Fully on board with this, even though I don’t live there.
What the publishers’ coalition says does make some legal sense. Licensing, particularly music, is a bitch. Look back about 20 years. Rockband is a game made by independent artists (everyone who worked for developer Harmonix was involved in the Boston music scene). (They also made the first two Guitar Hero games.) They worked to make a system that was fair to artists, so artists would get paid for their work. They were, after all, all artists. The RIAA famously said they weren’t getting paid enough and their cut should have been 80% (the cut was a third to Microsoft/Sony (whomever ran the platform, Xbox or PlayStation), a third to the people who authored the track, and a third to whomever held the rights to the track, so they were getting 33.3%). The RIAA argued that basically no one else should be getting paid to put the songs in the game. And that was an artist-friendly platform.
Now look at GTA San Andreas. Another famous case. If you buy it now, the radio stations are different. But you can still buy the original PS1 version (or acquire it online) and all the original tracks are right there where they always were.
So here’s my solution. It doesn’t work for something like Rockband (which is now called Fortnite Festival, and is part of Fortnite… and you have to use a controller… and there’s no more singing), but for other games, it should. Fully state up front that the songs have a timed license, and once that time is up, the license is gone and so are the songs. But let people play their own music in the game. This used to be a feature in GTA and its clones (IIRC Saints Row did it, too) where you could make a playlist on a console, or populate a designated folder on PC, and that was your “private radio station” or your “MP3 Player”. So in the case of a GTA-alike, push an update that kills all the radio stations and let you bring your own music.
The problem is, the game publishers opposing the “Stop Killing Games” movement know that, and have no real problem doing it. They just want to take your money and run.
I also don’t think they should have to give you a full refund, I think it should be prorated somehow based on when you bought it. I also think that should apply to ANY time a publisher or store removes your access to a game, for ANY reason. Yes, even if the player was caught cheating. Okay, you don’t want them playing the game. Fine, put your money where your mouth is and refund their money. Or some part of it based on what’s fair.
I’m not saying it should cost more to make games or to make games as a service (SaaS). I’m saying it should cost more — WAY more — to use SaaS as a profit venture by offering something and then pulling the rug out from under consumers without any form of compensation. They do it because it’s profitable. It shouldn’t be. Okay, you can’t keep paying for the servers or whatever, you don’t get to keep customers’ money. Door #3 is a patch that lets them keep playing the game offline, or let them use their own servers. And if they can’t afford refunds, this is their only option, or we garnish the wages of the publisher’s executives. To deter that option, they build the custom server option from the start, but don’t enable it right away. They enable it when they know they won’t be able to support the game any longer. No one would have a problem with that.
Fully on board with this, even though I don’t live there.
What the publishers’ coalition says does make some legal sense. Licensing, particularly music, is a bitch. Look back about 20 years. Rockband is a game made by independent artists (everyone who worked for developer Harmonix was involved in the Boston music scene). (They also made the first two Guitar Hero games.) They worked to make a system that was fair to artists, so artists would get paid for their work. They were, after all, all artists. The RIAA famously said they weren’t getting paid enough and their cut should have been 80% (the cut was a third to Microsoft/Sony (whomever ran the platform, Xbox or PlayStation), a third to the people who authored the track, and a third to whomever held the rights to the track, so they were getting 33.3%). The RIAA argued that basically no one else should be getting paid to put the songs in the game. And that was an artist-friendly platform.
Now look at GTA San Andreas. Another famous case. If you buy it now, the radio stations are different. But you can still buy the original PS1 version (or acquire it online) and all the original tracks are right there where they always were.
So here’s my solution. It doesn’t work for something like Rockband (which is now called Fortnite Festival, and is part of Fortnite… and you have to use a controller… and there’s no more singing), but for other games, it should. Fully state up front that the songs have a timed license, and once that time is up, the license is gone and so are the songs. But let people play their own music in the game. This used to be a feature in GTA and its clones (IIRC Saints Row did it, too) where you could make a playlist on a console, or populate a designated folder on PC, and that was your “private radio station” or your “MP3 Player”. So in the case of a GTA-alike, push an update that kills all the radio stations and let you bring your own music.
The problem is, the game publishers opposing the “Stop Killing Games” movement know that, and have no real problem doing it. They just want to take your money and run.
I also don’t think they should have to give you a full refund, I think it should be prorated somehow based on when you bought it. I also think that should apply to ANY time a publisher or store removes your access to a game, for ANY reason. Yes, even if the player was caught cheating. Okay, you don’t want them playing the game. Fine, put your money where your mouth is and refund their money. Or some part of it based on what’s fair.
I’m not saying it should cost more to make games or to make games as a service (SaaS). I’m saying it should cost more — WAY more — to use SaaS as a profit venture by offering something and then pulling the rug out from under consumers without any form of compensation. They do it because it’s profitable. It shouldn’t be. Okay, you can’t keep paying for the servers or whatever, you don’t get to keep customers’ money. Door #3 is a patch that lets them keep playing the game offline, or let them use their own servers. And if they can’t afford refunds, this is their only option, or we garnish the wages of the publisher’s executives. To deter that option, they build the custom server option from the start, but don’t enable it right away. They enable it when they know they won’t be able to support the game any longer. No one would have a problem with that.