They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game.

Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.

ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So, CA should get rid of those loopholes, too!

We need to culturally accept things like "zero day law patches" for loopholes and unintended consequences. Legislators, don't just pass a law, see it incentivizing something unintended, and then throw up your hands crying "Well, we tried!" Patch the law as soon as the bad behavior starts!

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markstos 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And how you would craft a law to prevent a company from forming sub-companies for specific games to isolate risk? Or make it illegal for a company to go bankrupt?

Creating sub-companies is common business practice that even small businesses use. Like if a small company wants to buy a building, they may form an LLC to hold the property to isolate that risk from the rest of their business.

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Ukv 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bankruptcy process already involves identifying and administering the company's assets, so releasing the server software (as-is) to owners of the game could be part of that.

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jandrewrogers 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bankruptcy sells the assets on behalf of creditors that have specific priority in law. Just releasing code to users would be a pretty serious abrogation of creditor rights.

The most likely outcome is that some PE firm would buy the software rights out of bankruptcy and figure out how to bleed money out of people that want to continue using that software.

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markstos 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Besides bankruptcy there is also shutting a business down, in which case are no new owners. Lavabit and Silent Circle being examples of businesses that shutdown rather than comply with laws they didn't like.

	▲	jandrewrogers 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How would this solve anything? Performance under existing contracts is still required to shutdown. The mechanisms for getting around contract performance without bankruptcy essentially require handing control of the company to the contractual counter-parties.
	▲	Ukv 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Shutting down operations as Lavabit/Silent Circle did doesn't negate existing contractual obligations. Voluntarily dissolving the company would also involve completing performance of outstanding contracts.

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ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know how you'd craft that law--I'm just saying they should. How to encode the spirit of the law into the letter of the law is the job for legislators.

Whenever the topic of regulating companies comes up, there's way too much fatalistic "Oh dear, we can't possibly incentivize good corporate behavior because companies are oh-so-clever and there's just no way to handle all the edge cases they will exploit!"

We'll never get anywhere at all if we simply give up the moment someone forms a shell LLC.

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pokstad 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Loopholes are possible from excessive regulations. Regulating everything will never stop. Vote with your money and support game studios that provide the best online support. Or buy games that are standalone purchases that don’t require online services.

	▲	paulryanrogers an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Excessive regulations? Or insufficient regulations and regulatory capture?

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radium3d 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These laws just complicate things, make it more expensive to run a game company and these government people don't get it. This will just result in making it more expensive to make games and keep them running. On top of that, it incentivises subscription based games.

> 'it excludes games provided via subscription services, free-to-play games, and games that are inherently playable offline indefinitely. It also prohibits the continued sale or distribution of games that have become unusable due to service termination.'

The only winners are lawyers. NOT gamers. The lawyers always like to call their laws "protect X" lol

	▲	BeetleB 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Disagree. I can see the challenges for games that are really only meant to be played on a centralized server, but what about games that need to connect to a server just to play locally? Demanding consumers be able to do that is not making things particularly hard on the company.

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tyleo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mentioned this in a separate thread. It seems like a huge risk to release an online game if you don't do this now. A single bad game can take down a studio. Now there's even more risk because a previously successful game may come with a big bill in the future if you have to do refunds or some late architecture change when you instead want to take a product down to save money.

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jnovek 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps they should just write games in a way where they can actually release server code when they it shuts down?

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Rapzid 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps "they" can write games however they want? If you don't like it, don't do business with them?

This is a weird thing to be legislating on.

	▲	unleaded 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's too late to decide not to do business with them once they've stopped you from using a product you already bought.
	▲	paulryanrogers an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The word "buy" is defrauding people when the thing purchased can be bricked before even getting it home.
	▲	jnovek 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I think it’s a great thing to be legislating on. I would like to see it on the federal level, myself.
	▲	wsve 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Consumer protection laws are "weird"? I'd hate to live in your world...

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littlecranky67 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So nobody to come after you for copyright violation if you run a community-patched (a.k.a. cracked) version of the game?

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mh- 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, no. Just like other purpose-built vehicles (like the ones for motion picture productions), they will transfer rights to other entities before shutting down.

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Akronymus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And then lose the rights to those franchises/codebases/etc? I don't think that'll realistically happen.

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littlecranky67 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How is something like that not considered when a law like that is passed?

	▲	agoodusername63 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Despite the good intentions of SKG, their efforts are being heavily shaped by the intense lobbying against them. This law has a lot of weird omissions and obvious loopholes because industry lobbyists want it that way for their clients. It's a very clever law in the studio and publisher's favor. It changes pretty much nothing. The worst GaaS plagues on the industry will be able to keep trucking along as usual and the few service games remaining that have an upfront cost will slap on the tiniest singleplayer function to meet the law. Hell a model viewer might even meet it, or at the very least bait people into trying to waste time in court over it. All while making nice headlines implying that SKG is making meaningful progress (they're not)

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cyanydeez 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

right, but what are you going to do? Have strong regulations for anonymous, criminal, businesses which operate as a shadow political class that can multiply at whim and influence global governance?

Yah, right!