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Guess signing the Stop Killing Games movement was more important than first thought, eh? It only got 1.3M in Europe after an entire year and there probably 30M or more gamers on that continent.
Stop Killing games is actually bad for gamers, large studios and publishers gain the most from it. Sony would have no problem complying with what ever regulations you want. The problem is that they are so fucking greedy and anti-consumer that they are inventing new ways to make as much money as possible. People on lemmy care enough about the hobby of gaming to make a stand and actually stop buying products, but the people that play COD/BF every night with their friends, don’t give a fuck. We are the minority.
Stop Killing Games is bad for gamers? What are you talking about? Do you know what they want?
I have my interpretation, it is so biased that I disagree with everyone. What do you think game makers have to do to make a game that follows a stop killing games law? Do you think that it will cost less to pay the fine for not following the law than following the law by implementing the requirements? Will it be more cost effective to not do official releases in regions that implement a law? The marketing budget can be shifted to other markets.
The business and legal side of this movement is being completely ignored.
Well, you didn’t understand anything. That happens sometimes.
Stop Killing Games is only concerned with the games that are coming to the end of support. If the game is an offline game, the only thing that the developer should do to comply is to not try and make it inoperable with some sneaky patch. That’s free for game developer, since that’s something that they don’t do, not doing things is free, you see.
If the game is online and requires the server to work (this includes multiplayer, or online authorization for the singleplayer game), and the developer is determined to stop maintaining the server and the game, they have many options to comply, including the free one: making the server or the protocol open source. Which, once again, is free for developer even if we account for insane concept like “missed potential revenue” since it’s only takes effect when the developer stops getting revenue from the game.
Doing extra things like patching out online authentication is nice to have and will be appreciated, but not actually required.How are there no articles that explain any of this, I am going to have to type out the explanation in 3 places.
You definitely don’t get it. One, this is a future date to take effect. Two, these companies already have a way to run things locally - without Internet services. That’s how the development works. This would force companies to release that local version when they decide to no longer support the game. So like how a lot of multiplayer games already work - steam has a server version that you download, run on a computer, and connect. Nobody who built these games wants them to be unavailable at some future point
If only there were some way to edit the original comment…
I think you’ve misunderstood. I make games as a single person. I’ve made multiplayer games. So I’ve got a pretty good idea of what goes into this.
Let’s talk about the breakdown of indie games real quick. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any concrete numbers, but I’m pretty confident in the fact that the majority of indie games are single player experiences. Any game that is single player only doesn’t have to do anything to comply with Stop Killing Games.
Next, most multiplayer indie games are using P2P networking. This essentially turns one player’s game into a host, which acts as the server for that session. As long as game devs aren’t using purchased, proprietary networking solutions for this (which most indie devs aren’t, because they are expensive and free alternatives are easy to come by) they also don’t have to do a single thing to comply with Stop Killing Games. This is what Steam’s free built-in networking is. The biggest indie multiplayer games right now all use this (Peak, Meccha Chameleon, Pal World*, etc.)
The last big group of games, multiplayer games with a central server that the company owns, is the group that is getting affected here. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of indie games do not fit in this category. The reason behind this is simple. It costs a lot of money to host servers. Compared to P2P, it’s significantly more complicated to design and maintain these servers. What do the companies that run these games need to do to comply with Stop Killing Games? They need to release a version of the server that can be deployed on anyone’s computer, rather than just their servers. This isn’t a ton of work, since they’ve already done the hard part, mostly just changing a few endpoints, addresses, etc. to be configurable. This becomes a bit more of a headache if they are using a paid for proprietary networking solution, because they likely won’t have the distribution rights for it, but again, for most indies that’s those proprietary options are prohibitively expensive. Most companies that run games like this have the budgets and manpower to comply without any issues.
The last game type that barely gets a mention are “Online” single player games, which require an Internet connection to play a game by yourself. These in all honestly shouldn’t even exist, but it’s a simple patch to remove the internet requirement from these.
There are other nuances that exist, but none that make it harder for the indie developer, only easier.
*Pal world supports both P2P model and central server model. They also let users host their own servers, so they wouldn’t get affected at all.
I have read this twice and am still in the dark as to what point you’re trying to make.
What do you think game makers have to do to make a game that follows a stop killing games law?
Make games exactly like they used to?
Do you think that it will cost less to pay the fine for not following the law than following the law by implementing the requirements? Will it be more cost effective to not do official releases in regions that implement a law? The marketing budget can be shifted to other markets.
Without knowing exactly as to how this’d be enforced and at what penalty it’s impossible to have a worthwhile discussion about this. And even the fine is an assumption. What if you’re just straight up not allowed to sell your non compliant game, the same way any other product needs to adhere to, for example, safety standards?
Well. Your interpretation is wrong. Hope that clears things up
Then don’t have it in your region, it’s no big deal.
You didn’t explain at all how this is “bad for gamers”. All you did was call Sony greedy
You’re a fucking moron
You are the worst type of person to interact with on the internet. What is the point of making a post that equates to shit talking? It is not a good look.
Go through the process of steel manning this argument and try to understand all of the sides. What do the game makers think? what is the parliamentarian perspective? Think critically and sometimes you will piss off everyone.
You said it was bad without anything to back it up.
I’ll agree with it not going far enough (it should be source code access not just server software) but I wouldn’t call it worse than now and there’s only benefits to have community servers vs company servers.
Boo hoo, you’re not worth the time
Are you that one pirate guy who knows shit about fuck but has an opinion on everything?
i thought that was me. wait i have a pegleg and hook now? that’s cool.
I have never pirated a game in my life.
I was referencing the guy that was very vocal about his dislike for the initiative, based on the fact that he also didn’t read or understand what it actually is, so he pulled the weird narrative directly out of his ass. He was later outed as less than honest person for unrelated reasons.
What’s the original version of this?
‘half of all tech news lately is some variation of “the computer company has discontinued their well known product, the computer”’ - https://bsky.app/profile/jtp.bsky.social/post/3mdki23tso22v
I’m guessing it was referring to Konami, but really any big or long-lived studio has IP they’re not using anymore. Especially if they obtained that property by buying another studio.
I wonder if we will ever get a new elder scrolls game.
Skyrim Remastered has been discontinued in favor of their new release “Skymastered: the Rerimmining”
Tbh, at this point I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t. The Skyblivion and Skywind projects are really close to finished, and the Beyond Skyrim team is still making progress.
Plus, there’s OpenMW always getting more and more development. I hope in a few years it ends up good enough that people can port (and play) Skyrim in it, but that’s probably stupudly far out.
And don’t forget about Wayward Realms, the indie spiritual successor to Daggerfall. If they can successfully pull off their ambitious vision, it could be one of the greatest RPGs of all time.
Looking it up, I got the inverse of the usual roller coaster of excitement. Saw a few seconds of their trailer on Steam that was obviously made in Unreal Engine (which is bad for multiple reasons), then checked the Wikipedia to find that they’re working to move to their own engine
Yeah, development has been rough. But I’m still cautiously optimistic. They expect to release early access later this year, so we’ll see.
Gonna be very interesting to see how they “streamline” the series even more.
Eliminate skills, just have three classes that level up.
Heavy armor stealth archer, light armor stealth Archer, and magic stealth Archer.
Which character are they going to totally rewrite from “nuanced deity with good and bad elements” into “literally Satan that wants to destroy the world?”
What region will they turn into a generic Tolkienesque fantasy next?
Man I miss the console wars, looking back it was free market competition and how it was suppose to work
And the other half?
Alec Trevelyan: Fate.
I can’t wait to capitalize on this.
It’s almost like something is happening.
All I am seeing is people complaining about no longer getting games on optical media, something I thought was redundant back in the 2000s. But apparently console gamers really like their shiny discs for some reason.
Reselling discs, the option to have an offline copy that cannot be revoked, and consumer choice are never a bad options to have. I paid for the product, I should be able to do with it whatever I wish. Though most discs now are just a download code, we can demand consumer protection for the products they make us spend ridiculous amounts of money to attain, and take back our right to actually own what we buy instead of having a license with a potential end date we are never informed of. Look at Sony removing media, and UbiSoft shutting down servers of single player games rendering them unplayable.
As far back as I can remember game discs basically always came with an online activation so they weren’t really offline or forever playable if the servers went down.
But in the same concept you could also save the game install files and have the equivalent of a physical disc just in SSD or HDD form.
There was a period where that was true for PC but that generally hasn’t been true for consoles
I’m not really familiar with consoles, do they let you install a game to local storage?
With the size of modern games it seems like they must, otherwise you’d be swapping discs non-stop during play?
Typically consoles just run the game directly off of the disc or cartridge without needing to install it locally.
Modern consoles will install updates locally as a delta to what’s on the disk. Really large games typically aren’t available as a disk. Sometimes they will give you a fake disk that’s really just a download code.
The most recent consoles use blu ray disks which can hold up to 50GB. Some of the newest ones might do UV which can go even higher. Nintendo switch cartridges went up to 32GB and the Switch 2 cartridges are 64GB.
Also a lot of games will ship lower quality graphics on the console version, which helps bring the total size down.
But in the same concept you could also save the game install files and have the equivalent of a physical disc just in SSD or HDD form.
That’s a valid POV for computers but how are you proposing that someone does that on a PlayStation or Xbox without jailbreaking them?
Physical media is massive for the global south and generally more impoverished people, you can buy used game discs much cheaper. Another reason why forced always-online for single player games is terrible, multiple reasons, but if you are poor you have less access to reliable data. If you are of lower wealth you more likely have less storage space and slower internet speeds also which makes it more inconvenient. I agree with the idea of digital only in that it takes less resources to produce but it benefits the corporate profits while hurting already disadvantaged people.
Another argument separate is preservation of media. By removing physical media publishers can maintain control of the property and cause the loss of media which could have historic, social or educational value. It would still be possible to preserve the data but with more difficulty either physically or legally.
Also public libraries can carry discs and cartridges, but they can’t somehow distribute “digital licenses” for games. (I’d say “yet” but publishers would probably start flinging poop over that one.)
They have platforms to do this with ebooks, and it is an assache that also thoroughly underlines the absurdity of pretending that IP is 1:1 analogous with tangible items. Can’t “borrow” a digital file for six weeks because two people have already done so and five more put their names on a list before me?
We gotta support creators, I get that, but copyright itself was always a hack based on literal scarcity of books.
Oh yeah, agreed on all points!
It generally works very well for ebooks, but yes, I think digital licensing is just as silly as “Web 3.0” before it was a thing.
The reason for my comment was that acquiring and checking out physical copies is easy: You catalog it and they circulate.
But for a digital platform with the AAA games industry? They’d probably demand some incredibly obtuse monolithic licensing platform with a ton of convoluted restrictions, not to mention the vast data difference between a simple ebook vs. a 100+ GB game.
So discs and cartridges are good to have in this case, multiple people can experience games, the people behind the games still get paid, for now until we reach Star Trek economy, it works.
Yeah. I don’t want to have a huge amount of Games in my Home. But I do want to own the license/game and there need to be laws dropped providing that kind of access.
It is a foul excuse by publishers that you cannot own a Game. Yes. I cannot own the Code or development tools. But I can own the fully functioning game. We never got that to begin With. It is all about control.
It is a foul excuse by publishers that you cannot own a Game. Yes. I cannot own the Code or development tools. But I can own the fully functioning game.
You cannot own the copyright, but you absolutely can and do own a copy. The notion of “licensed, not sold” is a lie.
Well then I have some excellent news for you. GOG sells games without any DRM, once you download it and can install it anywhere without internet access. You can even copy the installert to back it up.
Woah I didn’t know Sony let GOG onto Playstations!
Don’t get a playstation then. You are literally voting with your wallet.
Kind of a problem when the alternative to a console is either an expensive PC that you still have to set up (and has a more clunky expirience than a console) or the steam machine which isn’t cheap either in this economy
If someone is too stupid to work out how to double click a file to launch it I don’t think their opinion even deserves respecting. Keep in mind you need to setup an account to use a console too these days, and enter billing information. Installing a game is easier than that.
As for expensive… It just isn’t. Sure, you CAN spend thousands on a really high end PC, but you also don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. If you want to get into really fun stuff you can game on stupidly cheap hardware. But even push button and ready to install games doesn’t have to be that expensive.
You have to install the OS or pay someone to do it which is an extra cost (the avarage user does not know how to install an OS, i assure you) and then the problem is that it’s still too clunky, you gotta turn on the TV, the PC and connect the BT controller if it got disconnected open the game launcher and then hit play
On a console you just turn it on from the controller and start the game, that’s it
