11th April 2024, 12:19 AM
(10th April 2024, 11:07 AM)Northadox Wrote: 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.
I watched the video, he did answer some of the questions I had.
I should clarify that the point of these questions isn't to have you empathize with a publisher. Keep in mind as well that most of the questions I asked refer to legal obligations of the developers, not the publishers, so I assume it's the developers who would be held responsible. My understanding is that the publishers only need to make the software available somehow (or not, if they decide to delist the game or the companies liquidate), so it seems to have very little to do with them.
At the end of the day I definitely agree that the goal of this campaign is an important one that needs to be realized, but I want it to be effective and don't want to see it backfire and leave developers (especially smaller studios and indies) vulnerable to bad actors. I'm asking these questions because I want to see a proposal that is crystal clear on exactly what it expects of both publishers and developers. I'm not convinced Ross has a really good idea on what exactly he wants yet, especially since in the video you linked he was kind of non-committal and left a lot of details up in the air. I think if the proposal is left vague (nothing matters as long as developers / publishers can argue that the game was left in some kind of "functional state"), any legislation will have a hard time getting passed, and even if it does it will at best end up being pretty ineffective.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun though, it's still very early days.
