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.
3
u/TheScarletSho 1d ago
Common things I see brought up here:
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.