Comment by strags
23 days ago
Authentication is an interesting example - it sounds like might be the easiest component to remove. But without authentication, you don't have identity. And without identity you have no viable notion of accounts - and without accounts you don't have persistence, entitlements, progression, achievements, or any of the meta aspects that are deeply entwined with modern games. Not to mention how extensively identity ties into Matchmaking - another fairly complex backend service.
This legislation might be more persuasive if it were tied to a reasonable time limit, but I don't see anything of that nature in the text. An obligation to support or refund customers that lasts for a fair timespan (ie. preventing rugpulls) is far less onerous than an obligation to release your code to satisfy someone's nostalgia.
For many games (and software, IoT devices, etc.), persistence/progression is tied to save files on your own device, and any authentication is more to the publisher's benefit of making sure you have an authorized copy - that's where it should be fine to just patch out the authentication check.
Even for games with centralized server-side progression, if you don't want to release the authentication service when you stop running it, then it could still be acceptable to patch out authentication by default and let those running community servers substitute in their own access system (like cracked/leaked unofficial servers already do).
> This legislation might be more persuasive if it were tied to a reasonable time limit, but I don't see anything of that nature in the text. An obligation to support or refund customers that lasts for a fair timespan (ie. preventing rugpulls) is far less onerous than an obligation to release your code to satisfy someone's nostalgia.
Should we be able to read books and watch movies that were released over, say, 20 years ago - or is that just satisfying someone's nostalgia? Maybe you don't think this matters for games, but with DRM it seems other media isn't far behind.