I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse.
Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation.
It would be better if they'd focus on narrower problems where they can make a positive difference. For example, mandating a freely distributable end-of-life patch to remove online activation from DRMed games. Creating a patch and uploading it once to the Internet Archive isn't a big enough burden to make companies modify their biz model or deploy armies of lawyers and MBAs to circumvent. When it comes to rapidly evolving technology, the best regulations are clearly defined, narrowly scoped and cheaper to comply with than avoid or game.
I played games online over dial-up, a few asynchronously via email, in the 1990s. Until the modern era, if some sort of direct TCP/IP connection wasn't built in, then an add-on usually supplied everything needed for private multiplayer and map editing.
I don't think companies should be on the hook for maintaining moderation, hosting, and development at no cost in perpetuity, but addressing not providing any legal way to access or modify content from a onetime sale forces companies to pick a model so consumers can make informed purchases.
I've often wondered how the gaming industry has gotten away for so long muddying whether they're selling products or services.
> I doubt it's possible for legislation to mandate meaningful compliance regarding something as dynamic and rapidly evolving as online games. Despite good intentions, such legislation often results in unintended consequences including distorting the market, creating perverse incentives or even making the problem worse.
I believe it's possible to write laws that serve the people they're supposed to protect. It may take iteration, but you have to start somewhere.
I'm willing to tolerate the new problems that may arise from trying to solve an existing one. Presenting the unknowns as something to be avoided because it might be complicated and require additional effort to fix, is not a sane refutation.
"It may take iteration, but you have to start somewhere."
It's hitting the assembly floor. Whether this is good depends, imo, entirely on indie carveouts for revenue. I'm afraid of shortsighted legislation like certain sections of DMCA.
Talking about the problems now is important. "Add this or the harm is worth more than the benefit" isn't a blanket refutation, but it is a refutation of the existing bill
The DMCA does exactly what its proponents wanted. That is is a bad deal for society as a whole is another issue but this does not invalidate the entire concept of addressing injustices with new laws.
> I believe it's possible to write laws that serve the people they're supposed to protect.
I agree. In theory it should be possible to create a fully transparent legislative drafting process incorporating red-teaming, open comment periods and mandated iteration cycles where bugs and unintended consequences inconsistent with the original intent are required to be addressed years after a law is passed. I'd love to design such a process.
Unfortunately, that's not at all how legislation gets made. It's opaque and fully penetrated at every level by highly-organized, well-funded special interests working to subvert the process in overt and covert ways. There have been entire books written about the incredibly sophisticated and devious ways legislation gets nerfed, loop-holed and corrupted. I once had dinner with a long-time Washington lobbyist for a public interest group. He has decades of experience seeing how the sausage is really made in the backrooms. It was a very depressing dinner.
The one thing that doesn't happen in recent decades of U.S. law-making is any chance of revisiting and revising a law once it is passed and not working. The reality is the U.S. Constitution and law-making process was brilliantly conceived 250 years ago by smart people with the highest ideals for mankind. It's amazing that system survived for as long as it did. But it's now been corrupted by black hats at Ring 0. And you can't deploy patches to resecure a system once the patching process itself has been pwned.
The only legislation which still gets passed in any reasonably pure form are things which no well-funded political or corporate vested interests care to fight over. Games now represent more yearly revenue than movies and music combined and most of the money now rolls-up to giants like MSFT, EA, Sony, etc. The chances of any legislation passing with real teeth to meaningfully restrict online games are virtually nil. Although if legislators see it as a popular enough issue, we might see a law pass with much fanfare but it will have subtle nerfs and kill-switches built in ensuring it makes no real difference in practice.
If you're wondering why legislators propose such laws if they know they're doomed to ultimately make no difference, it's for two reasons: 1. To get some positive press just for proposing something they know will never be enacted in law, or 2. Proposing a law which very well-funded vested interests will mobilize to kill or nerf generates an extraordinary amount of cash "donations" to campaigns, political parties and PACs. I learned from the lobbyist I had dinner with that #2 is far more common than #1.
> Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation.
No, without legal guarantees that perpetual licensing actually means perpetual availability there is actually no such thing. All this would change would force companies to accurately advertise the contract their are intending to honor, thus allowing more honest companies to compete.
> Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation.
Either it’ll go this way, or you’ll get the client for free and it’ll cost $(full game price) to create an online account. Free client means no refunds, thanks for playing!
You know what? I'm tired of unintended consequences fear mongering. You know what else had a tons of unintended consequences? Mandating seat belts. This is the industry kicking and crying because they don't want to be told that they can't abuse the consumer blatantly. Joke Bloke would still be able to release their game without wondering if this kind of law exists because the law will never apply to them. These kind of laws are targeting a massive abuse by big companies with a bag of money to figure it out.
Unintended consequences is the price of progress. The alternative is to continue farming by hand, and carry after from the river for your daily needs.
We legislate away unintended consequences, that is the job of government. We put in laws and remove them if they are unsuitable. Analysis paralysis does no one any good.
I don't see how you can legislate away a move to subscriptions. That's not unintended consequences, that is an entirely foreseeable and direct consequence.
which will also encourage more people to switch to indie games who don't abuse their users.
$company might see this requirement, to treat people with respect, as a threat to their business model and will respond by becoming worse.
Is only a problem if you're not willing or able to introduce additional requirements to compel ethical behavior.
The problem isn't companies are evil and we're hopeless to stop them so it's better to bend over. The problem is we're unwilling to force companies to behave ethically. Its more profitable to be evil. And it's not technically illegal to do so.... yet. (It's also more profitable to just steal.)
Games that are sunset without a way for the players to continue playing it are already effectively subscriptions. The whole point is to force companies to stick to what they are selling. Having companies advertise their games correctly would be a win as it would give their already honest competition making games that you can actually play indefinitely a huge advantage compared to the current situation.
You can't think of any cases where unintended consequences dominated the equation and made the initiative completely detrimental? I can. The cookie consent popups we all have to click on every website started out with good intentions, wouldn't you agree? And how has that overall turned out? Are we educating people about privacy or are we just producing pointless pixel updates and burning the ozone layer?
Then table a bill to remove that legislation, that is entirely possible. The point being that all legislation have consequences, but it is better to move forward with the best step we could take than to stand still and do nothing.
Just as there is iteration in software, we should iterate our laws. That is what a functioning government looks like.
I don't have the time money or energy to introduce my own competing law, but I can post and try to spread my point of view, which seems to be very effective. And I agree with you, we should iterate laws, but starting with a good one is a lot better than starting with a bad one wouldn't you agree?
Serious problems are already apparent. Games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription." aren't regulated, which will greatly accelerate the death of perpetual licensing. A world where no games are available for outright purchase and offline use would be disastrous for players and historical preservation.
It would be better if they'd focus on narrower problems where they can make a positive difference. For example, mandating a freely distributable end-of-life patch to remove online activation from DRMed games. Creating a patch and uploading it once to the Internet Archive isn't a big enough burden to make companies modify their biz model or deploy armies of lawyers and MBAs to circumvent. When it comes to rapidly evolving technology, the best regulations are clearly defined, narrowly scoped and cheaper to comply with than avoid or game.