this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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Yes. A limit on how long before announced server shutdown a game is allowed to be sold (with it otherwise having to allow refunds) would already go a long way, and that is something I'm in full support of. I'm not signing that petition though because it seems disconnected from reality.
"Just make games playable in offline" works for some games (and if planned from the start wouldn't be that hard to implement), but ranges from "define playable" to "utterly insane" for others (imagine WoW servers shut down, is it in any way sensible to require allowing offlinr access?).
A more extreme but imo still reasonable variant would be forcing the open sourcing of server code and everything required to make networking work, with the license allowing self hosting of game servers. But even this can still be obstructed, because "open source" doesn't have to mean "publically accessible code repository"
Not saying you're wrong, but how can the source code be "open" and not publicly accessible? If it's not, that's just a closed codebase that is shared with some external people, surely?
If you have to request the source code by asking for it via a form and get sent the code printed out via snail mail that is still "publicly accessible". Not saying companies would do that since it seems like it'd just cost them money for no benefit, just that there are usually ways to really hinder people's access without being closed source.
There could be lines drawn, but it'll be hard to find the medium between reasonable and preventing exploits. Forcing an upload to third party services like github seems dubious. I guess a zip file somewhere on the company website wouldn't be hard to do, provided the company isn't bankrupt (which is an entire different can of worms, what do you do then).
I'd still be heavily in favor of such legislations fwiw, perfect is the enemy of good and all that, but there's a sweet spot of "actually does something and doesn't kill all live service games" that would need to be found
Good point. And sounds like you're in a similar headspace to.me on the topic. Personally I'm not a huge fan of live service games, but I can see why a lot of people would want to avoid killing them.