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The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'

246 points by TechTechTech

by wsve

8 subcomments

I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk.
Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a company may use or release. What popular libraries are we concerned about no longer being usable because of this? Remember, this is server architecture. Networking libraries? ENet is distributable, so is Valve's GameNetworkingSockets.
Yes, it'd ask developers to write their servers with this possible/inevitable transition in mind. Developers will plan ahead for that, and I have a very hard time imagining the server architecture would change much at all. A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden.
This is great news!

by phreack

6 subcomments

> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.
I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions. I think the previous cases where this act would apply are few but good thing they wouldn't increase under this act.

by vl

6 subcomments

They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game.
Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.

by ChoGGi

1 subcomments

Be interesting to see what this does to the online aspect of GTA 6.
I do wish this had been around when Firefall [1] shutdown, haven't really bothered with live service games since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefall_(video_game)

by Telaneo

0 subcomment

I wish subscription games could be preserved too, but this is probably about as good as it's going to get.
I doubt companies are going to go all in on subscription games, since that's more or less been tried and failed, and only WoW and a few others are left standing from that. Or maybe they'll try and fail, since the temptation is just too great (think Sony and Concord trying their luck with hero shooters, even though everyone with threw or more brain cells knew it would never make back what it cost).

by jrmg

0 subcomment

The details direct from the legislature: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

by Manuel_D

6 subcomments

Releasing server-side code would be a non-starter for lots of companies. For one, many of them don't actually own all of the code they use to implement the game server. There's lots of proprietary middleware in use in online games.
Perhaps a workaround is to just have 1 server online indefinitely. Technically the online services are still functional - the match queue times would just be very, very large.

by wagwang

9 subcomments

The reasonable compromise should be to force devs to release server binaries if they are not willing to run the servers themselves.

by jonhohle

0 subcomment

I’ve thought about how to introduce a bill and find sponsors for extending first sale and related rights to digital goods. I understand the current terms and licensing, but we’ve lost too much to non-transferable contracts and millennials and later will likely have no books, music, or games that can be inherited by their children. It’s crazy that after thousands of years of sharing copies of writings, hundreds of years of sharing recordings, and decades of sharing games, we’re going to give it all up because it’s a license now.
The problem is, where to even start? I would think EFF would be spearheading something like this, but I haven’t come across anything. There have been attempts in the past, but they don’t seem to have ongoing support.

by drewbeck

1 subcomments

It seems like one reasonable response from game companies is to include a service agreement with all games that explicitly limits the guaranteed server uptime. Ie “buying this game only guarantees operation until Dec 31 2028”
No clue if the market will go for that but it would meet the issue head on. “Companies will provide server binaries” on the other hand feels like pure fantasy.
Overall I’m glad folks are trying to do something about this.

by thegrim33

0 subcomment

So if I'm a game dev that lives in the US outside of California, do I have to care about this? Or do I have to explicitly block Californians from buying my game if I don't want to be affected by it?

by amazingamazing

0 subcomment

Writing is on the wall for more subscriptions. California will never learn - killed hollywood with most production being moved overseas, and now gaming.
I wonder if they will do something similar for software

by crackercrews

0 subcomment

Seeing this headline I thought it was about AB Hernandez. Guess I should have realized the assembly would not have passed such a bill.

by unixhero

0 subcomment

Thank you so much Ross and friends

by stevenalowe

0 subcomment

Are they going to pay for the servers and support techs and bandwidth? I know it sucks but running online games costs money
Edit: If this was just about local games it’d be simple

by gib444

0 subcomment

It looks less like a ban on killing games, and more like a road-map for how publishers could change products/marketing/T&Cs to avoid flak and liability.
(Not an ideal source btw: "This article was originally written in Korean and translated with the help of NC AI." The Bill is tiny can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... )

by charcircuit

2 subcomments

So just make every game free to play and then require a paying to unlock the actual game.

by misswaterfairy

0 subcomment

The key bit:
> 'AB 1921' is one of the first instances of bringing these demands into the institutional fold. Under the bill, companies selling digital games released or resold after January 1, 2027, must provide at least 60 days' notice before terminating service. Furthermore, they must ensure that purchasers can continue to access the game—such as by providing an alternative version or a patch—and must offer refunds if doing so is not possible.
I get that some developers are going to be irked by this, and I get that there will now be some perverse incentive to move to a 'subscription-only' model.
Now that the Stop Killing Games movement has overcome the major hurdle of landing actual legislative change from zero, its not much of a step from this point to extend these protections to anti-consumer practices around subscription-based games too, if they prove abusive.
It's not just about consumer rights, it is also about preserving and promoting arts and culture that can and are passed down through the next generation, which, ironically, helps keep growing and sustaining the industry.
Imagine what arts and culture might be like, seemingly everlasting copyright lifetimes notwithstanding, if Nintendo yanked Super Mario World from everyone because the online services to keep running the game simply costed too much or because the Mario franchise wasn't 'meeting profit expectations'. [Yes, I realise Super Mario World didn't have an 'online' component in the 90s, but imagine if it did...]
Remember that not too long ago it was very common place to self-host servers for games, and for quite a few this is still possible (such as DayZ and Minecraft). Thanks to community efforts, it is also still possible to play long abandoned online games that were once locked behind authentication and server listing providers, such as Battlefield 2 (previously fronted by GameSpy) that has been revived with BF2Hub (bf2hub.com).
Some games[1][2] even have a resurgence after long being forgotten. The revival of Dark Ages wouldn't have happened, and old friendships rekindled, if it was switched off because 'profit'.
Yes, Battlefield 2 had an offline component and could be still played sans GameSpy and BF2Hub, though a big part of the experience and culture around the game was the online community and gameplay against other real humans that made it so successful.
Relatively speaking (and legal/licencing complications aside) it is really not that difficult, especially for games publishers that cash in multiple millions of dollars in raw profits, to patch out authentication server mechanisms controlled by the publisher, and/or release the authentication/game server software binaries or source freely but unsupported after their deprecation date.
The legislation is designed to make these pro-consumer ethics at the forefront of game design. Video games are a big contributor to culture and human connection, and permitting companies to both freely yank a product that someone rightly paid for without compensation - you will own nothing and be happy about it - and kill off parts of our culture, is a horrible place to be as a society.
[1] https://youtu.be/FIFty-O4rOE [2] https://youtu.be/0zNtATsb5eg

by braiamp

0 subcomment

Wow, this comment section is terrible, lets cut through the noise. The "you're buying a license, not a game" argument is the industry writing its own rules and then citing those rules as if they came from somewhere neutral. EULAs are not negotiated contracts; you cannot counter-offer, you cannot opt out, and there is no competing storefront with better terms. The moment you frame a unilateral "take it or leave it" clause as a legal shield against consumer protection law, you've already lost the moral argument. More importantly, that same "license" framework is what justifies their copyright protection, their anti-piracy enforcement, their DMCA claims. You don't get to invoke ownership-level legal protections against consumers while delivering zero ownership to them. Pick a lane. Also, also, for "technically impossible to preserve", the bill doesn't ask for eternal servers. It asks for an offline patch or a refund. Fan communities do the patch part for free, on weekends with no legal team, for Pete's sake! If a volunteer modder can strip authentication from a dead MMO, a company with actual engineers can do it too. And if they truly can't? Then refund the customer. The "complexity" argument was always a misdirection, the bill already hands them an exit door for genuine edge cases. They're not opposing it because it's unworkable. They're opposing it because it closes a very profitable loophole.

by frankdlc222

1 subcomments

This isn't really about ownership in the abstract, it's about honest labeling. Owning a copy has never meant you can duplicate it. You can't run off copies of a book you bought, but nobody thinks that means the publisher can take it off your shelf when they stop printing it. The ESA conflates the copyright they keep with the copy you bought. The real difference with live-service games is server dependency, and that's where the dishonesty lives. If a game can't run without an online service the publisher controls, people deserve that caveat before they pay. Don't sell it with the word "Buy" and a one-time price and then treat it like a subscription you can end. This bill just forces that honesty: notice, an offline patch, or a refund.

by okdood64

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by anonymousiam

1 subcomments

[flagged]

by kahrl

1 subcomments

So instead of whole products sold at a one time price, there will be more and more subscription based services micro-transaction slop. 10/10 California. Never change.

by wilg

3 subcomments

This is such a terrible solution to a literal non-problem.
You should be able to make software that has a limited lifespan if you want. I just think that's fine. Games should not be special.

by phendrenad2

3 subcomments

I think this will cause a big schism in the Stop Killing Games movement. Game devs who were sympathetic to the movement will expect that this is enough, but a lot of people in the movement will be unsatisfied with the carveouts for MMORPGs and XBOX Game Pass and the like.