I work in games, worked on some of the huge(40+ million players) online live-service games out there, and I have no idea what you're talking about here:
" What isn’t realistic is stamping their feet and demanding that companies make it possible for people to run their own servers for live service games, just the licensing issues are going to be a nightmare to solve"
Like....what licencing issues? After the game is "dead" and the parent company doesn't want to support it anymore, we could easily release the source code or even just the executables for the servers. There's nothing complicated about it, it's just some windows executables with a whole load of config files to tell them what to serve and how. I once had to go to a gaming conference with a really basic laptop to setup a local-only version of our servers to host some private lobby of the game - it took all of 30 minutes to set it up. But oh no, players can't have that because what, it's too complicated?
Like, as someone who actually wrote some of these servers for various services in these games, I really don't buy this entire argument that it can't be done. If anything, it's just the people at the top who have no idea about tech dragging their feet and coming up with implausible "what if" scenarios as to why it can't be done. For at least 3 of the games I worked on I could give you a zip file with all the files and you'd have the servers up and running within an hour, given powerful enough hardware. And then what, we can't change the servers the clients connect to? Please. Modders would have that done within 24 hours of release, probably with a nice GUI for players to use.
>> that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.
Yes, and their help isn't needed with any of it, the game is by definition dead at this point, the alternative is the publisher shutting everything down and no one ever playing it again.
>>If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.
It's not just about consumer choice - it's also about us losing part of the culture that cannot be restored once shut down.
I say that wholeheartedly as someone who has worked on games that are(for the time being) still online. And in few years they will be inevitably shut down, leading to years of my life and effort being inaccessible to anyone - the only way that you will be able to experience it is through Youtube videos. That's a cultural tragedy, and I'm 10000% for companies being forced through law to include it in their design that _eventually_ the servers have to be released to the public. They don't have to offer any support whatsoever, the communities will figure it out, guaranteed.
> Like....what licencing issues? After the game is "dead" and the parent company doesn't want to support it anymore, we could easily release the source code or even just the executables for the servers.
I can't speak to the parent's stance, but more generally this would be referring to IP licensing and patent encumbrance. I've worked on a number of large systems where non-trivial parts of the codebase were licensed from external parties with distribution restrictions in place. Even the executable versions would be problematic as the contracts go to great lengths to lock it down to strictly company XYZ may modify and use the IP, but nothing else regardless of the form or means of distribution.
Releasing said systems as-is would require either relicensing to allow distribution (very costly and potentially impossible if the vendor declines), or replacing that functionality with a cleanroom implementation. Which is both costly, time consuming and difficult. You may also run into further issues there if the contract forbids cloning functionality, or even worse: if there is patent encumbrance you have to go back to the relicensing option.
No problem at all. Just release your own source code. Leave out the licensed stuff. That's how id did it. If you have non-ridiculous development practices, knowing what's your IP and what is not is a basic requirement anyway.
The modder base will reimplement the licensed stuff, if needed.
What if your licensed component is non-trivial, e.g. provides critical features so that omission renders the service entirely non-functional? These laws would need to cater for that scenario, as skimming over that detail and allowing stripped releases would either mean:
1) companies get to release broken, incomplete source under the banner of commercial licensing restrictions.
2) truly upstanding companies (/s) will use this as a loophole to block the majority of their source as commercially licensed by stuffing it all under related companies and licensing it back to themselves. e.g. Company A selling game licenses majority of source (say, the entire server platform) from Company B -> Company B can't be compelled to release their engine because they aren't selling the game.
#1 would be an annoyance through to major challenge depending on the scale, #2 seems a more likely outcome for the major players as they can afford to play that sort of game and get away with it.
To be clear, I think this law should be implemented. However it would be pointless to pretend that licensing constraints won't add significant complexity, and many inventive pathways to highly evasive yet technically compliant outcomes.
I think most people are looking at existing games made under different constraints and concluding that it can't be done. But If the law passed, to me it's quite clear that it's just something that would have to be considered during development - like, we already have to get a sign-off from legal on using any open source libraries, and they usually say if it's fine for something that ships vs something that doesn't. If we knew beforehand that server binaries will eventually ship then that changes the answer from legal, and we either don't use it or try to licence it for that usecase.
Yes, this would force the nature of licensing to change. It does not apply retroactively, so the legal processes would naturally need to shift. Such licenses were used in the past, so there is no reason they cannot be considered again.
" What isn’t realistic is stamping their feet and demanding that companies make it possible for people to run their own servers for live service games, just the licensing issues are going to be a nightmare to solve"
Like....what licencing issues? After the game is "dead" and the parent company doesn't want to support it anymore, we could easily release the source code or even just the executables for the servers. There's nothing complicated about it, it's just some windows executables with a whole load of config files to tell them what to serve and how. I once had to go to a gaming conference with a really basic laptop to setup a local-only version of our servers to host some private lobby of the game - it took all of 30 minutes to set it up. But oh no, players can't have that because what, it's too complicated?
Like, as someone who actually wrote some of these servers for various services in these games, I really don't buy this entire argument that it can't be done. If anything, it's just the people at the top who have no idea about tech dragging their feet and coming up with implausible "what if" scenarios as to why it can't be done. For at least 3 of the games I worked on I could give you a zip file with all the files and you'd have the servers up and running within an hour, given powerful enough hardware. And then what, we can't change the servers the clients connect to? Please. Modders would have that done within 24 hours of release, probably with a nice GUI for players to use.
>> that could do this work has been dissolved or are working on other things.
Yes, and their help isn't needed with any of it, the game is by definition dead at this point, the alternative is the publisher shutting everything down and no one ever playing it again.
>>If you don’t like games that require a server to function don’t buy them, that’s a choice that can be made.
It's not just about consumer choice - it's also about us losing part of the culture that cannot be restored once shut down.
I say that wholeheartedly as someone who has worked on games that are(for the time being) still online. And in few years they will be inevitably shut down, leading to years of my life and effort being inaccessible to anyone - the only way that you will be able to experience it is through Youtube videos. That's a cultural tragedy, and I'm 10000% for companies being forced through law to include it in their design that _eventually_ the servers have to be released to the public. They don't have to offer any support whatsoever, the communities will figure it out, guaranteed.