Finally, a push to end the practice of killing games when a dev decides they don't wanna support them
Finally, a push to end the practice of killing games when a dev decides they don't wanna support them
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Didnt watch this specific video, but the solution seems simple to me. Just release the server software. Bonus points to open source it.
I agree with this but I suspect that a lot of the backend is dependent on other in-house infrastructure so it's not as easy as most people think.
Yes, but hiring some devs to modify the code to be run on a home server could be seen as an investment towards saving the cost of running the servers themselves.
If a company is going broke and cant afford to port the code to a home market, they could simply open source it, and let the fans do the work.
And as i mentioned to the other guy, i think this should be the law.
Worse, it might depend on licensed infrastructure. Maybe a company can stand giving away their proprietary server, but they can’t legally give away a library toolkit they purchased a $300,000 non-transferable license for. That kind of middleware is extremely common in the industry.
I would recommend watching the video...
What you say is "easy" is great for a comment on Reddit or Lemmy but it doesn't really provide anything to the actual problem.
The problem is that a company "just" doesn't, why would they do this anyway? It would open their IP to be forked, modified and used for something else by someone else. That isn't what they want you to do.
Since there is no incentive and no one is forcing them to do this they just keep doing whatever they want. It was mentioned in the video that there is absolutely no regulation or anything in that regard available ANYWHERE in the world, not even in the EU.
THIS is what the video and Ross Scott want to achieve, that there either will be regulations for it so that Game developers and Publishers can't just create games with some mandatory server backend running that is shut down in a couple of years OR that there is at least some way of saying "well, we don't care" so that the consumer can actually do anything about it on their own end.
So it is easy to say they "just" have to do X or Y but the past and the increasing games relying on things like this have shown that they won't do anything about it because nothing is stopping them.
Don't misunderstand me, I absolutely think there should be regulation over this. I'm saying ultimately if a company wants to discontinue a service they should be forced by law to release the server software. That way the player base can still use the product they paid money for.
Did you watch the video?