your life is otherwise impoverished, a video game could be one of the few options for affordable entertainment, particularly if a viable market for used games exists (which is one of the things this legislation wants to mandate).
I just realized where the anger comes from: this particular division is not something that D/R team could easily splinter ( yet anyway -- I am sure we will soon be hating on the candy crush ppl ).
You know how some engineering teams have a really difficult time prioritizing? Maybe in planning there's a big long list of project ideas some of which really need more discovery to define scope. There can be stuff that seems really important to a long-term vision but is also hard to estimate and higher risk of scope creep etc. And there's stuff that's cheap/fast/low-risk but doesn't solve the larger important problems? And even in the context of a company that is still burning through investor money, you fix _some_ of the smaller things even while you're still figuring out the bigger things, b/c otherwise you'd likely _never_ do the smaller things?
I'm not saying legislators are doing their best in a good faith effort to serve their constituents. But even if they were, you would sometimes see things like this, right?
Yeah, I'm certainly not opposed to this law, but it seems like a strange thing to focus on as our democracy and the rule of law is crumbling in real-time.
I sincerely don't understand this mentality. Legislators consider more than one bill per legislative session. We can (and must!) push along multiple axes, otherwise we will always be behind right?
If this were the only bill being considered I'd agree with you. By this logic we would only focus on one issue at a time and others would get worse in the meantime, so we would always be behind.
> but it seems like a strange thing to focus on as our democracy and the rule of law
Society is improved one issue at a time, and if you sit around waiting for the revolution to come, you will end up like the socialists who never win any elections and achieve nothing for decades.
No, we do not need to overthrow all of capitalism overnight, or solve "democracy", or whatever it is that you are advocating for, before we take any action to improve society.
That is code for "just don't do anything except LARP and complain, and attack anyone who actually is accomplishing things". Its a useless philosophy.
> Games with online functionality would also be required to provide an offline mode before the servers supporting them are shut down.
For some games, like MMORPGs, an offline mode doesn't make sense.
In lieu of that, they need to make the server binaries available, along with client functionality to let you choose a server. They shouldn't be required to offer support, but the nerd community is great at figuring things out. They'll get it working and produce guides.
They should release either the server component or documentation for how it works and a way to unlock any protections around it. I’ve seen people argue before that releasing the whole backend stack would be an issue and I agree, but documentation shouldn’t be an issue.
I would prefer that this become the standard for software, as a whole, to be open source after a while. Because there is a sustainability aspect, just like the rest of the tools in our world.
For example, a manual drill has no real draw backs it will always run. An electric drill with a cord, will likely always run and electrical components can be traced and sourced rather easily. A drill that was designed to use with a battery, will not always run, and has software/firmware with some other limitations likely buried in the software.
The moment support is dropped, it should be released to open source to allow others interested to maintain it. Such as with the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080 Ti... no longer supported with driver updates (outside of "security updates"). The firmware should be supported by the people if the company doesn't want to support it, it still is an excellent card even 10 years later...
MMO or not, source code should just be released. Patents are not forever, source code shouldn't be either. Though patent might be too long as well. 15/20 years worked when things developed slowly, but now days its outdated within years and could benefit other advancements.
If a company is willing to continue maintaining a piece of code their monopoly should continue. If they choose to stop (because they can't come up with a sustainable business model, can't find somebody to sell the monopoly to who will, etc) it should become, at minimum, source available (if not out right Open Source).
This should be the case, especially, for software that drives long-lived hardware devices in infrastructure roles (public works, manufacturing, etc).
The 1080ti support depreciation is a travesty. Its still plays games great. Makes it hard to justify future nvidia purchases for gaming rigs
But that’s not the same thing as supporting offline mode, at all.
> but documentation shouldn’t be an issue
Oh boy. I would bet that at any medium sized games company the number of people who can run the full stack of a game from client to backend locally is single digits, and that it is absolutely not documented.
Documentation? In the video game industry? Surely you jest.
seems a good price to pay, it gives that guy something to do before he can switch off the server/product.
I think part of the comment is related to the typically much more lackluster management of video game source code, historically.
If I recall (as an example) Final Fantasy 8 had to be redone based on the PC port rather than original source code because, well, nobody cared about that back then.
The situation has almost certainly improved since then. Still, we have to remember that cases like Doom and Quake where there was cleanish source code was an exception, not the norm.
Doubly so when there are 'licensed' libraries or middleware involved, stuff coming to mind being:
- DMX sound driver (Doom) - RAD tools (e.x. Warcraft/Diablo for cutscene video) - Renderware (GTA2/3 and Vice City, among others) - Console SDKs (in the case of console games)
And, again, sure. It's possible that if the source code is clean enough, you can safely rip those things out without needing legal review. But if the source isn't clean enough (and a lot of games, its not) there is a concern.
Doubly so when it comes to console only releases and not wanting to accidentally anger a manufacturer by unintentionally exposing an undiscovered exploit.
Easy for you to say, if you're not paying the cost!
I dunno, there’s plenty of projects that turn MMORPGs into self-contained single player RPGs and/or simulate other players with bots, so I don’t really see any reason why they should be excluded.
I don't think they're saying exclude them, but expand the legislation to include a common scenario.
Releasing server binaries might be a stretch, but what about API specs?
Then any 3rd party could stand up a new server and at least have an inkling of where to go on.
That's never going to happen. Game companies are not going to give you their source code. Usually the source of any game that gets shut down is shared with games that are still live. Example: if Fallout 76 is shut down, Bethesda giving you their source would essentially be giving you the source to Skyrim also. I'm not saying that I have the solution or that your idea isn't good on some level, but we have to be realistic.
Counterpoint: maybe we could make proprietary software illegal, and make everything GPL so we can just request the source code to anything we want. With enough eyes all bugs are shallow, so why wouldn't banks and nuclear reactors want their source to be audited by the public? lol
(Software might become de facto open source with AI decomp anyway)
>> They need to make the server binaries available, along with client functionality to let you choose a server.
> Game companies are not going to give you their source code.
Okay but what about the thing they actually proposed?
I’ve worked on games where the server code is python, or there’s “core logic” in SQL, or we’ve used third party libraries that aren’t suitable for binary redistribution. Most studios will share code between games and server code isn’t intended to be redistributed so will contain “secret sauce” for multiple games. I’m not saying these are deal breakers but saying “just give them server binaries” isn’t a handwave solution for most of the games that these sorts of acts target.
Yeah, the idea of game companies (especially MMO or live service ones) being mandated to release server binaries or code is completely unworkable. Companies are not going to want to give away their main proprietary advantage that they've invested into. Games are already a high-risk investment and this would make it even higher risk because the little competitive moat between studios would be eliminated. The industry has been hit hard by layoffs and making gaming even less desirable for investment will further accelerate that. Any failed game (which is most games, because gaming is a hits driven industry) would be saddled with even more liability. Not to mention most commercial middleware is under NDA, so having their source become public would likely destroy those companies, too.
I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc. But straight up requiring server binaries is not going to be viable for a whole swath of online-only game studios like MMO/live service/subscription games etc.
How about "you need to release the binaries for the servers if you turn them off"? The intent of this sort of regulation is to prevent bait-and-switches were games become unplayable after players have invested their time and money.
Binaries are slightly less contentious, but still problematic for MMOs and other titles where they're just not designed to run on consumer gear, might have credentials baked in or might reveal trade secrets to competitors.
Fundamentally, entertainment and technology both are time limited experiences and can't reasonably be expected to last forever. Usually games get shut off when the playerbase has already moved on -- even if the binaries are available, you'd likely be playing in a ghost town.
> Binaries are slightly less contentious, but still problematic for MMOs and other titles where they're just not designed to run on consumer gear, might have credentials baked in or might reveal trade secrets to competitors
They are expected to run for at least a certain amount of time though, so maybe the solution is a requirement to post how many years it's guaranteed to be around, and if it isn't kept around that long, the server needs to be made available.
I don't think it's particularly relevant what hardware it's supposed to run on. Trade secrets are a legal privilege, so it's totally fair for society to say that certain other factors are more important in this extraordinarily limited set of circumstances, and if you're baking credentials into your server code directly, that's kind of your own fault, and I don't see "intentionally doing things in a riskier way" as something valuable to preserve.
The intent of the EU privacy directive was to clarify when websites were storing your data, instead every website has a click through banner that says they use cookies.
The actual implementation is very important.
I don't see the parallel here. You're saying you think that if companies are required to make the server binaries available after shutting down a live service game, people are going to be spammed by banners? Or is there some other emergent effect you're concerned about that you expect me to be able to infer?
I don't think this comment is made in good faith.
> Or is there some other emergent effect you're concerned about that you expect me to be able to infer?
Removing the unneeded snark, yes. A well intended, but poorly implemented law will not have the desired effect. If the law states that F2P games are exempt, for example (as Stop Killing Games has suggested), you'll find a massive swing towards free games with $60/80/100 in-game purchases to access the actual content.
I don't think your comment was in good faith either, hence the snark in my reply. When someone says "this is bad and I think it shouldn't be allowed", responding "solving the problem in a poor way is bad" isn't a meaningful comment. You went out of your way to describe what I was saying as bad without explaining what you thought was bad about it while maintaining an air of intellectual superiority. If you're surprised that leads people to respond negatively, I'm not sure what to tell you.
One general difficulty with implementing this is dealing with the case of a company going under. It's hard to compel performance out of a bankrupt organisation, so in a lot of cases it might still fall through. (And if this becomes a thing, you might see video game studios setting up companies to operate each game to exploit this).
I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that this would lead to a rush to the Hollywood model of a studio per project with contractors jumping between them. It work(s/ed) for movies because it was all in Hollywood but there isn’t really an equivalent for game developers.
> Companies are not going to want to give away their main proprietary advantage that they've invested into.
Companies never want to be regulated. Almost by definition. Thats why we have a government to force them to follow the law.
If IP rights are weakened by this, and its easier for competitors to reuse other people's code/innovations, then that sounds awesome to be, TBH!
> is not going to be viable for a whole swath of online-only game studios
If there is demand from players to play these types of games then someone will make them.
Its only getting easier to make games, after all. I'm not too worried about the dinosaurs losing their edge.
Basically by eliminating IP rights, what you're suggesting is to make games not commercially viable. Do you expect content creators to work for free?
What will happen is the money is invested into other industries and we'll see another video game crash like in the 80's.
Nobody is eliminating all IP rights. This is about games that are shutdown that they aren't making any money off of anyway.
Additionally, IP rights are already way too strict, and with technology we don't need nearly as much investment into it to make games. Productivity is massively improving. Huge R&D simply isn't needed anymore.
Nobody but you mentioned “eliminating” IP rights. Stop being disingenuous
> I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc.
The problem _here_ is if you use steam, or psn, or epic, or any third party provider you need that. It’s a bit like the California cancer label.
I think if there was a better criteria for “multiplayer”, “single player” , “required”, “online”, and “offline” it would help, but I’m not sure if that’s really feasible either.
This is a fair observation, but storefronts are subject to similar long-term concerns. I have lost plenty of Wii games when that store shut down.
That sounds like an argument around also enforcing some sort of consumer protections when shutting down a storefront, not an argument against protections for consumers when live service games are shut down
I don’t have a good answer but I agree with you.
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> That's never going to happen. Game companies are not going to give you their source code.
We don't need them to; AI can reverse engineer most shit now.
Even if US lobbying tries to hamper that, China will accelerate it.
> Game companies are not going to give you their source code.
I don't know if you misinterpreted my comment or if you're strawmanning, because I didn't say anything about source code.
Well then they can simply not shut down the old games.
> Software might become de facto open source with AI decomp anyway
Agreed.
> Example: if Fallout 76 is shut down, Bethesda giving you their source would essentially be giving you the source to Skyrim also.
That’s kinda bullshit to different degrees with different games.
> That's never going to happen. Game companies are not going to give you their source code.
Sure they will. They can be forced to by the government which is society's monopoly on violence.
> but we have to be realistic.
No we don't. We can just force companies to do it, using the threat of the law.
Funcom released a single player update for Dune: Awakening (not quite MMO but close) just a few weeks ago. They have simulated player economy and end game systems and flexible rules+progression for the game itself ... it's been great.
For many online games the same could be done. Simulate the systems, give players the ability to tweak the rules and just have fun.
This bill seems to be aimed at the situation where your purchase a copy of some game, and then the game becomes unplayable because some online service it depends on goes away.
For most MMORPGs nowadays the game client is a free download. You only pay for the online service. I seriously doubt they will draft this in a way that would cover that.
I would argue that server binaries are less important now in the age of AI. The ability to reverse engineer them is so accessible now.
I think more importantly / more digestible is that you can't pursue legislation against people running their own game servers if you no longer offer the game yourself.
This is definitely the most defensible position. I'm sure others want stronger protections, but taking lawsuits off the table for any item no longer for sale (be it a game, other software, hardware, media, etc) would make a ton of sense.
No one can reasonably claim to be harmed in such a scenario. Enshrine abandonware into law.
I find myself in general agreement but I wonder what second order issues would come about. Will we see companies listing an old game for a trillion dollars a copy just to keep rights?
Bob Dylan pulled some shenanigans like this. He "released" an album which only had like 100 copies, but in doing so he maintained copyright of all his old work (and let's be real that's all that anyone would ever listen to anyway).
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/jan/08/bob-dylan-box-...
I think Japan has an interesting model though for abandonware, at least when the copyright owner can't be tracked down: anyone can sell an old game, but a portion of the income goes into an escrow account in case the copyright holder is located.
It's currently accessible, but I'm sure they will start adding whatever roadblocks they can. e.g. Requiring attestation before running game, keeping some logic in server side which will be sent only to clients which pass the attestation, requiring platforms which grant more protections etc.
I can’t help but think that would end up violating some licensing agreements.
MMOs should have offline modes for LAN parties.
No reason a remote community can't host their own instance, and save bandwidth.
Ironically the various versions of WoW im self hosting have really good singleplayer support.
By the time something like this passes, everyone will have the ability to convert any game to unlicensed source code in a matter of hours.
Intellectual property is not going to be a thing anymore.
IP primarily existed for hundreds of years on things that are easy to copy. Technical difficulty is not relevant.
Hundreds of years ago, nothing was easy to copy, until the printing press. Early copyright surrounding that wasn’t about “IP protection” but rather who had the right to operate a printing press at all
And yet the clean room reverse engineering loophole remains in effect in the US.
It just used to take a lot of human labor, but LLMs are closing that gap. Fast.
You’re missing the point of the parent comment. IP exists BECAUSE things are easy to copy. If Apple REA’d Windows and sold it, Microsoft will get paid BECAUSE of IP. The system is working as designed.
Sure, this is why IBM gets a cut for every IBM-compatible PC clone sold /s
They don’t.
Exactly - I suppose this makes you one of today's lucky 10,000 [0] to learn about the sarcasm tag [1]. Welcome to the club of those in-the-know :)
[0] https://xkcd.com/1053/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_indicator#Internet_usage
You're dreaming. Prepare for DMCA2, where it will be illegal to run an LLM on a compiled binary for the purposes of decompiling under penalty of jail time.
As long as it is legal in at least one country, the code will be out there and models will train on it. The ship on IP has already sailed. The moat is gone.
Which models? Of Iranian Army or what? (this was sarcasm)
AI companies tend to discriminate against a lot of data they gather when it comes to training phases, usually for legal reason. Do you have any concrete proof that game decompilation efforts influenced any "mainstream" models?
I guess it would be any of the very powerful open weight models that anyone can run and finetune/jailbreak.
> Do you have any concrete proof that game decompilation efforts influenced any "mainstream" models?
Yeah tons of games have been decompiled recently. Its a big viral thing now.
With one giant exception, the advent of the algorithm all over again but with new proprietary and novel algorithms sets.
How is that working out for the mp3 algorithm or bluray decryption?
The OSS community just laughs at algo patents. There was never any ability to enforce them at the pre-AI scale. Post-AI the corpos have no chance. They lost.
Notice the word new, novel and proprietary. Would you like to ask your AI pipeline to duplicate ours? Unless someone knows what we do to parameterize, create and optimize new, proprietary and novel algorithm sets, it remains as part of any new scientific or engineering moat associated to an AI pipeline. This also include deep knowledge domain expertise and human decision trees applied along the way.
So if I am understanding you correctly, the final moat will be private AI optimizations hidden behind closed doors so the public has nothing to reverse engineer.
That moat will hold so long as no one cares about what you built enough to ask a model of similar power to yours "get me similar results to X" until they learn their own path to do so. Maybe one even more efficient than yours.
It will just take one of those people to Open Source something good enough and game over.
Even proprietary algorithms decay. Better proprietary AI algos are alive, grow and evolve.
> everyone
Assuming everyone is provided unlimited compute in the future is very naive
I already have built multiple confidential compute operating systems from 386 bytes of machine code all the way up with many novel and world-first features using exclusively consumer hardware I personally own, without any internet reliance, on my own property. Low level kernel and compiler debugging all with models that will run on old GPUs you can buy on ebay right now for under $500.
The way most people use AI, lighting money on fire, is a skill issue. You can build anything cheaply now if you generally know how computers work at a low level and can tell models exactly what to do.
Link to cheap processors and storage?
If I could run SoTA models on my desktop, you would be onto something. While it's a subscription, the big guys who own the data centers will do whatever the guys in government tell them to. TLDR: you'll start getting the "I can't assist you with this task" reply to all your prompts.
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That's why they're pricing out desktop builders and trying to lock everyone into hosted model consumption from a cheap mobile.
And if you can afford it a VR headset or AR glasses to simulate an 80" display
"Will introduce?" Not even in the hopper yet? If it's not in the hopper and doesn't have a few co-sponsors, it's just a PR stunt.
Election coming. Gotta gin up support. And if you forget later or it mysteriously falls to the bottom of your priority list so be it.
Also announcements of future announcements is trendy. Companies do it all the time.
> "Will introduce?" Not even in the hopper yet?
There isn't even a fucking bill draft. This could have been a single staffer with AI and like a small number of industry contact's work for a week.
Mike Johnson sent the House home early again. Has to wait until the next session before it’s introduced on the floor.
Not introduced yet:
https://www.congress.gov/member/ritchie-torres/T000486?hl=to...
…why wouldn’t he release the bill text?
I’d want a revenue floor before this took effect. An indie developer should not have to worry about getting sued because they didn’t properly turn off a hobby project.
He has not introduced that bill yet. You'd see it here if it had been:
https://www.congress.gov/member/ritchie-torres/T000486?hl=to...
Indie developers can probably avoid killing games the most easily, they're unlikely to have 3rd party tech or IP that's only temporarily licensed, or elaborate DRM, mandatory connectivity/accounts etc, and may even have complete autonomy/power to do what they want.
> Indie developers can probably avoid killing games the most easily
They can and they should. I wouldn't want someone to lose their livelihood because they didn't rigorously test a product they made and released for fun.
Anyone using AWS managed services has 3rd party tech that is temporarily licensed. Any dependence on steam, EOS, google, apple, is a third party dependency.
What about steam relay? Any APIs at all? I think a revenue floor is simpler and more future proof.
Please Jesus. Making a ton of online games as an indie would be suicide. Not to mention the obligations going on a balance sheet when they need funding.
Like functionally should probably be like that 200k revenue or more since it’s potentially a few weeks of labor obligation
This wouldn't have helped with my latest run in with artificial Product Existence failure*, but I'm glad to see it anyhow.
*Hey, remember how Neal Stephenson's last project was writing for a nascent shared sci-fi universe? Did you get a chance to play the visual novel that was its first entry, which was hosted on a crypto project's website? Well, I sure hope you did, because the crypto project rugpulled and took the VN down with it, effectively turning a Neal Stephenson novella into lost media less than a year after its initial release.
I am a gamer who has played around with private servers and emulators to revisit my gaming past - one thing I wonder about is how laws would handle game-changing updates? World of Warcraft famously does major renovations to game mechanics each expansion and minor changes each patch. What is to prevent a company from releasing an “update patch” that essentially cripples the game, then shutting down the game at that point and releasing the crippled code as the only available version?
Careful, you might accidentally improve the user experience of SaaS products.
I like this but why stop at Video Games?
it's easier to formulate and pass something with a smaller scope, like this, and then expand/iterate on it to apply more broadly.
Maybe in one aspect but it also raises the question, "Why is Congress concerned with details like this?"
Just trying to point out what could be the opposition for this, not that it's a bad thing to pass.
Consumer protection is already clearly the focus of Congress, and with the demise of the Chevron deference in 2024, it seems that Congress needs to bind (such that they can) groups operated by the Executive Branch to uphold consumer rights explicitly instead of allowing regulators to navigate the commercial market.
The answer to Why is Congress concerned with details like this? is that the Supreme Court of the United States made it their concern by rejecting an established practice of deferring to expert regulators instead of electable people who probably lack the relevant knowledge and experience.
> is that the Supreme Court of the United States made it their concern by rejecting an established practice of deferring to expert regulators instead of electable people who probably lack the relevant knowledge and experience
The current Supreme Court unfortunately unfortunately seems to lack the knowledge and experience to recognize the logic in this thinking (or just doesn't care because it doesn't fit their agenda)
Tis a silly question. This has the combination of being something that the populace either doesn't care about at all (so no opposition from _constituents_) or rapidly supports (basically any gamer with some form of nostalgia that has gone unmet). As an added bonus it has the potential to set a legal precedent over similar more serious software such as SaaS offerings with a client component.
I could use the same argument to oppose pretty much any legislation that isn't like, solving healthcare or preventing climate change. For any given issue, there's almost always something more important than it to at least some people, so if the best argument against fixing a problem is "there are other problems that should be fixed", that's a pretty strong argument in favor of the fix.
I agree. I think this is why lobbyists will be flooding this guy very soon. They don't want the door cracked.
:) You can argue almost all software is a video game in some way, just gotta argue yourself a way that the definition of "video game" would include your software in some way: https://excel-esports.com/
It's easier to pass a bill for video games than try to cram movies and music in the same bill.
I doubt it will become law either way.
Congress.gov says Rep. Ritchie Torres has sponsored 171 bills since 2021 and only one became a law, five passed the House and most of those were under Democrat majority. [1]
[1] https://www.congress.gov/quick-search/legislation?congressGr...
I would say that it can be pretty simple to solve these problems. If a software company is going to implement a license server or a time limited certificate into a piece of software that will prevent the software from working, then they should be mandated to keep all customer payments in escrow and within 5 minutes of the software becoming unusable by the users, the money has to be returned, with interest and adjusted for inflation.
So every week when World of Warcraft goes down for maintenance for a couple of hours. Blizzard should have to forfeit all of the subscribers money, since it is unusable for more than 5 minutes?
If a server runs for 30 years, and then shuts down. It should have to return 30 years of revenue, plus interest?
> So every week when World of Warcraft goes down for maintenance for a couple of hours. Blizzard should have to forfeit all of the subscribers money, since it is unusable for more than 5 minutes?
Yes. That's exactly what I wrote.
Yeah so simple, every gaming company basically has to operate without money.
The online component is a tough sell, but for anything with single player it should be as simple as allow the binary to still run / download?
Or they can sell a product that doesn't have artificial and arbitrary self destruct dates.
Good, now make games transferable on death. My kid should be able to inherit my Steam library.
If a physical copy can be, then a digital copy should also be.
If you own it then it becomes inheritable.
It’s software, so if you own it, you can sell or give away as many copies as you want.
I own a Stephen King novel. I'm looking at it right now. Your contention is that I can sell or give away as many copies as I want of it, and if not, why?
No. You can sell your one copy of your book you own. It’ll leave your possession when the sale completes. The new owner can sell it.
Software has different properties. If you own it, you can sell it without losing your copy, so you can keep selling it.
I own a CD. Can I sell or give away as many copies of it as I want?
No, there is only one physical copy for you to sell, and you’re not granted ownership of the music itself. However, if a law were to be passed that grants ownership of the music on the CD, you would be able to sell unlimited copies of the music.
Literally no one is proposing anything similar to that.
I was wondering how many bad faith questions you were going to ask before something like that. They were still good clarifying questions, though, even though intended otherwise. Hopefully you understand the issue with the word ownership better now.
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I'm glad they're spending time and effort on issues important to everyday Americans' problems.
You sound dismissive, but gamers as a whole is a demographic that is hard to be ignored and happens to span groups otherwise counter to one another. Any politician who would not take advantage does it to their own detriment.
He represents a poverty-stricken district. Nobody should give a fuck about gamers until their basic needs are sorted.
So, to be clear, you believe government should focus on one problem at a time to the exclusion of anything else or am I missing something? That's never been how government, of any form up to and including the utopian visions that people keep in their dreams, has functioned.
I agree, we have much bigger fish to fry, but "I don't care about this issue so nobody should" isn't how you build a coalition to get the poverty addressed. A lot of politics is "hey Gamers, remember how I got you that thing you wanted? Well now I need support as I take on a bigger, more important topic". Inversely, saying "I don't care about your problem until another problem is resolved" tends to fray the group because you're quite literally telling people you don't respect them or their needs/wants.
You should check out the book "Let This Radicalize You", great primer on how to organize and get actual results vs doomering on the internet.
Addendum (reason for edit): Here's a list of other policy proposals and stances this guy is making: https://ritchietorres.house.gov/resources Draw your own conclusions, but he doesn't seem like he's 100% focused on gamer issues at present...
If your life is otherwise impoverished, a video game could be one of the few options for affordable entertainment, particularly if a viable market for used games exists (which is one of the things this legislation wants to mandate).
I see we've downgraded to no bread and virtual circuses.
So the way we fix poverty is free PlayStations for welfare bums? Holy fuck.
no, poor people shouldnt have entertainment they've already paid for be taken away such that they have to spend a second or third time on it.
That's not at all what they said and you know it, so why pretend that's what they said?
You know.. and I am just going to throw it out there: never going to happen. So we might as well do what can be done.
> Nobody should give a fuck about gamers
Buddy, gamers are a LARGE part of how Trump won his first term in 2016.
I just realized where the anger comes from: this particular division is not something that D/R team could easily splinter ( yet anyway -- I am sure we will soon be hating on the candy crush ppl ).
You know how some engineering teams have a really difficult time prioritizing? Maybe in planning there's a big long list of project ideas some of which really need more discovery to define scope. There can be stuff that seems really important to a long-term vision but is also hard to estimate and higher risk of scope creep etc. And there's stuff that's cheap/fast/low-risk but doesn't solve the larger important problems? And even in the context of a company that is still burning through investor money, you fix _some_ of the smaller things even while you're still figuring out the bigger things, b/c otherwise you'd likely _never_ do the smaller things?
I'm not saying legislators are doing their best in a good faith effort to serve their constituents. But even if they were, you would sometimes see things like this, right?
I know some teams don't let work out-prioritize the party planning committee.
Video games is about as big an industry as TV and movies.
Bigger
I'm glad you can handle the concept of handling more than 1 thing at a time.
Yeah, I'm certainly not opposed to this law, but it seems like a strange thing to focus on as our democracy and the rule of law is crumbling in real-time.
I sincerely don't understand this mentality. Legislators consider more than one bill per legislative session. We can (and must!) push along multiple axes, otherwise we will always be behind right?
The house is engulfed in fire and we're sweeping the kitchen floor.
If this were the only bill being considered I'd agree with you. By this logic we would only focus on one issue at a time and others would get worse in the meantime, so we would always be behind.
Just because the fire department is insane doesn't mean that the cleaning crew needs to stop working.
If we never passed normal somewhat mundane legislation in "unprecedented times," we wouldn't have passed anything new since September 2001.
> the rule of law is crumbling in real-time.
Why would the people in charge focus on this? They consider it a feature, not a bug.
> but it seems like a strange thing to focus on as our democracy and the rule of law
Society is improved one issue at a time, and if you sit around waiting for the revolution to come, you will end up like the socialists who never win any elections and achieve nothing for decades.
No, we do not need to overthrow all of capitalism overnight, or solve "democracy", or whatever it is that you are advocating for, before we take any action to improve society.
That is code for "just don't do anything except LARP and complain, and attack anyone who actually is accomplishing things". Its a useless philosophy.