This is one of the reason why that law will surely be challenged and very likely invalidated by SCOTUS. Trade secret protection is a very fundamental part and if this is forced to be broken by legally compelled speech, then it needs to have very creative interpretations over judicial precedents.
As I understand it, the obstacles are mostly legal. Our development team would love to just throw the code on GitHub.
Sounds like if it was mandatory to make a server release, legal would mostly shut up and it would be low cost. In other words, minimal change in risk.
The refund thing is just there to force action by putting a dollar value on inaction. Pretty much no company is expected to actually choose refunds.
> Alternatively, it might push multiplayer games towards free-to-play if in-app-purchases are excluded.
Good point, the law had better not exclude those.
This is one of the reason why that law will surely be challenged and very likely invalidated by SCOTUS. Trade secret protection is a very fundamental part and if this is forced to be broken by legally compelled speech, then it needs to have very creative interpretations over judicial precedents.
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Sometimes, when a game developer shuts down, their computer equipment is liquidated with useful information still on it.
Do you think any compagny would want to release some very sensitive / secret sauce code?
Tbh I think engineers gladly would. I think most folks want the content out. It’s the legal obligations that always get in the way.