The "final boss" of bad legislation. Often, Government intrusion into the markets is worth the side effects.

But in this case, even the best-case outcome is extremely dumb. Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced. And there will be side effects, ultimately including geo-fencing of games to exclude California. It's a big market, but you can't make up for a net loss with volume.

> Companies are forced to expend resources just so a few niche hobbyists are not inconvenienced.

Yeah those poor companies. They should just be allowed to take our money and then stop providing a service we paid for. Won't someone please think of the corporations????

What kind of weird argument is this? If I pay for a game then I, you know, want to be able to play the game. You know what I don't care about? Whether or not it's profitable for Ubisoft to keep a cheap signing server online.

it seems like it would be good programming to parameterize the details of how to connect to a server, so really all the game developer would need to do is document the requirements for the server/make the server software.

..things they'd be doing anyway as they developed the game??