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The news as of late
(thelemmy.club)
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Logo uses joystick by liftarn
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.
If only there were some way to edit the original comment…
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
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.
Make games exactly like they used to?
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.