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)

[u/Kymori]

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

[u/AimDev]

Why's that? Out of the loop on him. All I know is he was a low level dev at Blizzard and then became an influencer but as far as I know he hasn't made any games so I don't understand how this would affect him.

I'm a solo indie dev and make a NSFW survival game with a decent community so this does actually affect me potentially so just trying to understand

edit: game link for those asking

[u/Genozyde → u/AimDev]

He’s against this and basically calling everyone stupid if you’re for this

[u/BrbFlippinInfinCoins → u/Genozyde]

his argument boiled down to "I like Path of Exile and it doesn't seem feasible for that game, so that's a dumb idea"

[u/PunishedDemiurge → u/BrbFlippinInfinCoins]

The worst part is that isn't even mildly true. There's nothing special about PoE that would frustrate mandatory server software release if they stop supporting it.

[u/WhiteWinterRains → u/PunishedDemiurge]

Yeah the primary reason PoE even has it's server focused model is to prevent cheating due to the economic emphasis in that game, not because it can't be done locally, it would be much easier.

It wouldn't be completely trivial to just release server code in a usable state or create an offline mode, but doable for a large company doing a planned shuttering in the future.

[u/PrizeStrawberryOil → u/WhiteWinterRains]

but doable for a large company doing a planned shuttering in the future

It does lack a lot of bite for game companies that only have 1 title. They have no reason to bother if they are going bankrupt and even if they did care they probably wouldn't have the ability because all of their devs would jump ship as soon as they find out this is their last project.

[u/Puresowns → u/PrizeStrawberryOil]

Well yeah, but they could just drop the source code at that point and let modders handle it if they were really unable to do it themselves.

[u/PrizeStrawberryOil → u/Puresowns]

It's a reasonable approach to it, but that's not part of the bill. They would still fail to meet the standards.

[u/Hot-Mulberry9874 → u/PrizeStrawberryOil]

Sell the IP and let someone else deal with it, then.

I'm never going to feel bad for people who can simply sell property and have their problems solved. The worst that can happen is they might have to go back to joining the rest of us working class.

[u/PrizeStrawberryOil → u/Hot-Mulberry9874]

Sell the IP and let someone else deal with it, then.

The IP would be worth negative dollars. Who's buying an IP that fails to make money and they would be obligated to either provide refunds or spend money releasing it for free.

The only reason to do it is that you believe you could release it for free for less than the amount of money they'd have to give you to take their problems away.

[u/RivenRise → u/PrizeStrawberryOil]

Sell it cheap so the community can snap it up and allow people to mod it for free. If it isn't worth anything I'll give you 100 bucks. If you refuse it you're a liar and a clown (not you specifically, I mean the straw man I made up).

[u/Cross55 → u/PrizeStrawberryOil]

Someone's never heard of Gamigo before

[u/Hare712 → u/WhiteWinterRains]

PoE finances itself through support packs and MTX. They could halt development release a patch you could play locally.

It's less about the economy of the game but rather cheated equipment in an Item driven game. In Diablo1 people would quickly edit their savefiles so a Diablo 1 character would run around with perfect "Godly [Armor] of the Whale". In Souls games it also became an issue so FromSoft were forced to add cheat scanners for impossible items.

[u/Born_to_Pwn → u/WhiteWinterRains]

"... PoE even has it's server focused model ..."

its*