Stop Killing Games lost its biggest battle despite 1.3 million signatures, but the fight isn't over

[Burty117]

That's far worse. For most server-based games, an offline mode is an utterly impractical complete ground-up redesign

You think it would be a ground-up redesign to offer an offline mode? You're going to have to give me a game example, even World of Warcraft, being able to roam the world and do quests by yourself is better than completely ending your ability to play the game you've paid for.

and "package the server code up" means releasing invaluable proprietary code that a major studio will certainly reuse in future games.

"Invaluable"... right... and then your next argument is that they're just going to re-use the same code for future games, perfect! Even easier to release the server hosting files for us to use once they're done hosting the official servers.

What's even funnier is the much larger list of games for which fans have themselves written replacement servers for, with zero support from the publisher. If there's a will, there's a way.

So you're saying, it always has to be driven by the community starting from scratch? Even though these are games that have been paid for? You're kinda proving my point that it obviously isn't particularly difficult or expensive to do.

It's also absurd to use 'Dune:Awakening' as some sort of touchstone for all multi-player games. According to the link below, there are curerntly 2900 players using 227 different servers ... a grand total of 12 players per server.

I was just using Dune as an example of a modern game that's been able to easily release their server code, Also, for a not particularly popular game and the servers have a 40 player limit, 12 players per server isn't even half bad.

You can't compare that code to a highly-concurrent server capable of serving thousands -- or tens of thousands -- of players simultaneously.

I wasn't using Dune to compare that, but I'll let you use Google to find games that are privately hosted with thousands of players on a single hosted instance, they do exist.

Still, your example proves how unnecessary any government action is here. If the market demands private servers and offline play, games will be designed from that in mind. Let the videogamers vote with their wallets for the optimal solution here.

Normally I'd agree, however, with video games in particular, until the "Buy" or "Purchase" buttons on video game stores like Steam, Battle.Net, Xbox, PS Store, EGS etc... changes to a "Rent" or "Limited License" or even "Lease", Governments should be doing something, as far as I'm concerned.

If they made that change, for example, when you go Steam store page for Battlefield 6 and it says "limited license" clearly, and on the button you have to press to accept the order, people would think twice about it.

While games that do actually let you play it forever, like Dune as an example, can just stay as is, because you're never going to have your access revoked or ability to play the game removed.

Games have been operating in a legal grey area for far to long, and they're the biggest entertainment industry, this is something that's easy to fix. Why do you think the games industries answer to SKG, are to not even answer SKG? Just talk about something else? Because they want to keep operating in this grey area.

 

[Gravitytr1]

Solidarity is a very powerful thing.

Yes, and companies and governments have taken notice. Especially DHS, FBI and CIA, working together with giants like microslop and Walmart to make sure we never unite again.