If the desire is to not lose the experience after the company shutters the project, I'm not really sure that's possible. Maybe it is for WoW. But I can certainly imagine a game like Pokemon Go or something being developed by an indie dev that works by orchestrating live real-time events depending on players locations. Would this game even be allowed in the EU following this law? They can't allow users personal locations to be released, they can't create a game they can't eventually fully release to the public. Even if they found a way to strip out users locations, the experience would be completely broken. So what's the answer? Just don't innovate in that space?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don’t think the intent is to maintain the exact original experience forever and after. It’s to ensure it’s possible to play the game at all even if the developer shuts down their servers.

It’s becoming more and more common that games stop functioning completely when the developers no longer want to support the game anymore - even games that are perfectly playable single player.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Yeah I agree with the single player bit. And even multiplayer if it's as simple as releasing the server app. But I think Thor's point and what's being debated here is that live service games often aren't like that. So why is this law seemingly including them?

If you don't like live service games and don't feel like they should exist, then don't buy them. I can see some legislation around clear marketing. But if people want to pay for an ephemeral service, that's up to the consumer.

[–] ampersandrew 6 points 3 months ago

The answer is to allow people to host it themselves. If you've got a Discord server and people who want to experience a game with you, you could get 40 people together to do a WoW raid long after it stopped being profitable for Blizzard. In a case like Pokemon Go, either that stuff is determined algorithmically or there's a game master with their finger on the button to trigger the event; users could run that too.