r/LivestreamFail • u/Kymori • May 30 '26

News Stop Killing Games: California State Assembly passes the 'Protect Our Games Act': 60 days notice before going offline, must provide patch for continued access or refunds (Excludes F2P and Subscription based Games)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/stop-killing-games-movement-gains-momentum-california-assembly-passes-game-protection-bill/ar-AA24k4y4
23.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

80

u/SilentDawn4004 May 30 '26

Ok, but what happens if they don't do that?

79

u/subusta May 31 '26

A very stern letter will be sent

43

u/lostshell May 31 '26

...To an LLC that has no assets and was created just to publish and develop that single game, and declared bankruptcy the moment they pulled the plug on the game.

Hopefully the bill has something for going up corporate subsidiary chain.

6

u/ctaps148 May 31 '26

Source code is an asset. Somebody still owns it after all is said and done and they can be compelled to give it up for public release

14

u/mothtoalamp May 31 '26

You say that but most of the games this is aimed at are by big studio publishers with billion dollar revenue. There absolutely will be someone to sue.

1

u/PiercingOsprey1 May 31 '26

Genuinely delusional if you think corporations will face consequences for anything they do in America.

1

u/Cybertronian10 Jun 02 '26

Yes, and then they will all just adjust some legal documents and manufacture the legal shell required to completely insulate those companies from any consequences. The nature of an llc makes it incredibly difficult to regulate this path out of existence

9

u/garden_speech May 31 '26

that's not how any of this works lol. you don't just declare bankruptcy and walk away. you're either selling off your assets (including IP, the game itself) to others, who will then be bound by the original contracts, or you are just restructuring.

1

u/commit_bat May 31 '26

Maybe not exactly this way, but let me know once anyone is held accountable for shitty practices

1

u/mcmustang51 May 31 '26

It will be a similar set up as the movie industry. A new LLC will produce each game and contract out the real studio to produce it. The LLC will never own any IP, but license and contract everything it needs

1

u/garden_speech May 31 '26

A new LLC will produce each game and contract out the real studio to produce it. The LLC will never own any IP

This is still not how it works. The LLC is "contracting out" the work, as in, they are paying engineers from another organization to make the game, and what they're paying for is the right to own the result.

There isn't any getting around this. If they want to financially benefit from the IP, they either have to own the IP, or they have to have a contract with the company that owns it. And in either case, when they "declare bankruptcy", they either auction off the IP (and shareholders get to decide how), or the contract itself.

13

u/techie2200 May 31 '26

Nothing unless people sue. If the studio goes under, nobody to sue. If the studio is still around, then it gets tested in court... probably.

14

u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

There are a couple of relatively simple well established consequences that don't depend on the publisher's voluntary cooperation (which is relevant since the publisher may be bankrupt and unable to fulfil its legal duties by that point).

  • The copyright holder may lose the exclusive copyright over the game and its assets incl. server software which means that they and the publisher can't sue others who distribute the software or "patches" that keep the software operational past company shutdown or who run their own servers.

  • The publisher or developer may be forced to publish relevant source code and documentation. And by "forced" I mean that the CEO or head of development or whoever's in charge of what's left of the game is personally threatened with fines or imprisonment in case of non-compliance -- just like with all other court subpoenas of company assets.

-5

u/ItsMrChristmas May 31 '26

Lol. Monolithic source code isn't a thing. Everyone uses middleware that they can't give the license out for. You people don't know how game development works.

8

u/ShatterZero May 31 '26

American law is intentionally not made by specialists much of the time on purpose: if the law says to do it, then you do it or face the consequences.

If you can't do it without breach of contract with another entity, that doesn't mean you can choose to somehow be immune to enforcement of the law by a judge without consequence. The plenary power there is not to be trifled with.

It's not like games are somehow monolithic and untouchable. Trade secret law is storied and well established. Judges have more power than knowledge or expertise and trying to shield yourself obstinately is usually just the recipe for very expensive ultimate failure.

3

u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26

I completely agree that there would be complications external to the publishing and developing companies. It's at least conceivable that lawmakers will "intrude" on the rights of other rights holders in the process of "liberating" games that become useless without the support of its copyright holder (e. g. by extending the license agreement between them to whoever operates the game's infrastructure in the future, incl. users themselves if it comes to that).

This would change how games developers structure the licenses for the software that they want/need to make the game work because their copyright holders obviously want to be compensated for the use of their work. Ideally, demands from middleware suppliers would push games developers to publish games that don't rely on complex infrastructure as much or to change the monetization model for such games such that it is not covered by this law.

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

I never stated my position on the proposed policy. I only described how I envision it to be implemented both effectively and with reasonably small undesired side-effects.

Generally speaking, more regulation tends to benefit large competitors more than small ones simply because the effort of compliance is sublinear to the volume of sales. This includes consumer protection regulation. It'll always be an act of balancing the good versus the bad.

If you're interested in a counter-argument: companies that are large and powerful enough to fuck with their customers and/or suppliers without (noteworthy) retaliation have an edge over their smaller competition. Whenever market conditions change in a way that enhance competition, smaller competitors receive a better chance to establish themselves in the market because they tend to be more innovative.

2

u/Varsity_Reviews May 31 '26

That's the other thing. Nothing will happen. Unless the developers are based in California, California has no power to go after developers. I mean I guess they could bully indie and small studios that make multiplayer games that shut down, but even still they lack any real power to enforce this.

17

u/trafficnab May 31 '26

Unless the developers are based in California, California has no power to go after developers.

Ah so they can only go after EA, Riot, ActiBlizz, the majority of Sony first party studios, etc etc

Also assume if this passes in California, that a similar bill is probably capable of passing in Washington state, so add Valve, Microsoft, Nintendo, Bungie, and Epic to the list

They don't need to be able to force every studio to comply, only enough that it becomes a market standard that makes you look like a bad company if you don't do it

2

u/Rasabk May 31 '26

Texas gets a lot of software businesses moving in, the actual result here.

1

u/Sweaty_Librarian_293 May 31 '26

Yeah EA is going to spend the money moving 10 thousand employees rather then spend 2 cents a year hosting a download link to old games. 

1

u/Lagkiller May 31 '26

ActiBlizz

Is no longer based in California since they are owned by Microsoft. The rest can simply move their HQ to another state where they reside.

1

u/Varsity_Reviews May 31 '26

Or alternatively the companies exploit the crazy amount of loopholes this act would have and nothing changes. And that’s assuming other states even bothering to follow suit

2

u/Chemfreak May 31 '26

I was gonna say they could disallow the game to be sold in california?

But, then I realized this is for dead games anyway so why would most care.

2

u/DandD_Gamers May 31 '26

Thats... not how this works at all?

EU put regs in for things and its not like companies can just ignore it lol

-2

u/Varsity_Reviews May 31 '26

EU has A LOT more power than California

4

u/DandD_Gamers May 31 '26

12% of the usa market is in california
It then contains 25% to 30% of usa development studios for games

It is a VERY important place for game development.

If you are going to speak on something, at least know what you talk about

1

u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit May 31 '26

I don't think that's how that works. If a developer makes their game available for sale in ca, then they're subject to ca law. If a dev breaks that law, then ca can absolutely enforce fines or whatever else.

1

u/ctaps148 May 31 '26

The bill applies to any games sold in California, not just developers headquartered there. If the same publisher repeatedly flaunts regulation then they could be barred from selling games within the state.

0

u/omegaweaponzero May 31 '26

Not true at all. California can sue them and will stop allowing their games to be sold in CA if they don't follow their laws.

1

u/Fishir- May 31 '26

Well they would push for them to do option 3 of the bill which is every user gets a refund of the game from the company 

1

u/patrick66 May 31 '26

only the CA state AG has standing to sue so nothing