this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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This is just pure fabricated bullshit. They themselves started limiting options. Remember the old days where you could host your own server with basically any game? They took that away, not us. So they themselves are 100% responsible for this 'uprising'. Besides they could just provide/open-source the backend and disable drm. Hardly any work at all.
But of course it's not about that. They just try to hide behind this 'limits options' argument. But they simply don't want you to be able to play their old games. They want you to buy their latest CoD 42.
I remember the "old days". That was when dialup internet was still popular and running a server usually meant it was on your 10Mb LAN. When we got DSL it was better and you could serve outside your LAN. This was also the time when games had dark red code booklets, required having a physical CD inserted or weirdly formatted floppies (sometimes a combination of these). You could get around these things and many groups of people worked hard at providing these workarounds. Today, many of these games are only playable and only still exist because of the thankless work these groups did. As it was and as it is has not changed. Many groups of people are still keeping games playable despite the "war" that corporations wage on them (and by proxy on us). Ironically, now that there is such a thing as "classic games" and people are nostalgic for what brought them joy in the past, business has leapt at this as a marketing opportunity. What makes that ironic? These business are re-selling the versions of games with the circumvention patches that the community made to make their games playable so long ago. The patches that publishers had such a big problem with and sought to eradicate. This is because the original code no longer exists and the un-patched games will not run at all on modern hardware and the copy-protections will not tolerate a virtual machine. Nothing has changed.
We can even go back as far as when people first started making books or maps that had deliberate errors so that they could track when their work was redistributed. Do the people referencing these books or maps benefit from these errors?
Why do some of us feel compelled to limit knowledge even at the cost of corrupting that knowledge for those we intend it for (and for those long after who wish to learn from historical knowledge)?
Let's be real, open sourcing it isn't "hardly any work". All the code has to be reviewed to make sure they can legally release it, no third-party proprietary stuff.
Oh but with the new rules they could do that before making their code work that way. The idea is not for the new laws to apply retroactively but for new games.
I think your response is coming off as kinda "oh just do it different". But that still means an entire industry of people are going to have to change how they make things. (And still spend time and money evaluating things at the end, just to be sure nothing slipped through.) I'm in favor of this at least being looked at and honest conversations happening, (which will not happen without this.) But there will certainly be an adjustment period where people on ground level learn and develop new "best practices". And invariably someone will screw up. The companies are obviously only worried about money. They'll get over it, is my opinion. But I think it's worth communicating that we all understand new government regulation is likely going to be a pain in the ass. We just think it's worth the pain/money. And that's open sourcing or just creating a new mode for offline play in everything.
Companies do that all the time in response to government regulation. You like seat belts and backup cameras in your car? No sawdust in your food? Transparent pricing when buying internet access? Government regulation. None of those companies went out of business.
This is exactly why I said:
It's just one possible solution. They can just release a proprietary server application instead.
When starting a new game, don't include that stuff. Not including proprietary stuff without meeting the licensing requirements is already a step in the process.
There is a reason it's included though. Stuff like fmod, bink video etc. does complicated things that you otherwise need to implement yourself.
When the law passes, the owners of proprietary functionality will adapt their licensing to meet the requirrments or go out of business when everyone stops using them.
Look I get it. The planet is dying, income inequality, it seems everything is unfair and going to shit. People yearn at an opportunity to help make things better. But yelling for simple solutions is the opposite of helpful. Because there are no simple solutions.
Saying to "just open source it" does not make sense.
What do you do about:
Making single player games without always online DRM: yes totally doable
Running game servers of online games forever: not really doable, as soon as all the libraries etc. they depend on are unsupported they will shut down one way or another. You need staff basically forever. Not even mentioning the maintenance headache that every legacy system always turns into.
Letting people run their own dedicated servers: sometimes doable, depends on the game though. Some games do not have "a server" but a whole infrastructure of stuff, look at foxhole. Some "servers" are a house of cards barely held together by duct tape.
This initiative all comes down to the definition of "reasonable". What is reasonable, actually? Running an infrastructure at a loss until bankruptcy? Or just keeping it online until it starts making a loss.
This has nothing to do with open source.
Nothing.
Open source has zero relevance.
None whatsoever.
Nada.
Their licensing will change so that it doesn't restrict keeping the game alive after servers go down or their license can't be used to kill an otherwise functional game. That's it.
Games will be designed to include the ability to do private servers after the company servers go down. It will be a cost of development just like anything else they are required to do. If they don't want to include that, then they can choose not to make an online game.
It will be hardly any work once a law passes, because they'll make sure it is. Everyone knows where the proprietary code is. It doesn't just get merged in "by accident" unless you are a really shit developer (and to be fair some are).
Besides, no one is saying they have to open source it. To be honest, the outcome from this petition that I would most like to see is simply a blanket indemnity to the community attempting to revive, continue and improve the software from that point forward. If the law says that it's legal once a software is shut down, for the community to figure out a way to make it work again and make it their own, and puts no further responsibilities on the "rights holder" at all, I think that honestly solves the problem in 99% of cases. It would be nice if they gave the community a hand, released what they could, and tried not to be shit about it, (and I know some of them will be shit about it, but we're pretty resourceful), as long as they're not trying to sue every attempt into oblivion I think we'll make a lot of progress on game preservation and make the gaming world a much better place.
Heh. You are still overestimating the average developer. Random code gets copy-pasted into files without attribution all the time. One guy might know, but if he gets moved to a different team, the new guy has no idea. That can be a ticking legal time-bomb.
Again, if you know going in that is an absolute requirement, processes can be put in place to ensure things like that doesn't happen. (at least not as often) vs what you're thinking of trying to do it after the game is already shipped.
That's why i also said provide, not just open source. They can release a binary.
Maybe they should have made sure their code was fully legal to use before releasing the game initially
What? There's a big difference between "legal to sell as a compiled binary" and "legal to release as source".
Just saying, if my highschool programming classes are any indicator, there's a ton of released binaries out there that use copywritten and otherwise plaigarized code
And that's one of the big reasons companies don't even think about open-sourcing their code.
honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction
Bold of you to assume such spec or docs exist. Usually it's all cowboyed and tightly coupled, with no planning for reuse.
Cool, so after they are legally required to then they will start creating the documentation.
The point is making them change how they do things when how they do it is shitty for consumers.
I'm speaking from ignorance but isn't the server backend often licensed and they couldn't release it if they wanted, even as binaries? Granted, going forward they'd have to make those considerations before they accept restrictive licenses in core parts of their game. And the market for those licenses will change accordingly. So there core of your argument is correct.
lots of licensed or bought code in development in general, but knowing that you'll have to provide code to the public eventually, means that you'll have to take this into consideration when starting a project.
Maybe so, but that's a decision they make. Surely I as customer shouldn't be taken away what i paid for because of that? And if so they should have mentioned clearly upon sale that they would take away my product after 3-4 years (though maybe that's the case in those dense ToS?) . Everything else should be considered illegal and fraudulent if they planned/knew it from the start. Which is the case if it's a licensing issue
Besides, I'm pretty sure after those 4 years the code is outdated and they could renegotiate the license to be more open to release a binary.