PC Gaming

8651 readers

473 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

Be Respectful.
No Spam or Porn.
No Advertising.
No Memes.
No Tech Support.
No questions about buying/building computers.
No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

EXiLExJD@lemmy.ca

UncleBadTouch@lemmy.ca

KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com

614

A new law has been passed in California which prohibits the use of words like "buy" and "purchase" on digital storefronts like Steam. (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 2 months ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

109 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The Stop Killing Games concept is not stopping or protecting anyone from buying video games.

... Neither is slapping a warning label onto games that says 'hey you don't own this the way you own a blender.'

That's very strange framing to use.

What SKG does is mandate that your purchased product be technically possible to be usable in perpetuity, or refund the cost of it.

Everyone knows servers cost money to run, so its not reasonable to mandate every game that is totally online only just have servers up forever, maintained by the publisher.

But what is also unreasonable is needless, always online DRM that shuts down one day (Games for Windows Live, anyone?) or having a massively online game that could still be enjoyed by dedicated fans, willing to front the cost for one or two servers... but cannot, because reverse engineering network code is orders of magnitude more difficult and costly than the publisher just releasing it to the public when they no longer want to officially maintain it.

SKG would completely allow you to purchase an online game whose official server support would end someday.

It... just augments consumer rights by mandating either a refund at that point, or a pretty effortless and costless release of the server files and configs.

I am really struggling to see how you are interpreting this concept as somehow preventing the purchase of games.

[–] dudinax@programming.dev -5 points 2 months ago

If games have to be playable in perpetuity, then you can't buy a game that isn't playable in perpetuity.

But what is also unreasonable is needless, always online DRM that shuts down one day.

There are lots of video games without forced online DRM, and video games aren't a necessity. You can simply stop buying games from these services and let people who don't care about such things continue to buy them.