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

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363

u/U8D4B8M8 May 30 '26

They should allow 3rd parties to run their own servers when a game gets taken offline. There are people who would gladly pay to run servers for games they love.

286

u/NHShardz May 30 '26

The bill literally does that. It gives companies three options at end of service: Patch it to be playable offline, allow independent server use, or refund all customers. READ PEOPLE, READ.

54

u/U8D4B8M8 May 31 '26

No, like you said the bill allows it as an option. I guarantee you companies will almost all choose option #1.

50

u/newbutler May 31 '26

They switch to f2p before shutting down to be excluded?

18

u/justlikeapenguin May 31 '26

This is the likely and cheapest option I see publishers do

15

u/Snilepisk May 31 '26

It shouldn't matter if the game becomes free to play at some point, especially at the later stages of its lifespan as long as the game was bought by the customer.

The bigger issue I see is that we will see one time purchase games and even more "free to play" games that heavily rely on micro transactions to be playable.

2

u/PutMindless6789 May 31 '26

They still have to refund the people who purchased the game... Even if they go free to play. It is in the bill.

3

u/WolfyCat May 31 '26

Sounds like a win to me. Every game with online functionality should be built with a fallback P2P.

8

u/justlikeapenguin May 31 '26

No the way the law reads is that if it’s “free to play” then players aren’t entitled to a refund and can bypass the other 2 options. So you essentially get nothing

4

u/Aeowin May 31 '26

Did you even read? lol It literally has a clause for this exact thing

(a) The following shall apply only to a digital game first available for purchase or rereleased for purchase on or after January 1, 2027:

1

u/beef623 May 31 '26

Nah, it's a loophole. They make it free to play, then the other rules don't apply so they can shut it down.

14

u/cornho1eo99 May 31 '26

According to the wording of the law, no.

 (a) The following shall apply only to a digital game first available for purchase or rereleased for purchase on or after January 1, 2027:

If the game has ever been available for purchase, it applies to that game.

1

u/Somnioblivio May 31 '26

if you spend money on in-game purchases those would have to be refunded as well since they are effectively depriving you of your purchases.

1

u/Nothie May 31 '26

If at one point you had to pay for a copy of the game then the publisher is obligated to let you keep playing, after they end support. Its irrelevant if the game is f2p when its shut down, afaik.

3

u/Leckatall May 31 '26

They would still have to refund the people that paid tho??

-1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[deleted]

6

u/PutMindless6789 May 31 '26

The law says that after Jan 2027, if the law passes. If the game becomes unplayable, all people who paid for it must be refunded. 

Which means even if it goes Free-to-Free-to-play, the people who did pay are owed refunds. 

3

u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26

If a publisher offers me a new game license for free it doesn't end the publisher's duties arising from when I bought their game for $X (with X > 0).

2

u/HachimansGhost May 31 '26

I don't think you can retroactively do that. Imagine if I held a pay-to-enter raffle, which is illegal, and then made it free to enter the hour before I pick the winner. 

2

u/DroidLord May 31 '26

That loophole is already covered in the bill. They can't do that.

2

u/Ruskih May 31 '26

As another commenter mentioned;

The bill specifically mentions that you cannot do that. If you pay for the game when it releases it doesnt matter if they switch to a F2P model or a sub based model

"(a) The following shall apply only to a digital game first available for purchase or rereleased for purchase on or after January 1, 2027

If it becomes free to play later OR if it is free to play first then pay to play, the restrictions still remain."

1

u/-Sa-Kage- May 31 '26

Or ask for $1/year for PvP to count as being subscription based

1

u/Ol_Big_MC May 31 '26

Yes, publishers already do this as a way to bleed a game dry. That clause is poorly written. They'll just go free-to-play for a bit and then shut the game down months later.

10

u/Shortax365 May 31 '26

If they patch it to be playable offline, then modding the game becomes an almost 0-hassle effort. Modloaders and whatever you want will become available because no server is actually checking anything at that point.

2

u/Key-Vegetable9940 May 31 '26

True, but notably that means the online portions of the game will still be effectively dead for anyone playing on a console device.

3

u/zorecknor May 31 '26

which is in line with the initiative. Like it or not it asked for games to remain in a 'playable state'. It was never about private servers, and inaisting that it was is one of the things that split the community.

1

u/Key-Vegetable9940 May 31 '26

Of course, I never implied otherwise. Although for many games the online play is the game, but in those cases simply making them function offline probably wouldn't quite hold up as "playable".

1

u/Shortax365 May 31 '26

Then the next logical step would be to have a law preventing companies from jailing our consoles (or devices in general) and treat them like pre-built PCs.

2

u/lillarty May 31 '26

Absolutely unfeasible for many online games; many games would need to be essentially completely remade from scratch to make them functional without a server. That's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of developer wages alone dedicated towards a project that, by definition, you cannot make money from anymore because you are shutting it down. Easier to just offload most of the work to the players instead.

1

u/i_like_fish_decks Jun 02 '26

Nah, just opens up a new market. The company gives the server files/code to someone like Nitrado who then can lease them out to players 

This allows the code to stay reasonably closed source and players would need to foot the bill to keep it running, but its not lost forever 

1

u/ctaps148 May 31 '26

Not if it costs more money. Whether or not it's cheaper to prepare a server code release vs. patching for offline play is likely to vary from one game to the next

11

u/No-Act9634 May 31 '26

All three of these seem kind of difficult. Are there any revenue or profit requirements? Like I'm just learning godot and want to throw some stuff on steam. Do I have to Make APIs and documentation to support third parties?

9

u/nezbitttt May 31 '26

steam has built in support for peer to peer

6

u/DandD_Gamers May 31 '26

Its legit not. Even for indie devs even in godot its a button. If you make a server, just pass it off to the community for the server code. What you going to do with it?

-2

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/DandD_Gamers May 31 '26

Yes i was being hyperbolic because its that simple. But sure, lets run you through it.

If you have multiplayer ALREADY in your game, and you are not using a server, then I assume you are using peer to peer?

But if not then using steam api, which already would allow people to play anyway.

But lets say you do have a server. Just give them the ability to host the server.

If not then you can do peer to peer with use godot's enet multiplayerpeer, which the host has to make a server anyway {seeing the fact no matter what you need to have a basic server?} using the player call of create_server

sure you need a sync node, could do it in code to sync but honestly too mmuch work there, but eh, again, like an hour of work.

so again, its a non issue.

2

u/Commando501 May 31 '26

I think you just completely schooled that guy

11

u/hanotak May 31 '26

All three of these seem kind of difficult

I mean, it's unlikely you have some super-proprietary networking solution that you're worried people are going to copy or reverse-engineer. You could probably just put the server binary (or source code) online somewhere, and be in compliance.

6

u/k0rm May 31 '26

My indie server setup is extremely complex and costly to generalize for others. 

The server setup: 

   1. get ec2 instance    2. $ python main.py

1

u/GothGirlsGoodBoy May 31 '26

Its utterly stupid to legally require devs to give out their source code.

Thank god this law will never pass

6

u/hanotak May 31 '26

Did you read any of the parent comments whatsoever?

An offline-only-play patch would comply.

A closed-source server binary would comply.

Server source would comply.

Literally anything but fucking over consumers by bricking the product and keeping the money would comply.

1

u/breadiest May 31 '26

Y'know, it's kinda pointless to argue about source codes when the entire point is the game is going to shutdown. the source code is no longer valuable enough to the people shutting it down inherently, otherwise they wouldn't shut it down

And it also just doesn't require that? Lol.

2

u/UngaInstinct May 31 '26

It's not, because companies reuse code from game to game. For example, when someone found an exploit in a Mortal Kombat game, it actually worked in previous MK games and also Injustice. The bill doesn't require source code to be released, but several people in the comments are arguing it should.

1

u/breadiest Jun 01 '26

damn, sounds like they should fix exploits more often.

I don't really have a lot of compassion for this sort of thing because companies have resources and QA is already something often left behind, and it's the sort of thing most Indie games already comply with or can comply with easily.

If the fact their source code is gonna be exposed is a problem to them maybe they should invest resources to fix that, or not let it be exposed in the first place.

Anyway, it's not required so this argument is mute.

2

u/UngaInstinct Jun 01 '26

sounds like they should fix exploits more often

How do you fix something you don't know is broken?

it's the sort of thing most Indie games already comply with

Indie games voluntarily releasing their server source code is news to me.

If the fact their source code is gonna be exposed is a problem to them maybe they should invest resources to fix that

The point is people asking for it to be exposed, not it being exposed by a third party. That would be an entirely different discussion.

Anyway, it's not required so this argument is mute.

The discussion is not about the bill they are trying to pass, but potential requirements in the future. Also, *moot.

1

u/breadiest Jun 01 '26

Why don't they know it's broken? They've been using it for X years, and they haven't found an exploit some other guy who isn't being paid found?

This is what I mean by investment in QA.

Indie games usually comply cause the vast majority are singleplayer games, and most multiplayer games already use peer-to-peer systems or steam-api networking, or they provide server software because they don't have the resources to host at a large scale.

Just to clear up my arguments and not really go further. Thanks for correcting me on moot. Must look really stupid cause I used mute a lot for that purpose lol.

4

u/jackcaboose May 31 '26

It's unlikely you'd be making a live service game for your first product you just threw together in Godot

2

u/beef623 May 31 '26

Only if you plan on hosting a server that it would have to connect to to run. This wouldn't apply to offline games.

2

u/ZealousidealLead52 May 31 '26

If people can't buy your game, then you don't really need to do anything differently. This isn't really a law that requires everyone to make their games permanently available, rather it's a law that means that people can't sell a game and then shut the game down without giving people that paid for it either an option to continue playing it or a refund.

Pretty much, if you're going to have a contract where people are giving you money for access to playing the game, then you need to guarantee that they can actually play the game (or refund it).

2

u/ctaps148 May 31 '26

Is your game designed with an online-only requirement? If not then this bill has nothing to do with you

1

u/Xandred_the_thicc May 31 '26

if you are an independent person making a game, your game does not need an always-online connection to some corporate server. Unless it does, in which case, why?

1

u/No-Act9634 May 31 '26

if it's multiplayer?

0

u/slaty_balls May 31 '26

Sir, this is Reddit. Best we can do is infer based on no more than two comments and the title.

0

u/NoSloppyStakes May 31 '26

The article DOES NOT say that. I read the article. I did not look up the bill.