With the rise of the live-service model, video games have shifted from a product you buy to a service you rent, one that publishers can switch off whenever they want.
Perhaps a little dramatic, but have you heard the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”
“things have changed” the makers of GDPR admitted it didn’t really accomplish what they wanted
The EU does great things, but this is an area plagued with issues. Like timed licences expiring, meaning even the devs/publishers can’t continue distributing the game, copyright and IP ownership being unclear who owns it after companies dissolve, leadership leaves or collaborations end. Not to mention the law still hasn’t really caught up over what it means to distribute a game. Does hosting a download for the client side of a game count as distribution? What happens if a company is obligated to stop distribution, but obligated to provide the community a way to keep playing? What if a member of leadership keeps providing a way to download the client-side, it might not contain copyright content, but maybe the server side does, which is actually distribution, is either?
We live in a world where 'I want to remaster <game> and I’m willing to buy the licenses and IP" can end with nothing happening because it’s too complicated.
So forgive me if “We want to continue playing games we bought =(” feels like too vague a direction for something this complicated and I can see far more concepts of terrible consequences for bad implementations than just having to click a popup box on every single website I visit and needing a VPN to visit the sites that try to block EU traffic because they don’t want to have to adhere to GDPR.
Perhaps a little dramatic, but have you heard the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”
“things have changed” the makers of GDPR admitted it didn’t really accomplish what they wanted
The EU does great things, but this is an area plagued with issues. Like timed licences expiring, meaning even the devs/publishers can’t continue distributing the game, copyright and IP ownership being unclear who owns it after companies dissolve, leadership leaves or collaborations end. Not to mention the law still hasn’t really caught up over what it means to distribute a game. Does hosting a download for the client side of a game count as distribution? What happens if a company is obligated to stop distribution, but obligated to provide the community a way to keep playing? What if a member of leadership keeps providing a way to download the client-side, it might not contain copyright content, but maybe the server side does, which is actually distribution, is either?
We live in a world where 'I want to remaster <game> and I’m willing to buy the licenses and IP" can end with nothing happening because it’s too complicated.
So forgive me if “We want to continue playing games we bought =(” feels like too vague a direction for something this complicated and I can see far more concepts of terrible consequences for bad implementations than just having to click a popup box on every single website I visit and needing a VPN to visit the sites that try to block EU traffic because they don’t want to have to adhere to GDPR.