Comment by chickenzzzzu
6 days ago
There is a competitive advantage for being able to hold onto your code and builds. It currently requires quite a lot of effort and skill and persistence to resurrect live service games. This allows us to make money by re-releasing games and remastering them and so on.
If you require us to release server builds and or code "while still respecting copyright", the result will be that countries like Russia and China will offer competing services against us and we will not be able to make nearly as much money anymore.
I don't think there is much trouble in re-releasing and remastering games, since the company does not forfeit its IP and it doesn't give anyone else the right to publish the same game. Plus no one suggests that the company should instantly release the server binaries or source code upon game's release. Only when they themselves stop profiting from it.
For instance, with WoW, you currently have unofficial servers, but it doesn't stop Activision Blizzard from making huge money from WoW, both from new addons and classic ones.
I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever, and yes especially not at release.
Let me try to argue against my own point with WoW as an example then.
You say there are unofficial/private servers. Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere? It doesn't matter if it was from a leak, a reverse engineering effort, etc. Or are they the guarded property of the groups running the private servers?
The reason I ask is because, it is my opinion that once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you.
If WoW is still able to make a ton of money despite widely available builds being out there, then I think my position would be that WoW is just a cultural phenomenon that can survive all of that. But if it turns out that the server builds aren't widely available, I'd be curious to see how it survives when those are released.
Think-- why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing when you can pay pennies for the same exact thing? The only possible answer is conveniece and network effects ("my friends are on the official WoW so...")
> I don't think the companies should be required to release server executables ever
I still don't get why. If the company stops profiting from the product, they shouldn't care if people self-host it. Unless, of course, the company wants to force their playerbase to another project that does currently generate profit.
> Are these server builds downloadable online somewhere?
Not that I know of.
>once a reliable build exists, inevitably it will be hosted in China and Russia and so on, and now you have a serious competitor to deal with who doesn't need to follow the same laws as you
That's true, but it's not a problem for Blizzard, rather for those who host those unofficial servers. Because the main competition will be among them.
>why would you pay a quite high monthly price for the official thing
Mainly because of the quality. The official servers are fully functional, get regular maintenance and updates. While unofficial servers can go offline easily, they lack latest content, not all quests might work etc.
So if, for some reason, Blizzard can't keep their servers in good shape, but the community can, then it's Blizzard's fault if people start leaving official servers. And what if Blizzard intentionally starts making the service worse and worse to shift people to their other game (whatever it may be)? In this case I think that having an option like unofficial servers is good for community. Not good for Blizzard, yes, but good for people that just want to play the video game that they've been playing for 20+ years. This is what SKG is about.
thief