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New York rep announces game ownership bill that would require consumer ownership rather than sale of licenses — would also require publishers to keep the game functional after support ends (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/games@hexbear.net
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[–] 16 points 1 day ago (1 child)

I wonder if enough laws like this pass, will it force devs to reconsider the calculus on releasing online games? "Functional" could entail paying for a server to run the game forever, or dramatically changing your backend to let people host their own.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    It wouldn't entail either of those, or at least doesn't have to. Idk about this specific law, but the SKG movement has made it clear that companies saying "here you go, you figure it out" and posting their unmodified backend source code/programs and leaving it to end users to figure out how to run it is acceptable. The big problem without it is that a lot of stuff in modern games is just straight up encrypted and impossible to decrypt, so once the central server is gone you're completely screwed.

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