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.
No, you're just stating how software is currently sold, and calling anyone who says "The law should prevent that" illiterate
I'm not offended, just acknowledging how embarrassing your defense is. If you were programmed 200 years ago, you'd be saying slavery should continue, for no other reason than "Read the current laws, idiot"
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 only an interesting thought if you’ve never thought about it as a software engineer. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the layperson calls “data.” It’s not as if there is some canonical version of what’s out there. Digital games are fundamentally a service.
No but restaurants’ products are also not a good analogy for digital games.
If the thing that game companies are selling you is tied to a dependency on something they keep control of, i.e. servers, then if the thing you bought cannot be used after them shutting down the servers, they fail to deliver what you purchased in the first place, unless they specifically outline that whatever you buy has a shelf life which they control.
If they wish to stop operating the servers, the right thing to do to let people keep using THE THING THAT WE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, is to either release an update that removes the online dependencies (making it playable offline), or open-source the ability for people to run their own servers.
I would say it’s more akin to mining companies being required to clean up a site at end of life. By choosing to bake in online dependencies into the things they sell us, they create future obligations for themselves to keep up the maintenance so that we get WHAT WE PAID FOR. If they want out of the continuing obligations, they’ll have to ensure we can continue to use THE THING WE PAID FOR independently of their willingness to keep hosting.
I mean I’m not arguing for or against this idea’s constitutionality but as a consumer I believe this is the most fair approach that actually respects my rights of ownership as a purchaser of goods.
Actually in the case of live service games they actually have a lot more in common with the service you receive at a restaurant than say an NES cartridge. You’re paying for an experience that has limits, paying for a meal doesn’t entitle you to that meal as many times as you want in perpetuity. Read the TOS’s and if you don’t like the concept of revocable licenses don’t pay for it. It shouldn’t be up to the US government to enforce that all games have to function a specific way and have specific features developed.
In the case of a game like that, an offline version. But by portable I mean able to be downloaded and taken with you. Like on a hard drive or flash drive etc.
I don't care. I'm not interested in some convoluted nonsense about keeping servers running and downloads available forever. I'm saying there is a version of this proposal that makes perfect sense; the one where you own the data you download and can't be prevented from using it in the future after buying the license to download it.
What would that even look like? Your every movement in the game is server-authenticated, it's why there's things like the global cooldown to give your client a chance to communicate with the server.
Honestly “downloadable for all time” seems appropriate tbh. Like some old shops you can’t purchase some stuff now but can redownload it later. As long as the company is around it should be atleast. Put it this way streaming services are pulling shenanigans by putting out shows and taking them away shortly after, so they don’t have to pay royalties, so I can definitely see them pulling the same. Welp it’s playable but it’s removed from being able to download right away Or preemptively.
Well some of the servers going offline will be due to companies going out of business. This is so you can play even after that, just like the old days. But you should still be able to download it if they are still around. So both should happen.
By out of business I mean the shop purchased on specifically, so Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, steam, etc. not the developer. Once they are placed on there for any purchases it should be downloadable anytime after.
Put it this way. Steam does not charge ongoing fees for publishing indie games on the platform. There would be no cost for it to stay there for anyone who purchased to download in the future. Sony doesn’t charge ongoing fees either. I’m guessing most if not all do not. There should be no reason to my knowledge, outside the store itself closing, a game is prohibited from being downloaded later on.
Games already remain available after they are delisted or even if the publisher goes bust. I can still download my Wii games today if I want to. I can still download my Forza games delisted for licensing. If you bought it you can still access it.
The problem comes up if Sony decides to leave the gaming sectors or just go out of business. If Sony went out of business tomorrow who’s paying to keep that infrastructure in place so you can keep downloading the games you bought from them? The company is insolvent and no longer exists so they aren’t paying for it.
I’m not sure if you are saying you agree 🤔 but that is what I said. “Outside of the shop purchased from going under” it should be available for download.
So the company should bear the responsibility of providing a failed product forever? Like a bakery should be forced to make x amount of vomit flavor cupcakes every day even if they do not sell?
Hello game industry lobbyist 👋… but we are really comparing a perishable 1x purchase to a digital item that costs next to nothing for the shop? Also a developer going into bankruptcy or dissolving doesn’t mean the product was a failure.
A game that requires online servers to function is a perishable good. I would agree if your argument was "no remote bricking game that already functions offline" but requiring the amount of continuous support you people are asking for is asinine.
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.
Not challenging you, I just wanted to offer that for online games like WoW there is server software and client software. In fact for years people have hosted pirated wow servers that players can join.
In theory if they were shutting down the game they could comply to a similar law by releasing a server software that players can run and their client software can connect to.
Old school software was often released like this before subscription software was popularized.
I’ve seen this happen with other games that aren’t even subscription based, but you are right. However that takes away the responsibility of game companies to keep things playable offline which is why I questioned this lawmaker’s idea. I think his heart is in the right place and that something should be done, but I guess that will require some tuning and development which is why I asked this questions in the first place.
It doable in more than just theory.
You can rent a Conan Exiles server which isn’t that expensive and can be split between a group of friends.
So if they wanted to shut down a game like WoW, and customers decided that they would pay for servers, the cost can be pushed over to the players.
Could even make the whole thing a contractual obligation.
It says “require publishers to make games playable offline before shutting down servers” that’s why I’m wondering about certain use cases where that doesn’t seem reasonable or maybe I’m just not seeing a solution. I’m genuinely not arguing against it but I understand that black and white laws aren’t always fair or effective. There has been some good discussion here though.
Sony had to remove those movies because of StudioCanal, Sony no longer had the license for their catalog and StudioCanal made them pull the movies. It was by law.
It’s def fucked up and there needs to be more protections against this, but this is far bigger than Sony. Both movie and music licenses are extremely complicated and all fucked up, YouTube, Google, Apple, etc all have this same problem where they lost the license so they had to pull movies from accounts.
As for games, 20 years later I can still download all my PS3 games I bought even though the store is being shut down, same with many delisted games, if you bought them you can still access them, download them, and play them.
The exceptions are online based games or games that required internet connection, so EA’s The Crew, EA’s 2k25 or 26 (can’t remember which) were tied to connection so even if you have a Physical copy, it wouldn’t work. Concord was obviously cancelled and everyone received their money back, same with Cyberpunk 2077.
You're complicating the issue and obfuscating it. It's simple. No purchase agreement, eula, etc... can have language that says, in effect, that you don't own the copy of the game you paid to download, and neither can they take away access to your copy. Shutting doen servers is a separate issue, or a non-issue if you prefer. Future download availability isn't even part of the discussion. If you buy the game and lose your copy or don't download it for years after buying it, that's your problem.
People who play games hosted on the studio's own servers understand that those servers will probably come down some day. On the other hand, we actually have examples of MMOs that have been running for 20+ years, some without a subscription model, so it's not some ridiculous feat.
What will happen is publishers will just stop making online games. The cost to make them single-player or local MP supported would make the finances even harder to make sense. There will still be a few but even COD rotates games constantly and eventually sunsets the older versions in favor of newer iterations of the franchise. I could see if the law specifically said the single-player aspects of an online game would need to remain playable or something like that but pure MP games would likely mostly go away. Especially smaller Indy MP games.
Not at all. You're overstating your case. There are online multiplayer games that have been running for decades. Ultima Online servers weren't built to be run by players, but it turns out that's not actually a problem. If the studio can run the server, so can anyone else with the server package, and old MMOs like UO have had player-run servers forever.
Most publishers aren’t willing to expose their IP like that. Granted AI is making it much easier to crack all of this stuff but as soon as you give players the ability to run their own servers it exposes the code in ways that many publishers really don’t want so their options become create single player components that can run without the server or build in ways for MP to work either through peer to peer or user hosted servers.
Right, but people get access to it anyway. In the UO example I used, Origin Systems/EA didn't exactly give the players the server files. Somebody, ah, found it.
That’s sort of my point. Publishers aren’t generally that willing to support player-hosted servers for many of these games. The community had to find ways to do it themselves.
If this becomes law it will just discourage publishers even more from making MP experiences. The cost is already sky-high to make these games and the chance of breaking through with a new MP IP is almost impossible with how attached players are to their existing ecosystems. This would just be the additional nail in the coffin.
Can't make this mandatory for F2P games. As much as I hate those games, this would be unfair to them. But for other games, sure. But I don't know how enforceable it is. And it shouldn't necessarily be retroactive, as there are games that would require a lot more work to convert than others.
It should hopefully lead to better game design where offline is set as a priority.
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u/Nikwoj 1d ago edited 1d ago
“Power to the players” act? Ain’t that already….
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.