| ▲ | stouset 3 hours ago | |
Setting aside for a moment whether or not this specific legislation is a good implementation of the idea, I cannot understand how people don’t comprehend that this only happens because there is currently no obligation to release their server binaries or code. The second that becomes a legal requirement with associated penalties, developers will stop licensing technology under those kinds of terms. | ||
| ▲ | cityofdelusion an hour ago | parent | next [-] | |
Why would developers stop licensing? They will just tear the middleware out and release as-is, leaving the community to fill the API gaps. | ||
| ▲ | Manuel_D an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Right, they'll stop licensing proprietary sever code. But that in turn drives up the cost of game development since they'd have to either purchase redistributable licenses or develop their own networking software. I suspect companies will just scale down the servers to 1 instance with bare minimum support. Technically the online service is still active, thereby eliminating the requirements to distribute source code, even if it can only handle a handful of active players and terrible latency. | ||