This is just pure fabricated bullshit. They themselves started limiting options. Remember the old days where you could host your own server with basically any game? They took that away, not us. So they themselves are 100% responsible for this ‘uprising’. Besides they could just provide/open-source the backend and disable drm. Hardly any work at all.
But of course it’s not about that. They just try to hide behind this ‘limits options’ argument. But they simply don’t want you to be able to play their old games. They want you to buy their latest CoD 42.
Let’s be real, open sourcing it isn’t “hardly any work”. All the code has to be reviewed to make sure they can legally release it, no third-party proprietary stuff.
It will be hardly any work once a law passes, because they’ll make sure it is. Everyone knows where the proprietary code is. It doesn’t just get merged in “by accident” unless you are a really shit developer (and to be fair some are).
Besides, no one is saying they have to open source it. To be honest, the outcome from this petition that I would most like to see is simply a blanket indemnity to the community attempting to revive, continue and improve the software from that point forward. If the law says that it’s legal once a software is shut down, for the community to figure out a way to make it work again and make it their own, and puts no further responsibilities on the “rights holder” at all, I think that honestly solves the problem in 99% of cases. It would be nice if they gave the community a hand, released what they could, and tried not to be shit about it, (and I know some of them will be shit about it, but we’re pretty resourceful), as long as they’re not trying to sue every attempt into oblivion I think we’ll make a lot of progress on game preservation and make the gaming world a much better place.
When starting a new game, don’t include that stuff. Not including proprietary stuff without meeting the licensing requirements is already a step in the process.
“That stuff” is often core to the game. Any anti-cheat library, for example. On the client site, libraries like physx, bink video, and others are all proprietary and must be replaced and tested before it can be released in a working state. Few companies would release a non-functional game and let reviewers drag them through the mud for it.
None of those things will be affected because this isn’t about making games open source. It is about making games that have a design that allows them to potentially function indefinitely instead of allowing the companies to design them with planned obsolescence like tying single player games to server verification.
So you’re telling me that this could disrupt the anti-cheat industry, which is currently responsible for a lot of the Windows platform lock in the gaming industry and is tied to a lot of potential security vulnerabilities because it goes to a much higher level of privilege than a reasonable user would expect a game to need? I already wish I was in the right geographic area to sign, you don’t need to sell me on it twice!
Anti-cheat is a necessary evil for competitive online games. No one wants to play a game against cheaters since they typically have an unfair advantage. If you can’t combat cheating then you might as well not make the game since no one will want to play it. Fine by me since I don’t care for such games but I could imagine people who like playing them might prefer to play against as few cheaters as possible. What are the alternatives?
Anti-cheat is a necessary evil for competitive online games
Client-side anti-cheat is useless. It’s not a necessary evil, it’s just evil. The minute the cheater/hacker has direct access to the system, you’ve already lost.
Much like every form of security measure, the intention is not to completely eliminate the possibility of an attack (which is impossible in most cases). Instead, the intention is to increase the amount of effort that’s required to make an attack.
Battlefield and cod have cheaters running rampant in their official servers despite using anti cheats. They could employ a team to monitor cheating reported by players. But clearly they just don’t want to expend resources to combat that.
EvE Online doesn’t use root access anticheat software. I know it doesn’t because it runs on Linux just fine. That particular player base is the worst hive of scum and villainy that you’ll find outside of government. Clearly the anticheat software isn’t as essential as game studios would have you believe. The only major cheating I’m aware of in EvE was the BoB scandal, and that involved Devs cheating because they were Devs.
Oh but with the new rules they could do that before making their code work that way. The idea is not for the new laws to apply retroactively but for new games.
honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction
I’m speaking from ignorance but isn’t the server backend often licensed and they couldn’t release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they’d have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
lots of licensed or bought code in development in general, but knowing that you’ll have to provide code to the public eventually, means that you’ll have to take this into consideration when starting a project.
codifying in law that your customers must be able to run a server for your game, when you stop running them has the consequence, that you’ll have to buy licenses that allow you to give binaries or code for those things to your customers. every middleware or library that does not allow that won’t be a viable product anymore. It’s not more dev work, it will change how licensing in game development for middleware and such will be done.
Because you can buy other people’s code for cheaper than developing it yourself, as long as you use it within the restrictions of the license you paid for.
It doesn’t, that’s why companies rarely open-source their code. If you want to publish it you have to make sure you have all the rights to do so, you have to code in a way that’s readable for outside users, you have to make sure people can reproduce your build process, and ideally you provide support.
On the other hand, if you’re not developing the source for publication, you can leave undocumented dirty hacks, only have to make sure it builds on your machine, and include third-party proprietary code wherever you want. That’s faster and cheaper, so naturally companies will prefer it.
There’s no requirement that the open source code released after EoL has to be pretty or maintained, just functional to meet legal requirements. Using other 3rd party code would be a hurdle to get over I suppose. It would definitely take a different approach to design, but after the initial shock of changing, it wouldn’t be more difficult to do long term.
This is just pure fabricated bullshit. They themselves started limiting options. Remember the old days where you could host your own server with basically any game? They took that away, not us. So they themselves are 100% responsible for this ‘uprising’. Besides they could just provide/open-source the backend and disable drm. Hardly any work at all.
But of course it’s not about that. They just try to hide behind this ‘limits options’ argument. But they simply don’t want you to be able to play their old games. They want you to buy their latest CoD 42.
Let’s be real, open sourcing it isn’t “hardly any work”. All the code has to be reviewed to make sure they can legally release it, no third-party proprietary stuff.
It will be hardly any work once a law passes, because they’ll make sure it is. Everyone knows where the proprietary code is. It doesn’t just get merged in “by accident” unless you are a really shit developer (and to be fair some are).
Besides, no one is saying they have to open source it. To be honest, the outcome from this petition that I would most like to see is simply a blanket indemnity to the community attempting to revive, continue and improve the software from that point forward. If the law says that it’s legal once a software is shut down, for the community to figure out a way to make it work again and make it their own, and puts no further responsibilities on the “rights holder” at all, I think that honestly solves the problem in 99% of cases. It would be nice if they gave the community a hand, released what they could, and tried not to be shit about it, (and I know some of them will be shit about it, but we’re pretty resourceful), as long as they’re not trying to sue every attempt into oblivion I think we’ll make a lot of progress on game preservation and make the gaming world a much better place.
When starting a new game, don’t include that stuff. Not including proprietary stuff without meeting the licensing requirements is already a step in the process.
“That stuff” is often core to the game. Any anti-cheat library, for example. On the client site, libraries like physx, bink video, and others are all proprietary and must be replaced and tested before it can be released in a working state. Few companies would release a non-functional game and let reviewers drag them through the mud for it.
None of those things will be affected because this isn’t about making games open source. It is about making games that have a design that allows them to potentially function indefinitely instead of allowing the companies to design them with planned obsolescence like tying single player games to server verification.
So you’re telling me that this could disrupt the anti-cheat industry, which is currently responsible for a lot of the Windows platform lock in the gaming industry and is tied to a lot of potential security vulnerabilities because it goes to a much higher level of privilege than a reasonable user would expect a game to need? I already wish I was in the right geographic area to sign, you don’t need to sell me on it twice!
Anti-cheat is a necessary evil for competitive online games. No one wants to play a game against cheaters since they typically have an unfair advantage. If you can’t combat cheating then you might as well not make the game since no one will want to play it. Fine by me since I don’t care for such games but I could imagine people who like playing them might prefer to play against as few cheaters as possible. What are the alternatives?
Client-side anti-cheat is useless. It’s not a necessary evil, it’s just evil. The minute the cheater/hacker has direct access to the system, you’ve already lost.
Much like every form of security measure, the intention is not to completely eliminate the possibility of an attack (which is impossible in most cases). Instead, the intention is to increase the amount of effort that’s required to make an attack.
Battlefield and cod have cheaters running rampant in their official servers despite using anti cheats. They could employ a team to monitor cheating reported by players. But clearly they just don’t want to expend resources to combat that.
EvE Online doesn’t use root access anticheat software. I know it doesn’t because it runs on Linux just fine. That particular player base is the worst hive of scum and villainy that you’ll find outside of government. Clearly the anticheat software isn’t as essential as game studios would have you believe. The only major cheating I’m aware of in EvE was the BoB scandal, and that involved Devs cheating because they were Devs.
There is a reason it’s included though. Stuff like fmod, bink video etc. does complicated things that you otherwise need to implement yourself.
Oh but with the new rules they could do that before making their code work that way. The idea is not for the new laws to apply retroactively but for new games.
honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction
Bold of you to assume such spec or docs exist. Usually it’s all cowboyed and tightly coupled, with no planning for reuse.
Cool, so after they are legally required to then they will start creating the documentation.
The point is making them change how they do things when how they do it is shitty for consumers.
Maybe they should have made sure their code was fully legal to use before releasing the game initially
What? There’s a big difference between “legal to sell as a compiled binary” and “legal to release as source”.
I’m speaking from ignorance but isn’t the server backend often licensed and they couldn’t release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they’d have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
lots of licensed or bought code in development in general, but knowing that you’ll have to provide code to the public eventually, means that you’ll have to take this into consideration when starting a project.
Which is doable, but is additional time and money.
codifying in law that your customers must be able to run a server for your game, when you stop running them has the consequence, that you’ll have to buy licenses that allow you to give binaries or code for those things to your customers. every middleware or library that does not allow that won’t be a viable product anymore. It’s not more dev work, it will change how licensing in game development for middleware and such will be done.
Why would coding something with less restrictions take more time and money?
Because you can buy other people’s code for cheaper than developing it yourself, as long as you use it within the restrictions of the license you paid for.
The thing is either that license model changes, or those other companies selling the code cease to exist when nobody buys something they can’t use.
It doesn’t, that’s why companies rarely open-source their code. If you want to publish it you have to make sure you have all the rights to do so, you have to code in a way that’s readable for outside users, you have to make sure people can reproduce your build process, and ideally you provide support.
On the other hand, if you’re not developing the source for publication, you can leave undocumented dirty hacks, only have to make sure it builds on your machine, and include third-party proprietary code wherever you want. That’s faster and cheaper, so naturally companies will prefer it.
There’s no requirement that the open source code released after EoL has to be pretty or maintained, just functional to meet legal requirements. Using other 3rd party code would be a hurdle to get over I suppose. It would definitely take a different approach to design, but after the initial shock of changing, it wouldn’t be more difficult to do long term.