I'm always shocked by how irrationally anti-regulation this site is. I have yet to see any explanation why this regulation would be, in practice, cost/legally prohibitive in any way. This seems like a consumer protections slam dunk.

Yes, you would have to make sure your server application adheres to software licenses before release, just like you do with the client application, or any other piece of software a company may use or release. What popular libraries are we concerned about no longer being usable because of this? Remember, this is server architecture. Networking libraries? ENet is distributable, so is Valve's GameNetworkingSockets.

Yes, it'd ask developers to write their servers with this possible/inevitable transition in mind. Developers will plan ahead for that, and I have a very hard time imagining the server architecture would change much at all. A dedicated company-owned server is just a beefier home computer with load balancers and matchmaking. Drop those two, slap a server list on the client, and you're golden.

This is great news!

What is irrational in pointing out that this particular law, as it is written, gives the game developers a perverse incentive to further embrace more exploitive revenue models such as free to play and subscription based services? The technical implementation is irrelevant. It is the business side of things that you should actually worry about.

If anything, some people seem to have this weird faith in regulation that makes them think if some politician is promising to fix something via legislation, then it will get fixed, regardless of how the law is actually written or how it will work out in practice. California in particular is full of regulations that feel good but are either ineffective or has unintended consequences. See prop 65 which litters the state with vaguely worded warning messages that provide next to zero useful information, or prop 13 which massively disincentivizes home building and effectively makes new homeowners subsidize the property taxes of those who bought before them.

You can be supportive of regulations. I am supportive of many regulations. But I don't just support a regulation because it is great news that makes me feel warm and fluffy. I want well thought out regulations that don't neuter themselves with exemptions and don't easily lead to undesirable consequences. If this makes me an irrational anti regulation crusader, then off to Antioch, CA I shall go.

There's so many renditions of these style bills that it's hard to keep track what's in this specific one.

From what I can tell this one doesn't include provisions to protect indie shops/solo devs. The entire time spent developing a game is a net loss until release (and probability wise, probably still a loss then). So this is adding more upfront cost to devs.

The bill text I found is also one of the more generic versions I've seen. Specifically this line

>the ordinary use of the game

This is quite broad. I've seen some supporters of this style bill push for 'offline play' being a requirement. For instance, an mmo raid may require 20 players. If after the death of the game getting 20 players is impossible, I have seen people push for ai (just the game version) so it would be possible, or a patch to make the content possible for 1. Each of which are development time that serves no benefit to making money.

There's also the likelihood of the server architecture requiring many moving pieces. Think if fortnite died tomorrow how many different servers it would take to host. Could an argument be made that an end user couldn't be expected to launch a dozen aws services? More dev time, more costs.

Now the day 1 proponents would probably focus on the obvious provide the server exe cases, but these are concerns down the line.

Also at least this one doesn't do the 'development bond' idea I've seen to protect against the entity going bankrupt, essentially requiring every dev to pay for some sort of insurance before releasing the game (more costs for indie devs).

I would describe them as pessimistic rather than irrational. They just believe that instead of going with an option like you proposed, companies will push toward unregulated options.

Since I don't know their backgrounds and don't have any background working with video game company executives it's hard to tell which options are more likely.

Its because people are brainwashed by techno capitalists propganada and think they're going be in the "startup" founder position one day and thus defend the people currently in those positions no matter what, thinking their protecting their own interests (and its almost always the opposite).

There's nothing wrong with having an ambitious attitude, but why not be ambitious seek to build a better tech-biz ecosystem that is actually pro consumer and pro human..

People seem to think there's only one way, and that way is letting capital owners behave however they want incase they're also in that position one day.

It’s not irrational, the comments literally explain in great detail the downsides of the regulation.

For example one commenter in this thread said:

>See also car fuel economy standards that push car makers into killing the wagon market segment in favor of SUVs.

This is an objectively true and prove-able statement. What is irrational about that?

WRT regulation the only thing that matters is the incentives that it creates.

>If this is how the bill ends up being enacted, it will only push more big game developers into making their titles subscription only.

This is a valid concern and a real incentive if that’s how the law works. What is irrational about this argument?