> I recommend taking a look into the different standards for website accessibility, GDPR, etc. On paper it sounds great, who doesn't want an accessible websites or privacy? But in practice it's a total drain of resources, real legal risk even if you genuinely try and be compliant, and often you just pay a lot of $$$ for legal, compliance advisors etc. so you could tick off a box and have some sort of insurance in case you're being sued.
This is a really good analogy, except you made one mistake: it’s not difficult at all to design something to be accessible and respectful of privacy as long as you do it from the start. If you try to build something inaccessible and privacy-invading then get caught and have to retrofit accessibility and privacy at the last minute to avoid fines and lawsuits, that’s when it becomes difficult.
And you see this exact mistake crop up in the Stop Killing Games criticism as well. People say that it’s difficult because they are thinking about taking the status quo and retrofitting longevity. For instance, trying to retroactively obtain licenses to distribute components that they didn’t originally have. When in practice, the effect of a law like this is that it would push game developers to make the right choices up front like picking appropriately licensed components, so there’s no barrier to keeping the game alive when the time comes to cease support.
It might also have escaped your attention that the EU was perfectly willing to create accessibility and privacy regulations, so if you are likening Stop Killing Games to these things then it stands to reason that this is not a reason for the EU to avoid Stop Killing Games legislation.
This is my second business after already having experience with GDPR. Thinking of it in advance does make it easier but it can definitely still break a business and it's not a trivial cost. Moreover, it's still changing frequently, just about 2 years ago there was a major change were asking for simple consent was not good enough and now there's a whole CMP TCF2 protocol you have to implement. From research I made, the tools that provide good coverage are not cheap, I pay a lot of money for these services, and they are also 3rd parties that without them the game experience might degrade. Just a little example, if the privacy consent service times out, the game load time increases to about ~10s at least.
Moreover, I have to also pay a company just to be my representative in the EU and have a stupid email address that is completely useless.
I don't know these things definitely don't make my appreciate regulations, and I think if you want to add more layers of regulation, you have to be really thoughtful about them, because often like DRM, eventually they screw the little guys more than they screw the bad actors.
> Thinking of it in advance does make it easier but it can definitely still break a business
If privacy regulations can break your business, then I think there’s a very high chance what you are doing is exactly the sort of thing the regulations are explicitly designed to discourage.
> now there's a whole CMP TCF2 protocol you have to implement.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. There’s no regulation saying you have to implement that. That’s a consequence of you making the choice to trade user data. Somebody who does not choose to do that has much less work to do. This is an example of the regulations working as intended. You’re supposed to see the friction and make better choices up front to avoid it, not make the same choices then complain about the friction.
> eventually they screw the little guys more than they screw the bad actors.
If I have to watch ads, I personally prefer personalized ads as they waste less of my time if I happen to see an ad for something I would actually want. I think generally, scaring people with "oh noes they'll have your annonymuized data" is not that dissimilar from scaring about radiation radiation from their wifi router.
Anyway, the discussion was about the harms of regulations and why developers would resist these. I personally know several indie mobile developers that had games that their core business model was ad monetization, and the regulation made these businesses less viable, and it's likely that players who enjoyed these kind of games, will now see less of these indie games.
I personally think this regulation does more harm then good for small businesses and players alike. I think legeslation has to be super careful when it comes to regulating businesses, anytime I had to deal with compliance around accessibility, privacy, transparency etc. I saw how intentions were good, but execution was absolutely terrible, with so many holes that the ones who benefit the most are the big companies that can workaround these clauses, while good intentioned small businesses need to spend money on compliance before they even know if the business is going to be viable.
> I personally think this regulation does more harm then good for small businesses and players alike
Are we supposed to just accept that games will die because of the profits of some game dev studios?
> I saw how intentions were good, but execution was absolutely terrible, with so many holes that the ones who benefit the most are the big companies that can workaround these clauses
I think regulation is a superweapon that should mostly be used in cases where there can be severe long-term damage (physical and health dangers, loans, etc.) or in cases where what it regulates is simple and easy to comply with.
For example, it makes a lot of sense to regulate gasoline so there won't be any lead in it. It also makes sense to standartize and simplify loans which can also have severe impact on people. I don't think it makes sense to regulate games to that degree, which are merely a form of entertainment and have no severe consequences on people, especially not SKG.
> If it would be so important for players to ensure their games stay alive, they'd just stop buying these games and they'd apply pressure on devs to do that
Unfortunately, it only works on paper. In reality publishers can add stuff after the release when people already paid money for it (classic bait and switch). So buying only "good" games does not guarantee that they will stay that way. Also, we did try "applying pressure", it didn't work, that's why we are here currently.
> I don't think it makes sense to regulate games to that degree
Nobody is asking to regulate the games themselves, only how they are distributed after their end of life.
> which are merely a form of entertainment and have no severe consequences on people
People make money using specific videogames. So there are consequences of shutting down games for good.
Most of the discussions I've seen about this disregard the fact that on paper it's all nice, but in practice it's a rabbit-hole of constraints. Developers often use 3rd party SDKs and services that can render the game useless if they are not included is just one concern, and many times they cannot be technically or legally included in client versions for players.
Personally, for all I care, even as a game-dev, I don't mind if there'd be a law that would allow players to modify and even reverse engineers previous versions of the game for the sole purpose of playing the game.
This kind of regulation demands nothing from the game developers, doesn't force them to comply with anything, and doesn't incur any additional costs. Maybe there'd be some tiny loss of revenue, but it's arguably miniscule if the games are already abandoned.
It pretty much already happening with games like the C&C Generals that have pirated abandonware versions.
Most of the demands I've seen from the SKG crowd demand actual laws that define what developers must provide players, instead they should just legalize reverse engineering.
> Developers often use 3rd party SDKs and services that can render the game useless if they are not included
That is indeed a case, and potential solutions has been discussed. The main idea is that games that have already been made do not need to comply with this, so they don't need to change anything. Moreover, some videogames have already been released with middleware stripped out of them. From the top of my head: Doom 3, Blietzkrieg. So you can work around that.
> I don't mind if there'd be a law that would allow players to modify and even reverse engineers previous versions of the game for the sole purpose of playing the game
To my knowledge, you can already do that in most jurisdictions. That's why there are a lot of decompilation projects that started in recent years.
> This kind of regulation demands nothing from the game developers
The problem is that for games with online components you also require server binaries, which you don't always have access to. So developers would need to provide at least those binaries. So unfortunately even in this case there will be something that developers must do.
> C&C Generals
That's a good example because EA made source code available last year for most C&C games. So people have been improving unofficial versions.
> Most of the demands I've seen from the SKG crowd demand actual laws that define what developers must provide players
SKG itself does not demand anything specific, that's the idea. People who support the initiative do provide some potential options, but I don't think they are forcing it on anyone.
This is a really good analogy, except you made one mistake: it’s not difficult at all to design something to be accessible and respectful of privacy as long as you do it from the start. If you try to build something inaccessible and privacy-invading then get caught and have to retrofit accessibility and privacy at the last minute to avoid fines and lawsuits, that’s when it becomes difficult.
And you see this exact mistake crop up in the Stop Killing Games criticism as well. People say that it’s difficult because they are thinking about taking the status quo and retrofitting longevity. For instance, trying to retroactively obtain licenses to distribute components that they didn’t originally have. When in practice, the effect of a law like this is that it would push game developers to make the right choices up front like picking appropriately licensed components, so there’s no barrier to keeping the game alive when the time comes to cease support.
It might also have escaped your attention that the EU was perfectly willing to create accessibility and privacy regulations, so if you are likening Stop Killing Games to these things then it stands to reason that this is not a reason for the EU to avoid Stop Killing Games legislation.