Comment by meheleventyone
6 days ago
What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
6 days ago
What is a server executable? With a lot of modern games it could be a whole stacks worth of systems that neither the game client or server side game runtime will work without.
And which are not owned by the developer or available to be perpetually licensed.
To my understanding the idea is that if a company licenses some 3rd-party component for their game, the component would either need to be severable from the game while still leaving it reasonably playable, or the license would need to permit people who have purchased the game to use that component. This is going foward, not applying retroactively to existing games.
I think that's still fairly favorable to game publishers compared to most other purchased goods. If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
> If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
Yes it can.
Fairly notably quite a lot of publishers sell their physical books and newspapers and require retailer unsold copies to be destroyed - but they were sold to the retailer.
> Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
They quite possibly already have an alternative business of licensing the component for non-game offerings that they won't jeopardise.
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> If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
The big difference here is that you’re applying B2C terms on B2B licenses. This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
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