this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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well, while i understand sunsetting old online multiplayer games because hosting game servers is a non zero cost, i can't understand the need for singleplayer games to be always connected and rendering them unplayable
The company wouldn't be required to keep their servers online, just to allow other people to host their own. So it has 0 ongoing cost and maybe few hours of coding during game development.
Unless you are a game developer I would hold off on assuming how much work would be required to do what this proposal asks.
Used to be the norm back in the day though. I'm saying 15 years or so before the old internet disappeared with AWS etc.
Self hosted should be an option and I think this is a reasonable requirement tbqh. Yeah it's not 0 work but it's not a hardship either, really, given the many hours that are going to be needed on netcode anyway. Especially if you know this going in to development.
That isn't an unreasonable take. But the language this proposal uses is far too vague and leaves too much in the hands of the government, and could be used by the EU, an organization not really known for their tech savvy, to place some burdensome requirements on developers....especially indie developers who do not have the resources that big studios have.
Indie developers are the only ones doing that, Knockout City devs released their hosting software for the community, it's the AAA developers that wanted to maintain control.
if they can code their own server software already, it wouldnt be a problem to release it.
Wat
Building a whole cloud backend is not a few hours work.
Plus I bet most of these companies share cloud tooling so they'll need to make distinct standalone self host code
Most of what they use built-in in game engines, not their standalone code. It's a matter of switching the servers used with some minor tweaks.
While simply allowing the game to use a variable for the server URL is easy, the VAST majority of gamers would assume it'd come with a clean server installer and the ability to set the URL in some kind of UI.
Both of those details are very much NOT simple in many cases. Sure, quite a few well written games, it could be done quickly, but as someone who's worked on software for decades ... it's NEVER well written. Especially when video game studio style crunch is involved.
This is still a good petition and good idea, but to assume "just a few hours" is ... simply ignorant.
Does it need to be simple? I think it's pretty reasonable to just release what you have as is, then let the users figure out how to run it for themselves.
I wouldn't mind anything above "possible". I was just commenting on what most end users would expect if it's released for public consumption. Just like everyone keeps bringing it up as a good example, old steam games with a perfectly functional server component you can start up about as easily as the game is all the "hosting" experience most gamers have. If it's more than setting a port for the server and typing in the url/ip and port in the client, many will be immediately lost.
... not that they should have to make it that easy. The main point of my earlier post was that for many games, creating an easy server component and updating the game to connect to arbitrary servers is very likely to be more than a few hours' work.
Especially MMO's and bigger games that may have multiple server components running on multiple servers and likely with an entire build/deploy pipeline behind them...
Hah.
There's actually nothing wrong with no longer supporting a game you developed. The problem is these scummy bastards make sure no one can support the game or run it privately after they abandon it.
Looking at you hitman...