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IMO once you delist a game and shut down servers where people cannot play anymore then it should become open source and not protected IP.
Open source is too far, but as part of a shutdown of a game and it's servers there should be a year long period where the publisher is required to release the game without DRM, including the server software, to all customers.
I could see it going through Steam, you get a message "Delistment notification: The Crew is being delisted, get your permanent copy now!"
Worse solution, but I would accept if publishers were forced to clearly display the exact date when the game will stop functioning at the point of purchase and all advertising materials.
I see what you're getting at but this would be difficult for a publisher to stick with in the event the game does horribly. Requiring them to keep their word to the date advertised would end up with them only guaranteeing a week, or send ramifications through all industries requiring truth in advertising.
A middle ground would be simply to legislate that when games require online connectivity for any reason, the appropriate software is released to allow a locally run server to enable online function at the time the company decides to decommission their servers. Then require them to hold these files in an accessible manner for at least as long as the servers had been active for.
That would be difficult in the event the company goes out of business, but I'm sure this would be a difficult thing to explain to most politicians so maybe not so simple after all.
If they can't keep their committed date (or fold entirely), then the source goes open. If every copy happens to get deleted during the bankruptcy, treat it as criminal fraud by the top levels of the company and go after everyone that could have decided to improve backups and other IT methods of avoiding that but didn't. That's assuming it was accidental, higher penalties if it can be proven to be deliberate.
In an ideal world, the penalties you describe are suitable. Though, gaming industry aside, for the executive level of most any corporation, being a scapegoat and handed a golden parachute is the worst case scenario for them leaving. In many cases floating across the street right into another executive position.
Jail time isn't a likely outcome. It just isn't the world we live in, unfortunately.
Yeah golden parachutes are such a joke in this society that likes to pretend to be a meritocracy.
Though on that note, I'd love to see a law that limits golden parachutes to the lowest paid position in the company. Hell, I'd be ok with that being scaled to full time. Not because disgraced executives deserve even that much but because it would give some incentive to increase pay rates across the company. I've also long thought that executive compensation should also be limited by some multiple of the lowest pay. And yeah, I'd include stock options and grants in that (for both employee and executive compensation).
Agreed. The whole idea of these huge payouts could be eliminated and replaced with what exists for everyone else - severance pay. Calculated off a regulated minimum formula, based primarily on how long the person served the company.
I also agree with you that the top and bottom salaries should have a correlation. The C suite making the salary of a shelf stocker in one day should not happen. I think I could accept that the top gets somewhere around 10 or 20 times higher salary. Even 100x would be an improvement to the way it is now.
Like you point out, between stock options and whatever else, an executive salary could be a few hundred thousand, even if their total compensation is tens of millions. In fantasy land it would be nice if, once a company grows to a certain point, say a billion dollars in value, if it were required to convert to an employee owned cooperative entity.
It's a shame things are the way they are. Maybe one day we won't have politicians that can be bought. That's a different discussion altogether.
I think the company should also be required to clearly state the amount of time they'll keep supporting the game and will operate the servers for. If they decide to shut them down early, everybody should be given the choice to either receive a full refund or the non DRMd version of the game + the server software like you suggested.
In general I think all paid games should be required to clearly state the amount of time they'll keep providing feature updates for, as well as support for new hardware, major bug fixes, and minor bug fixes. Although games that aren't online and just reach EoL are still playable for quite some time, eventually there'll be some breaking operating system or hardware change that will force the use of a virtual machine, compatibility software, or other types of emulation to keep playing. That might not happen for 50 years, at which point you probably don't care, but still. I'd give more leniency to indie Devs and games made as passion projects, though.
Although obvious once you think about it, I don't think most people realise or even think of the fact they will eventually not be able to play the game they're buying. And these mega companies need to stop making games they dump 6 months after launch.
I get what you mean but that is not feasable, however, if we look back at the old multiplayer experience like in Unreal Tournament 2004, the company runs a master server, and the community runs the game servers.
The master server just lists the game servers and allows for a server browser. That is WAY less resource intensive and can be run almost indeffinately.
The master server for UT2004 ran continously for almost 20 years, and when Epic announce it was shutting down, a fan server was created and after a quick edit of the config file you can play UT2004 multiplayer exactly like it was in the past.
So let's go back to that model of multiplayer, it requires a bit of skill to set up your own server securely, but you'll have way more choice and less commitment of resources from the publisher making it available for longer at less cost.
eventually there'll be some breaking operating system or hardware change that will force the use of a virtual machine, compatibility software, or other types of emulation to keep playing.
I still can play Unreal from 1998 on modern Linux. Faust bless Torvalds and his "never break userspace".
Full refunds would be reasonable, if they wanted to protect their IP