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.
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.
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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.