Stop Killing Games

**Northadox**

(10th April 2024, 1:42 AM)Delphinoid_ Wrote: I guess I'm confused about what exactly constitutes "means for restoring service". The laxest interpretation of this campaign that I can think of (at least from the perspective of preserving intellectual property) is that developers would be obligated to provide players with a binary for hosting servers and a modified client that allows connection to these player-hosted servers (for instance). Would developers be obligated to provide support for these? If not, what happens if bugs are introduced in the new client or server software (in other words, what is meant by "a functional state")? Could developers be sued for this? What about if there isn't "enough documentation"? What responsibilities would (or should) players hosting these servers be expected to have? What happens with games where microtransactions have a particularly important presence (e.g. gacha games)?

For any given interpretation of this there are a lot of questions you can ask that, imo, lack clear answers. I'm hoping in the coming months they'll have a more precise proposal.

Ross goes more into detail in his original video concerning the matter and addresses common counterarguments, but you can always email him your questions (his email is present on that site posted earlier); he really does want to be clear on what he believes in. I really really invite you to do so because he is VERY comprehensive.

If you were to ask me though, I can't say I really empathize with a hypothetical publisher asking these questions. The baseline message is "stop keeping games attached to a centralized server and killing them unprompted". What the campaign petitioning for is just a clean compromise that will hopefully dissuade publishers from the practice to begin with. Rather than rack their minds about these legal questions, there's always the option to...NOT make their games tethered to a server, which is the goal and is what is best for people who play video games. Courts could also examine these things in more detail, i.e., what a "functional state" is precisely.