Comment by bob1029
20 hours ago
Imagine this from the perspective of a small indie studio, not from the perspective of a gamer. Lots of collateral damage with our first principles thinking here.
If we want to get serious about this there need to be exceptions. You can't force a one man shop to sing and dance the same rule set you would apply to all of Microsoft. At least, if your goal isn't to kill indie gaming and further expand the moats of the very people who would be inclined to lobby for this kind of moat expansion legislation.
What issues do you see? From the article, when selling a game you either have to ensure its continued online functionality or have to provide an offline mode. That seems reasonable to me.
It would actually be beneficial for end-user software in general.
> What issues do you see?
Well, there is no actual bill text because this idiot is more interested in announcing what "he will introduce" than actually writing legislation.
But let's assume it has a hard requirement that a game work offline. Let's say an indie developer releases something where some component that fails when some random server stops responding. If the law or regulation is poorly written, that could create liability for them. Hell, it could create an opening through which well-funded studies could target indie competitors.
You haven't said what the indie studio perspective is. What damage would this do to indie gaming? Does it come above consumer rights?
"would also require publishers to keep the game functional after support ends"
You are signing up for a life sentence of maintenance. No thanks.
"Games with online functionality would also be required to provide an offline mode before the servers supporting them are shut down."
Providing an offline mode doesn’t imply continued maintenance.
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