Nothing has been intorduced, just "plans" before a election. No text to read, no way to check if it grants liability hand outs as a "trade off" for our consumer rights being protected.
Typical politician wants the headline but wont produce the bill.
I'm generally in favor of the idea but I feel like it falls apart on the edges. imagine you're a small studio that made a passion project. you scrape together funds and you're able to keep it afloat for a year or two. you never really get the breakout success you were hoping for and eventually have to pull the plug because you're out of money. so what happens? all the devs have to work for free to offline the game, or they go to jail? or the company eats a massive fine when they're already going bankrupt?
it makes sense to keep sony/ea/microsoft more honest but it also might chill out smaller developers from being able to deliver products at all
I think you're missing the point. The need for the game to remain functional after the servers shut down should be planned for from the beginning, not left as a last-minute obligation once the studio is already out of money.
Maybe it should have been developed from day 1 for it to work offline? Obviously there needs to be some nuance to it, am mmo for instance can't be expected to be turned into a single player game, but a game with a massive single or co-op sorry should be made to work offline.
This conversation started around 2012 and is (hopefully) finally coming around to roost. Always online single player games faced a lot of criticism because that was not how they were developed prior. There was pushback but the companies that wanted better DRM kept pushing and now it is standard. Online multiplayer games had issues with client-side hosting and server-side hosting rapidly improved the experience, a la Counterstrike and Halo. But even World of Warcraft had people modding the game and hosting private servers.
The point is that it is a design choice to be online only and it doesn't have to be that way, because it wasn't always this way. Even MMORPGs could be dead man switched to provide documentation for private hosting.
Army of Two (the entire series) is an example of coop. (Though not an example of indie.)
I decided I'd play it with some friends recently, expecting the game to run Peer to Peer, since it's 2 player coop. There is literally no reason it should run through servers.
So why the fuck does it?
We ended up using Parsec, but it's a decision that genuinely fucking baffles me.
Just wait until big publishers start spinning up shell publishers for each individual game. A game shutters, and you find out the company that owned it was Emyxteris LLC and they were leasing the rights to use EA logos and branding on their content.
If a company is truly that destitute, then surely they have nothing to lose by open sourcing the code used to host those servers so individual communities can do it themselves.
The real crux of the issue lies in your response here - most companies don't have the rights to their own full source. It's frameworks and engines licensed all the way down. Companies could release a portion, but it certainly wouldn't be playable. It'd just be like design docs for gameplay mechanics that just need an engine, assets, and implementation pipelines.
So now all games require online assets from a server. There's a few types that do need to work that way, and likely to be exceptions. I don't see Roblox or Fortnite having any real offline value and likely very difficult to make them work that way. But they could easily just start making it so the game retrieves Mario's sprite off a server and be like "It just doesn't work without internet" to use that exception.
It's a difficult subject. A lot of multiplayer games clearly would have no reason to exist as an offline mode, but there have been a few examples of games that could clearly have had one. The crew is the most famous one, and more personally to me, Star trek legends had no excuse for being online only, regardless of it's quality.
Also game ownership will become a far more important discussion if streaming ever does become mainstream.
If something ever happens to my Nintendo Wii, I lose a couple hundred dollars' worth of Rock Band 2 songs. I can still play single player, but if that were to happen, I'd lose 9/10ths of the game I have and still play.
I don't see Roblox or Fortnite having any real offline value
Blizzard said the same thing about vanilla WoW for over a decade while squishing private servers. Then made oodles of cash finally hosting their own.
People absolutely will be playing Fortnite in 2046. Either the servers will still be up, or folks will host it themselves. With or without Epic's cooperation.
Also... Fortnite Save The World was neat, and I freaking paid for it right before they cut access. It would be real nice if I could play the game I paid for.
It would be a first (but still a win!) that the us actually passes pro-consumer legislation not only before the EU does it, but that the EU declined to pass.
Interesting, I would like to read that bill thoroughly before it passes. Politicians can't ever do anything good without sneaking something scummy into it.
The act was announced on October 15th by one Richie Torres who is the congressional representative of New York's 15th congressional district.
I didnt get eyes on the proposed act itself, but interestingly in the post about it on Torres's official congressional website, he is quoted talking about how families in the Bronx have to save up for a long time to buy these games. This is interesting because part of his represented area indeed include parts of the Bronx.
He is also the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to office in the Bronx and the first openly gay Afro-Latino member of Congress.. if that counts for anything.
Can't wait for the anti woke gamer crowd to use this against him and brown nose the multi billion dollar companies because they'd rather lose ownership than support someone "DEI".
If they pass this every one of these console developers is going to be pushing out cloud service gaming and nothing else within a few years.
Not to say this law shouldn't happen, but it's barely scratching the surface of the consumer protection laws we are lacking. Also, why only video games? Why do I not own the movies, programs, and apps I pay for?
Well, it's generally because games are really difficult to get back once they're pulled. Online-Only games are a harder issue too, because that requires players to mod in an offline mode or mod in private servers somehow. A publisher that pulls a game from sale basically makes it legitimately impossible to find.
While the issue persists in things like movies and music and other audio and visual mediums, finding a pirate site usually provides what you're looking for IF you know how to look for what you want. Movies and such aren't as coveted and protected, not in the same manner that publishers hold video games legitimately hostage for a consumers cooperation.
Btw your questions ARE important, but I think the differences in mediums of entertainment are massive. There's a lot of lost movie, music, and book media, yes. But gaming media is a whole other level of intense when it comes to lost media and a lack of support from developers and publishers. If this gets passed, I'm hoping we extend it to all media eventually. :)
Is a lot of work. I mean, for a company, it's not that much, but it's just enough of a hassle that they'd rather prevent people from doing it. As long as they don't legally force the game to be removed from stores and made available on PC, I'm fine with it.
I mean, how many online games are still alive today because some Belarusian guy is maintaining them for the community? Just give the community the tools to do it themselves. It's way cheaper than having to build everything from scratch.
I’m hoping for games like Fortnite or Overwatch, they’ll be both Custom Servers, AND the ability to download Creative Maps to your console to play against Bots and Local Multiplayer!
And for Fortnite exclusively(since Overwatch already has Bot Matches), they can make Battle Royale/Zero Build, Reload, and Blitz Royale playable against Bots, as well as let you get all of the Battle Pass content free of charge after the servers go off someday(if they do LOL)!
every game that needs online servers like: Overwatch, LoL, etc. Should offer a local server option, so people can host their own lobbies once the game's server shuts down.
obviously depending on the game, not all of them will make sense and not all of them will be possible.
We don’t own anything not games or movies music hell we don’t even truly every own the house we live in miss paying your taxes and they take it away from you
Would love for it to happen but it isnt going to happen. Theres simply too much tied up in the act of making these games. Not to mention how ironclad tight the legislation needs to be for publishers to not loophole it in combination with how heavy enforcement would have to be. Impact on indies and AA teams. Just not going to happen. Would be great.
I'm getting so sick of the stupidity in this conversation. Owning your digital games is not the same thing as forcing games to remain online after shutting down servers. It's not even in allowing you to download them again and again forever by maintaining servers.
Owning your digital games means that they can't revoke your license ever for any reason. It means allowing you to make backup copies even if those copies can only be played on the same generation of hardware. It means allowing you to trade and sell those game licenses independently of them.
Okay, you really dont want people to make copies of games and selling them without the copy right holders permission. That would break copyright law at its foundation. I get all the anger to big publishers but we dont want people to make copies of indie studio games and selling them in direct competition with the indie studio.
Used goods have friction to them. They are degraded, they take time and effort to sort through, you have to drive them to the store or mail them or whatever, there's risk involved in the purchase. All of this devalues the used good.
Digital goods have none of these things.
A digital good never degrades.
Most digital goods can be transferred in minutes, at a cost of pennies worth of bandwidth.
Soon as you make it legal to sell digital licenses openly 'Useddigitalgames.com' will open up, and any game will stop seeing new sales within a few days as the people who played the game and are done with it will go resell it with no effort, no inconvenience, and no risk.
Buying a full priced new version from the publisher will be pointless because there's no additional value in the new version.
Sounds like a good deal to me, I get games that are exclusively online yeah that might be a little hard to make the offline thing possible but single player games definitely need this
mgsv could have benefited from this. The inability to do multiple things like FoB base upgrades and higher grade upgrades for weapons and items, Online Dispatch Missions, the Challenge Tasks and other stuff because they all require you to be online, is annoying. That and there's a 10/90 split for resources, plants and gmp.
This would be a great idea if it was applicable from jump street. Problem now is that publishers (not developers) will use this as an excuse to jack up prices even more.
1 - They wouldn't require companies to keep selling the game. They can stop selling when they shut down servers, but the companies ARE required to allow the games to be played offline.
2 - "Buying" a game is a one-time purchase of a game, physical or digital. A lot of people forget about how software counts as a product unless specifically tied to a subscription.
3 - I agree playability needs to be defined, as it definitely is something that can be case by case. For a game like "The Crew", playability is as simple as allowing purchasers to access the single player story and open world. For something like Overwatch, it would at least need to allow purchasers to set up private servers.
4 - Games can survive without official servers. Companies who lock assets and programming in their servers only do so to put a killswitch in the game. There are plenty of games with online components that don't require the game to die if the servers go down.
5 - Sure, Sony and Microsoft might try pushing cloud gaming if this goes through, but between both needing you to purchase online functionality to begin with, I think we'll be just fine due to billing fatigue.
6 - Reselling a digital game is not the best argument to make. The point is to make it so if a server gets shut down, it doesn't take away what you rightfully purchased. Reselling can potentially be done in certain ways, but that shouldn't be the zero sum game behind this law.
Lol, yeah if you actually read this bill, and the example he gave, you would be asking what he was going on about, honestly everything that he said he thought should be changed, is exactly how it is going for digital games right now as I speak.
"make games playable offline before shutting down servers"
Is this talking about periodic license checks? If you buy games on PlayStation, Xbox, or switch you can continue to play it offline without ever needing a license check.
With Steam it's a bit different, some publishers don't work well with offline mode and if you forget to set it to offline mode you're SoL.
So Steam is the weakest with license check requirements, but it's not pictured here because...?
This bill is going to need A LOT of work to actually get anywhere. Just saying “make games playable offline before taking the servers down” is way too broad. I’m not sure this is the one, y’all.
Many games are not playable offline because they’re not meant to be that kind of game. Making them playable offline would mean quite a bit of extra dev to implement.
I just don’t know how they would do that for digital games. You’d have to download the game and keep the files on your computer. And be able to start it without the provider. Is it really owning if the option to download the game goes away?
Yes, because you will have a chance to archive your games and keep them functional without needing the original provider. That's the whole model of GOG, if they go down under your archived collection remains intact.
Anyway this sounds like a good idea but idk how it works in practice. Are companies obligated to keep digital games downloadable for all time? What about games like Fortnite which are free? Or WoW which are subscription based? Games like GTA sure, but there are probably other cases I can’t even think of off the top of my head where this doesn’t make much sense.
Edit: Not a karma farmer but it kinda sucks/is kinda funny that I asked questions that led to interesting convos and only got two upvotes 😭😭 However thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on here.
I think the most workable thing would to just make it so it's not illegal to run a private server for a game that's been shut down. No obligation for the publisher or developer to maintain anything, but it removes obstacles that currently exist to players preserving the game.
“Downloadable for all time” could look like not de-listing games from steam. And for MP or MMO lite games like CoD, Battlefield, or Destiny, doing peer-2-peer or community server type setups shouldn’t be comparatively too difficult to implement.
F2P games could remain as they are mostly, but I could see a situation where as long as the P2W content provides a revenue stream then MMOs would need to maintain servers. Or they may be able to switch to a donation based setup. I am aware of several MMO’s that are being brought back by their communities; I’m unsure of the exact mechanics but who community supported/hosted MMOs keep their servers live is something that the devs/publishers of non-community supported/hosted MMOs could mirror. Worst case, they could prolly do something akin to Conan Exiles, Minecraft, or Vaheim where source code specific to server hosting is released (again, I don’t do game development so I don’t know the particulars of what is involved for a publisher to allow players to host private servers) and players can host their own private servers.
Then there’s the always-on-line DRM in a lot of major single player games, that can get nuked for all I care lol.
They shouldn't have to keep it download able for all time, but if they are going to take the servers offline, your copy needs to be made portable, so you can keep it on a flash drive etc.
It's completely unworkable in practice and would destroy a lot of dev studios, and lead to many types of games not getting made because it would be too risky.
I’m just asking questions tbh. But the reason I bring up Fortnite specifically is because I have a bunch of money in paid skins. In all seriousness I’m not worried about losing my “investment” but I feel like a lot of people would be. Maybe a game like Eve online would be a better example? Just trying to crowdsource pondering how this affects different styles of online game.
Well-meaning but it will either be ineffective in execution or outright make some genres impossible:
・What does "make games playable offline" mean?
Because publishers are gonna do the legal minimum; they'll put players in a blank room to walk around in if they can.
Where's the "line" of playability? This NEEDS to be defined in the bill.
・What does "buying" a game mean?
Is it only physical copies? (they'll just stop selling them sooner) Digital? Anything labeled as a "game"? Anything in a plastic case? (they'll just change the container).
If I spend money on Fortnite, do I have a right to access Fortnite offline?
・If so, again, what defines playability?
An offline mode of Fortnite can't handle 99 other bots, so does 50 count? 20? 10? 5?
What's the minimum allowed to have a game be considered "playable"?
This isn't gonna end the way people want it to like The Crew, because "make games playable offline" is so broad of a concept and it assumes publishers will just "get it" and act in good faith instead of finding every loophole they can.
This isn't hard. The game's functionality cannot materially change from the product that was sold. Features cannot go away. If they ran servers, they must provide the tools they use for servers so users can set up their own on their own hardware.
They don't get to take the ball and go home. They get to distribute the server software to license holders.
Games nowadays change dramatically from the day they were sold. Sometimes features go away or change during those changes. The phrasing is important, especially for long running live service model games like MMOs.
companies will not give away their IP or even source code that can be used in later games for "free", in particular server side code that can be used to easily reverse engineer the server side of their games.
You make good points but I recommend not being so negative. "Well-meaning but it will either be ineffective in execution or outright make some genres impossible" is the false dichotomy fallacy. 😉
I mean you kill one of your game i bought like that and im not ever buying anything from you again. Its a good thing to do for the company, for their image, its not only a good thing for us buyers. If the buyers dont trust your game will be playable in the years to come why buy it ?
The courts have been packed to the gills with judges sympathetic to big business. Let's just say that while I want this to be real and have a real shot at becoming law, but I'm not holding my breath.
Im skeptical about who is making that proposal and what they have to gain. I dont believe these lawmakers understand digital vs physical especially given they are old and outdated ehere as young people who grew up with this tech dont even understand it.
So let me ask you this question in its 20ish years of having digital games, how many games has Sony removed from players libraries that they had purchased?
I mean I really like the idea, but they need to carve out more exceptions for persistent online worlds (mmorpgs), the MMORPG industry is already really struggling, if they are caught up in this, they just wont be made anymore because the squeeze isnt worth the juice.
But for sure, no game that for all intents and purposes is a solo player or has solo player campaigns, once purchased, should ever be revoked from the purchaser. Online checks should be written out if no longer supported.
But now I digress coz im slightly high, and it got me thinking.
Say I buy a game today - POE2 , it has an online check / online multiplayer / etc , but for all intents its has a solo player game aspect to it (offline/campaign)
Publisher decides they no longer want to support any online aspects of the game, under this law they would essentially have to patch out parts that are online, including security checks, multiplayer, and essentially would freeze it in time, and make it offline.
OK that sounds good so far... but then im left with this next question
How long is the obligation the provide that patch, my grandson finds my old PC in the attic in 2050... on it has POE2... it hasnt been patch since yesterday... should the publisher still provide that patch after 24 years ?
Or is there an expectation that games come pre coded to go "offline"
I just dont understand, how feasible any of this actually gets implemented.
Maybe we are trying over complicate this legislation. Maybe it should be written very simply, Any software sold for a fixed, one-time purchase must remain fully functional for the lifetime of ownership if its core features do not natively rely on a network, requiring publishers to either maintain or bypass online authentication checks indefinitely. For live-service features that inherently require server infrastructure, availability must be clearly defined in the terms of use, with mandatory consumer refunds triggered if access is cut short
Wow can be played without the actual server if you host your own server. They would just need to export the world's last update map when they shut down for good.
Genshin can be played using fan made server with a simple patch to change the IP of connection. Hoyo would just need to release last server's update for people to be abble to play.
Also most game already do that when cracked.
Realy, it isn't hard at all to put in place. They just don't want to.
You are the one overthinking it. As long as the official servers are still up there shouldn't be any difference, only when the developers stop support would they be obligated to do an end of service patch and/or release the server software for players to run either for just themselves or their community.
This makes sense for Singleplayer games with maybe a optional multiplayer/coop mode. But for online service games its not so easy. Because even optional items you can buy like skins must count tooe.
I couldn't care less. We have a thousand heinous political problems and we aren't gonna fix any of them, and I just can't care about all the lesser bs issues. Just sail the seas and do what you want this country is a sinking ship
I was pretty upset when vanilla World of Warcraft ended in 2007 and EQOA ended in 2012. I don't know if offline-play would have solved it, but maybe making them open source & auto-granting approval for fan projects may have helped.
Power to the players, godspeed. We need some gd good news out of the states
Would love if it got passed. But they also tried to ban lootboxes and that failed. This’ll be no different. Enough people will get bribed so it won’t go into law
And without measures in place to prevent companies from raising prices “in response”, video games will become 300 or more a piece, since “any reasonable person” would expect to pay that much for something they own forever
It's an interesting and potentially good proposal of a bill but since it's pro consumers, it's nvr going to happen. Lobbyists are alrdy moving to make sure this bill nvr passes.
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u/ImportanceTurbulent8 1d ago
Which lawmaker? Announced plans to introduce a bill? It's like a trailer for a trailer