7 ms·

> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently pla

by phreack 4mo ago

> The bill applies to digitally sold games. However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination. I believe this is the key paragraph. I wonder if this will be an incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions. I think the previous cases where this act would apply are few but good thing they wouldn't increase under this act.

pibaker 4mo ago
California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven! If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.
- RobotToaster 4mo ago
  I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    Why not $0?
    - greenavocado 4mo ago
      $1 refundable subscription
  - meatmanek 4mo ago
    At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)
    - paradox460 4mo ago
      Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available
      - tadfisher 4mo ago
        Quake 3 can also be played fully offline, for various measures of "play" and "fully".
      - hadlock 4mo ago
        After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of the server code, can't host truly private servers, and when the sequel MW4, BF4 comes out, those private servers won't survive and it forces everyone to move to the sequel regardless of the quality of the game. You can technically still hire a private server for games like BF3 (circa 2012) but very few people are going to pay the $70/month to host an official one via whatever terms EA has come up with, and you absolutely can't run it with plugins, mods, and especially custom maps or game modes, you have to play it "vanilla". Quake 3 the server is included with the game, anyone can run it, modify it and it's very plugin friendly, which is largely why it is still around today. Closed servers you can't directly access is a deliberate decision to kill the game when the sequel is released, by not allowing users to extend what they "bought". Otherwise we would still all be playing Battlefield 3 on custom maps with CTF and 128 v 128 player servers and everything else. You can modify a handful of things on the paid private servers but it's extremely limited and there's no community feedback on any of this.
        RandomGerm4n 4mo ago
        > After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.
- cosmojg 4mo ago
  I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).
- gwerbin 4mo ago
  It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.
  - NooneAtAll3 4mo ago
    > See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?
  - jnovek 4mo ago
    What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?
    - wilg 4mo ago
      No it will make everything a live service game
      - bayarearefugee 4mo ago
        Good luck with that. The industry already tried to make everything a live service game in the 2020-2022 period and it was financially disastrous because gamers rejected it. Gamers have made it clear that they don't want a market full of live service games unless they are free to play (and even then, very few will survive). They'll make rare exceptions for things like GTA6, but these will be unicorns.
        xingped 4mo ago
        That certainly won't stop out of touch CEOs from choosing to do just that anyways. CEOs and making the stupidest possible decisions are also a match made in heaven.
        4mo ago
- Akronymus 4mo ago
  Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think. Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.
MadnessASAP 4mo ago
Of course its an incentive, however the disincentives to purchasing (subscribing/spending), and thus producing, such games still exist.
ocdtrekkie 4mo ago
So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)
- Akronymus 4mo ago
  It also covers games with any form of MTX, even if the base game is free. So most live service games.
  - ocdtrekkie 4mo ago
    I don't read it that way. "Free-to-play" games generally include games with microtransactions, and the bill text does nothing to disagree with that: > (b) This section does not apply to any of the following: > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration. This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.
    - Akronymus 4mo ago
      > > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration. I'd argue buying any form of MTX creates a monetary consideration. Though, I guess it is kind of a gray area that's gonna have to be ruled on. > This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free. I didn't intend to mean additional stuff being free. I meant additional stuff you can buy, resulting in the no monetary considerations carveout not applying.
      - throwaway85825 4mo ago
        This is absolutely not a gray area. MTX are monetary consideration. Free games in this case are more likely advergames.
nine_k 4mo ago
incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions Yes, please, produce more "games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely".
- agoodusername63 4mo ago
  > However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. How is that incentivizing offline games? Half of the service game focused industry would be exempt
  - acters 4mo ago
    They will also prefer subscription or free-to-play than actual offline gaming. This is going to be a disaster
    - agoodusername63 4mo ago
      I don't think it's going to be a disaster, doing nothing is not quite a disaster when the AAA games sector has been ticking over like this for the past 10 years or so. The law is worded so that this does extremely little even if fully passed by CA's legal system due to the very broad exceptions. Exactly as lobbyists want it. Makes great headlines for SKG while doing pretty much nothing material for them though.
lucb1e 4mo ago
>> It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination. Does anyone know how this should be interpreted? Maybe to have a concrete example, let's take Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2), with OpenRCT2 as a sort-of mod for it, but imagine that RCT2 was originally a subscription game where you paid per month to play it and that it terminated before OpenRCT2 started. Existing copyright laws already prohibit continued distribution, which OpenRCT2 doesn't do, so does this change anything? Does this law move what used to be civil (copyright) cases into criminal law (so there needs not exist a rights-holder to file suit; the state can just push cases as they see fit)? Could the OpenRCT2 devs still (as I believe they hitherto can) release a 'donation version' with bonus gimmicks if they so wanted, or would that be classified as a sale of something that enables playing the original RCT2 and so illegal?
jayd16 4mo ago
You'll just get subscription games with a free year subscription code in the box. If anything I bet it will accelerate the death of free multiplayer.

by phreack 4mo ago

pibaker 4mo ago

California and meaningless feel good legislation with massive loopholes? A match made in heaven! If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only. A win for gamers' rights, I suppose.

RobotToaster 4mo ago
I can see them adding a $1 per year subscription at the very least.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  Why not $0?
  - greenavocado 4mo ago
    $1 refundable subscription
- meatmanek 4mo ago
  At least that somewhat aligns incentives between players and the game studio. If an old game has a long-lasting player base, then a modest subscription makes it more likely that the studio would keep the servers up and running, if not actively patching the game. With a game that you pay for up-front, a long-lived player base can be a liability for the company (ongoing costs without many new purchases.)
  - paradox460 4mo ago
    Why is this a problem? Quake 3 came out a quarter century ago, yet there are still community host servers available
    - tadfisher 4mo ago
      Quake 3 can also be played fully offline, for various measures of "play" and "fully".
    - hadlock 4mo ago
      After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. With the current "closed server" model, you can't get a copy of the server code, can't host truly private servers, and when the sequel MW4, BF4 comes out, those private servers won't survive and it forces everyone to move to the sequel regardless of the quality of the game. You can technically still hire a private server for games like BF3 (circa 2012) but very few people are going to pay the $70/month to host an official one via whatever terms EA has come up with, and you absolutely can't run it with plugins, mods, and especially custom maps or game modes, you have to play it "vanilla". Quake 3 the server is included with the game, anyone can run it, modify it and it's very plugin friendly, which is largely why it is still around today. Closed servers you can't directly access is a deliberate decision to kill the game when the sequel is released, by not allowing users to extend what they "bought". Otherwise we would still all be playing Battlefield 3 on custom maps with CTF and 128 v 128 player servers and everything else. You can modify a handful of things on the paid private servers but it's extremely limited and there's no community feedback on any of this.
      - RandomGerm4n 4mo ago
        > After about 2010 companies stopped providing the server binary. Games like Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield 2, etc could be played by communities in perpetuity on private servers. If the next game (MW3, BF3) were terrible, you didn't have to buy the sequel, what you had was "good enough" and you could wait for the next version to be released in 2-3 years. That's not true about Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 was the first Call of Duty game where you could no longer host your own servers. In its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, however, that was still possible. For MW2, unofficial servers created by players only became available later on. However, Activision has taken legal action against many of these projects.
cosmojg 4mo ago
I think it's more likely that the big studios will start rolling out trivial offline modes (less risky) rather than overhaul their revenue models (more risky).
gwerbin 4mo ago
It's not meaningless feel-good legislation, it's actively harmful by disincentivizing a bad thing, in favor of an even worse thing. See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.
- NooneAtAll3 4mo ago
  > See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs. by the way, why wasn't this bug fixed long ago?
- jnovek 4mo ago
  What will the negative impact of this law be, exactly? Hurting live service games which are already cancer?
  - wilg 4mo ago
    No it will make everything a live service game
    - bayarearefugee 4mo ago
      Good luck with that. The industry already tried to make everything a live service game in the 2020-2022 period and it was financially disastrous because gamers rejected it. Gamers have made it clear that they don't want a market full of live service games unless they are free to play (and even then, very few will survive). They'll make rare exceptions for things like GTA6, but these will be unicorns.
      - xingped 4mo ago
        That certainly won't stop out of touch CEOs from choosing to do just that anyways. CEOs and making the stupidest possible decisions are also a match made in heaven.
        4mo ago
Akronymus 4mo ago
Subscription only games get way less revenue than pay once for the most part. So I don't think moving to subscriptions isn't gonna be as attractive to publishers as you think. Also, with a subscription the customer has VERY different expectations, compared to a one time purchase. As in, they expect the access to go away once they no longer pay.

MadnessASAP 4mo ago

Of course its an incentive, however the disincentives to purchasing (subscribing/spending), and thus producing, such games still exist.

ocdtrekkie 4mo ago

So this only really applies to games you have to purchase once but are online-only? That's... an incredibly narrow law, that only covers a class of games which are particularly stupid by design. (Continuous cost without continuous revenue.)

Akronymus 4mo ago
It also covers games with any form of MTX, even if the base game is free. So most live service games.
- ocdtrekkie 4mo ago
  I don't read it that way. "Free-to-play" games generally include games with microtransactions, and the bill text does nothing to disagree with that: > (b) This section does not apply to any of the following: > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration. This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free.
  - Akronymus 4mo ago
    > > (2) Any digital game that is advertised or offered to a person for no monetary consideration. I'd argue buying any form of MTX creates a monetary consideration. Though, I guess it is kind of a gray area that's gonna have to be ruled on. > This solely refers to the game being available for free, not for any additional powerups or cosmetics being available for free. I didn't intend to mean additional stuff being free. I meant additional stuff you can buy, resulting in the no monetary considerations carveout not applying.
    - throwaway85825 4mo ago
      This is absolutely not a gray area. MTX are monetary consideration. Free games in this case are more likely advergames.

nine_k 4mo ago

incentive towards making more games qualify for those exceptions Yes, please, produce more "games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely".

agoodusername63 4mo ago
> However, it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. How is that incentivizing offline games? Half of the service game focused industry would be exempt
- acters 4mo ago
  They will also prefer subscription or free-to-play than actual offline gaming. This is going to be a disaster
  - agoodusername63 4mo ago
    I don't think it's going to be a disaster, doing nothing is not quite a disaster when the AAA games sector has been ticking over like this for the past 10 years or so. The law is worded so that this does extremely little even if fully passed by CA's legal system due to the very broad exceptions. Exactly as lobbyists want it. Makes great headlines for SKG while doing pretty much nothing material for them though.

lucb1e 4mo ago

>> It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination. Does anyone know how this should be interpreted? Maybe to have a concrete example, let's take Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2), with OpenRCT2 as a sort-of mod for it, but imagine that RCT2 was originally a subscription game where you paid per month to play it and that it terminated before OpenRCT2 started. Existing copyright laws already prohibit continued distribution, which OpenRCT2 doesn't do, so does this change anything? Does this law move what used to be civil (copyright) cases into criminal law (so there needs not exist a rights-holder to file suit; the state can just push cases as they see fit)? Could the OpenRCT2 devs still (as I believe they hitherto can) release a 'donation version' with bonus gimmicks if they so wanted, or would that be classified as a sale of something that enables playing the original RCT2 and so illegal?

jayd16 4mo ago

You'll just get subscription games with a free year subscription code in the box. If anything I bet it will accelerate the death of free multiplayer.