Maybe it’s better to start in a smaller, more focused and less controversial topic to set some precedents before trying to boil the ocean.

Yeah, it's frankly ridiculous that "smart" devices need internet access. Why shouldn't my smart oven behave exactly like my Brother printer? There's no reason my oven needs access to the internet, it can do everything it needs to do on my local network. My phone should be able to connect directly to it via a scan of the local network subnet or using any number of service announcement technologies that already exist.

And it makes these devices worse. I should be able to control my oven using a simple REST api and home assistant. The fact that in order to interact with my oven with a home assistant I first have to reach out to my manufacture servers is just insane. It's an oven. It only has so many sensors and nobs to twist.

About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever. But that too should be solved with the same regulation that says "Ovens, refrigerators, washing machines, thermostats, and doorbells must not connect to the internet". We can teach the world about VPNs if they want remotely access their devices.

“Ah, but you didn’t buy a thing, you bought a license to temporarily use a thing in ways we deemed acceptable!” -publishers somewhere

  It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for.

This is silly. No developer should be obligated to support an online game forever.

Imagine a highly complex online game that requires a few people and tens of thousands a month in cloud costs to keep it running. Now imagine that this game is 25 years old and only has 100 players total left. Are you saying that this developer must maintain the exact same quality of online play for 100 people?

It's hardly a whim if a game runs 15 years, they announce "our active playerbase is 60 people" and the game shuts down.

I think we need to stop treating it as a dichotomy.

There's an understanding it won't last forever, when you buy a multiplayer game, ans making devs make offline versions in the cases where its trivial is going to bite indie game studios.

Gamers have repeatedly shown they dont like subs. Its hard to model "we want to charge you 40 cents per month, escalating with inflation" but thats what youre asking for

Then I will simply stop purchasing games and continue to play old ones that I can run on my computer as I please, online server or just do something better with my time.

The whole thing seems absurd when you remember that no one needs video games. This doesn’t need to be legislated. Let them kill video games and then stop buying their video games if they’re just going to kill it off. Why are people still buying games that cash be killed off?

If enough people are still buying these games then clearly the game being killed off is not an important factor. If it was, they wouldn’t buy them.

What does need to be legislated is how these games and services are marketed: it must be made clear latest date the service is guaranteed to be up.

This is a phase and data center parts are usable for gaming. (Yes even with all the rasterizer and texture units chopped off, we'll have a wrapper that does that work in compute shaders)

Hardware scarcity and cloud incentives are real, but they're also part of the same broader trend: more dependency on centralized providers, less control for the buyer

> The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud

That might be your future. But as long as there are computing platforms that users can run in their own home there will be games for them.

Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud, and their customers have proven willing to pay higher prices for the types of gaming experience Nintendo will deliver.

fortunately, that's been already attempted and despite the best circumstances imaginable resulted in a much welcome failure.

>On September 29, 2022, Google announced that it would shut down Stadia, citing its lack of traction with users. The service was shut down on January 18, 2023, and Google refunded all purchases for hardware and games made through the Google and Stadia stores.

even more fortunately, further attempts will fail for the same reason - input lag.

>So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

This example is humorously short and this is why there is backlash to game companies shutting down games. What about the people who bought it towards the end? They just get nothing? All that time and money spent just gets thrown in the trash because they don't want a cloud bill? They either need to opensource the games and servers or keep supporting them for a decade or longer.

Counterpoint: UK law gives you six years to sue if goods are faulty or otherwise not as advertised, why should software be any different?

Not everything is economic value. For gamers, an online game can be a community hub, part of their identity, a hobby. It’s not about whether they got their money’s worth, it’s about destroying a virtual “place” they’re emotionally and socially invested, and the specific skill they posses when they’re there.

Every developer on videogames has some kind of offline mode already implemented, because its necessary to be able to playtest the game builds on the developer machines. Any argument against SKG is lobbyst nonsense. With the very specific exception of stuff like MMOs. We are seeing cases of pirates being able to play those "turned off games" through cracks and private servers, so there is absolutely 0 reason why the publisher cant already do it.

we still got newer companies out of china like moore threads working on gaming gpus, they had to pause new production because of the whole ai shortage but it looks like they might restart. is it usable for any serious gaming right now? no. but its already fighting the nvidia/amd monopoly together with intel.

as long as there is a market the producers will come, even in a super capital intensive industry like this. and it looks like nvidia is partially going back on the whole data center push with rtx spark. its just one high end product but it shows they know a lot of people want local gaming and local inference.

> Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for.

Companies would just default to saying "we reserve the right to shut off online connectivity at any time."

i remember when multiplayer games could be connected to a user operated server.

the basic function of a multiplayer server is to keep the players game state synched, large numbers of players, and very fast gameplay vs connection rate and jitter is fly in ointment.

That's fine if "gamers" are my age, but 3 years for a 12 year old is an eternity. This isn't a thing which can be handled like the cookie consent popups.

Judging by the amount of people saying they've used and enjoyed cloud gaming I'm not as confident as you to make that claim. If cloud keeps making offers good enough such that people pick it instead of building their own PC, the number of personal devices will decrease.

I enjoy low-latency competitive games, and I'd say those are unlikely to get replaced by cloud, because many players notice latency spikes immediately. But I'm a bit skeptical of how much market value can be sustained by people who like the feeling of owning their own hardware, or feel the need to have lower latency in games.

I'm sure if someone built a data center within two blocks of my home and I was able to stream from it, many of these issues would disappear as well.

>Nor do I think Nintendo will simply drop their hardware efforts to focus on cloud,

Consoles might as well already be cloud for all you control them. But I guess I should've specified PC gaming. I thought it was indicated from the context of "stop killing games". Also, to be clear, I'll never "cloud" game or use consoles. I'll just remain in the past with old hardware and old (and new indie) games. But the "PC gaming industry" as an economic block larger than movies is dying and that's a shame.

Consoles already make you pay for online services. They already sunset games so I think even under the new rules they have the ability to stop that service at any time.

Certainly we'll just move the fig leaf so the free online component of games are now part of a subscription.

Ideally a free subscription through packed in keys and such but we'll probably end up being nickel and dimed even further.

Im a professional gamedev. There is pretty much no indie on earth who actually depends on cloud systems to work, because that stuff is expensive and indies dont have money. Thats a megacorp thing particularly from AAA publishers. Indies are either singleplayer (this is 0 problem) or they have local servers.

That article is paid for by the lobbysts and completely incorrect and wrong.

> Now it becomes way more expensive for small studios to come out with games that have online features.

Good riddance. Online features suck. Make your game multiplayer or make it singleplayer. Don't add pointless online features.

PS all you need to make sure it works is release the server once you stop supporting it yourself.

> They rely on a huge network of interconnected cloud micro services.

Give people the docker file.

> A single match might require separate proprietary systems for matchmaking, player inventories, anti cheat, metrics tracking, and database management. Many of those come with licenses that don't allow you to just give away the code for free.

That's more AAA stuff not indie.

This the lobbyist's FUD, and SKG are so up-front with the reasonable constraints that it makes it pretty obvious that this is a paid piece.

Edit: oh, it's yours. Spend 5 minutes understanding exactly what SKG have said they are not asking for.

some timing-sensitive games such as Clair Obscur (parry) or I Am Your Beast (movement)? sure, they depend on low latency. that said, GeForce Now is, sadly, pretty good nowadays. enough to play a moderately fast paced game such as DEATHLOOP. Ukraine, streaming from Germany. 5 GHz is basically required, but in slower-paced games, on a phone, with 720p streaming, you can get by with 4G.

even games are not really a moat for owning hardware - next Gears with its timing-sensitive reloading mechanic can just get adapted for cloud.

if cloud gaming gets another hype wave for one reason or another, this time I am pretty sure they will lock in a much bigger user base. me personally? still committed to owning my hardware, but I can totally imagine my mother playing some RTS on a GeForce Now-connected tablet and having zero complaints.

So who gets to be the arbiter of how much time $70 is worth?

You?

The companies making the games?

Why should they get to destroy games—gone, forever, with no chance of retrieval or resurrection—that hundreds of people put their time and love into, and millions of people want to play, just because they think it'll make this quarter's stock price numbers look better?

Copyright was created to protect the rights of the creator for a limited time to promote the useful arts. Creations are supposed to become part of the public domain once the creator is no longer getting use out of them. Game companies want to break that bargain, scorched-earth style, and ensure that no one can ever use the things that they create to make anything new.

You can't make a person see a problem if his livelihood depends on not seeing it.

In my gaming circles, people who work on SaaS solutions are against SKG even though they are avid gamers and even open source contributors. They just recoil on a thought of an EOL plan. Same on HN.

"Think of the indies" is just same old "Think of the children" astroturfing.

> About the only grace I give these manufacturers is the fact that google and apple both make it an annoying pain to maintain applications in their app store. A manufacturer can't simply drop "oven app" once and expect it to be available on the store forever.

If the app doesn't use the Internet then the natural way to provision it is to have it pre-loaded on the device anyway. Why should the goal of "avoid needing to hit the manufacturer's servers" involve hitting Google's servers?

Any sufficiently popular multiplayer Indy game gets ruined by cheaters.

Two of my favorite games of all, Chivalry 2 and Hell Let Loose, are indie studio games and this law would make more expensive to make.

California AB1921 notably doesn't match those opinions.

Clair Obscur was perfectly playable for me through GeForce Now, for what it is worth, even when hitting parry timing. (N = 1, but a datum nonetheless)

Or they have an indie game theyre "making" and being forced to build an EOL plan for a game that will statistically be a flop is silly to them.

I feel a carveout for total says, say $200k USD or less, would be reasonable. Otherwise you're just conscripting indie time.

I was working on a game, but I'm not looking forward to releasing updates everytime steam changes their relay. Considering scrapping multiplayer completely.

Why would you buy my new game if you're spending all your attention on the one I sold you 10 years ago?

what is truly silly, is the practice of online requirements, to operate software.

"deemed". the past tense is doing a lot of work here.

That’s the exact excuse used by the publisher in the article.

I think this is the root of it and what the article describes in the first half. I suspect owning a copy of a game will soon be completely eliminated and replaced w the subscription model. Then when subscription dollars stop flowing, the company naturally winds down the service.

I don't see how the publisher is relevant here. It would be the developer saying that.

6 years seems pretty reasonable to expect servers to be up. And wouldnt bankrupt every company giving prorata refunds based on that %

Nobody has a problem with rentals. Just be up front with the terms and don't try to pretend it's a sale.

That game is called World Of Warcraft.

It had its server reimplemented by enthusiasts [1] with no access to this "one of a kind cloud" for decades now. Heck it even supposedly had game client ported to new engine [2].

> B-but we can't release the binaries due to licensing...

Release the source. As a developer you should be able to write code that allows to stub out all the propriety parts. The community will replace your speedtrees, matchmaking, netcode, anticheats and so on.

Change is hard we get it, but the excuses are on par with any other industry..

[1] https://www.getmangos.eu/

[2] https://turtlecraft.gg/remastered

The comment you are replying to doesn't argue any such thing, and is pretty clear in its explanation of how your position is perfectly compatible with what is requested.

So release the server code as OSS, data necessary to function & support community servers. Even in a crappy hard-to-support way, the community will usually figure out a way.

IMO, the move from community servers over to matchmaking & vendor only servers being the only viable option was a huge disservice to the long-levity of games. If I find the code around here, I could still get a Tremulous server running today for a few bucks, even if I haven't played that game for 20+ years.

Gaming companies did not need to insert themselves into the process in the first place. I could conceivably continue to locally run Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc forever because there is no external server component.

"Here's a device we sold you, but when you first turn it on you need to sign this 30 page contract which says you actually don't own the device, if you are mad at us you have to go to our preferred arbitration, and we reserve the right to turn your device off at any time on a whim because you left a bad review somewhere. Sign it or enjoy your worthless brick which we will not refund. Oh, and now every single manufacturer requires the same thing for this device class. So you can either have a washing machine or hand wash your cloths in your bathtub".

These sorts of EULA should be flat out illegal.

Why should we let these kinds of concerns dictate what happens with our cultural heritage?

Why should profit be the first, last, and only consideration when it comes to deciding whether the art of today is even possible to view tomorrow?

because you made an effort born of true craftsmanship, because you found the properties of the game that appealed to users and preserved them, instead of taking them away, or locking them into a premium paid tier version.

Releasing the server code isn't always ideal. There's likely a ton of secrets, hardcoding, and exploits.

The author is arguing for it.

This is what the post was saying:

1. No nerfing to the game/service whatsoever. This means you can't just kill online play. Ever.

2. Charge a monthly price or significantly increase the purchasing price.

Clearly neither of these are viable for most games and the game industry.

Not every game has a server architecture like that. There's been a Renaissance of indie multuplayer due to good libraries and third party dependencies.

Pretending that not doing that is bad design would have a chilling effect on novel games.

I'd be 100% for "if your game has an easily releasable server you have to release it on EoS" but this bill isn't it.

My opinion is that is a fraudulent rental masquerading as a sale.

And any and all EULAs or similar documents presented after a sale should be completely null and void. But any corporation attempting to that should be fined a signficant portion of their revenue. Past that, dissolution of company.

But no, we live in a shit society that someone who signs up for a demo of Disney+ and then has his wife die due to bad food, and they tried to slap indefinite arbitration on him.

https://lawreview.missouri.edu/infinite-arbitration-how-one-...

This whole country feels like one big fucking company store scam.

1. Yes.

2. It's not just a country. Sadly this is a worldwide problem, this is the global standard. And it's sickening.

Yeah, contract law is simply busted here. If it were sane, these contracts would be deemed null and void. In fact, common contract law does require that both sides be compensated. It doesn't require fair or reasonable compensation and that's the big problem.

But I think there is an argument to be made that the EULA has no compensation. Since payment has already been made for the product, it's completely one sided.