Comment by hodgehog11
3 hours ago
It just requires game engines to develop a tool to make this much easier to do. The rule won't apply retroactively, so it just means different design choices from the start.
> For a small game studio it may be incredibly prohibitive.
Alright, you lost me here. All of the games that do not follow what this law would suggest are AAA (or scams, essentially). The smaller studios always have some acceptable end-of-life plan from my experience.
I'm not sure AAA studios are as large, or as profitable, as you think. The studio itself is often small, large publishers just own many of them.
Small like 30 people? I don't think so. Genuinely small studios are able to preserve their games for the long-term, so there is no excuse.
AAA gaming isn't something that needs to be protected. Anything of sufficient magnitude and budget should be made responsibly or not at all. If a game is unable to exist without screwing over the user in a very legal sense, it has no right to exist. The requests of SKG are not only sensible, they impose a serious legal ambiguity in the current system that needs to be corrected one way or the other.
AAA was always an untenable monster that brought obscene risk; this was clear even in the mid-2010s and the industry is rapidly moving away from that model for good reason. The user-base clearly does not look kindly on AAA anymore either. That's why they are not profitable anymore. The SKG requirements would make very little impact overall compared to this.
I got my start at a game studio in 2001, after they were bought by Microsoft (and their game went from Mac to Xbox, if you get my drift). They're "big" now, but they regularly lay off large portions of their staff, because game development is boom and bust.
I don't think what you say in your first paragraph follows. Are you really, really interested in learning more about why, with an open mind?