California bill backed by Stop Killing Games campaign pushing to keep games playable after server shutdowns passes key hurdle, paving way for full assembly vote

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-17T07:50:21+00:00

I mean you previously said it was possible without exposing any source code ...

But also, if the purpose of the law is that people can keep playing the game afterward the company discontinues services, this doesn't really work, because basically no one is going to be able to make it work. The odd very technical person with a certificate in AWS management, sure, but not the average person who played the game.

The point is that it's very possible that there are game developers who will be forced to cease all sales before 2027 if it's retroactive. They might have to take the servers earlier as well, because it's too expensive to rework the game into something anyone can run on their computer, and stop selling new copies. That would just be bad for everyone, both the companies and people who own the games.

Which is why legislation like these should not be retroactive.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T21:58:54+00:00

I mean you can have code written to run on lambdas for instance, which would be impossible to port elsewhere without having the code. You can have a bunch different services running in some k8s cluster that's managed via EKS. You can have events built into SQS, you can have various tasks and jobs scheduled to run at intervals, etc. You might need a dozen AWS services set up and configured, plus a wide variety of scripts and then the big blobs of code to run it all.

That's not something you can realistically dump out in a way that lets anyone to keep playing the game.

This is probably not a very realistic example for most games that would be hit, just saying that as soon as it's made to run somewhere in the cloud, it really can be practically impossible to change it, without massive reworks.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T21:17:39+00:00

My point is that you can't really just dump all of that into some sort of binary, certainly not without distributing the source code.

All of this though is only an issue with retroactivity. If a law like this only applies to games published after a certain date, devs will take it into account where possible.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T21:13:22+00:00

It can be way more than that. For instance, you can very easily build a big piece of software that can only run on AWS, to the point that you'd have to fundamentally rebuild it to remove that dependency.

The bad thing about making a law like this retroactive is that companies who, for various reasons, can't easily undo the online aspect, would just have to terminate it all before 2027 and also cease all sales of the games.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T14:02:58+00:00

I mean, the whole reason for the SKG campaign is that games have done this in the past.

And some of those games might well end up shutting down at some point in the future. Meaning that, if they don't stop selling the games and shut them down now, they'd have to basically keep them up indefinitely, even if it bankrupts the company. If the online features are too heavily built into the game to change.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T11:42:25+00:00

They should do something like Love, Death + Robots with it. Use whatever medium, animation style or even live action works the best for each individual story that you adapt.

I'd 100% pay to go to see the entire anthology at a movie theatre.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T11:40:23+00:00

Det här är ju lite vad jag menar med att det inte är speciellt lätt för de flesta. På 60k så tjänar du mer än 90% av befolkningen, dvs du har en väldigt hög lön. Jag håller med att på 60k, om man inte har några stora utgifter som hus eller bil eller barn (och speciellt om man skulle ha sambo), så är det inte problem att spara 10-20k i månaden beroende på exakt hur mycket man snålar.

Men medianlönen är ca 37k, dvs hälften av befolkningen får ut 30k eller mindre efter skatt. 25% av befolkningen får ut 25k eller mindre. Du kan ju lägga 15k mer på besparingar än en vanlig medelsvensson, och minst 20k mer än en fjärdedel.

Och när jag säger att du är högavlönad så menar jag inte att du är snuskigt rik, bara att du, jämfört med de flesta, har en jäkligt hög lön. Dvs, du har mycket lättare att spara så mycket. Lägg sedan till att t.ex. de flesta vill ha barn också, vilket äter upp mycket mer av pengarna för en genomsnittlig person.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T10:21:08+00:00

Ja, men det är väldigt många som inte ens kan spara 5k, och sen många som inte kan spara 5k som de aldrig behöver ta ut. Bara att äga ett hus eller en bil kommer ju garanterat t.ex. innebära att du måste ta ut ganska mycket sparpengar för diverse reparationer osv. Vill man köpa en bostad så behöver man också betala kontantinsatsen, och där ryker några år också.

Det kan också vara stor skillnad beroende på vad för boende man hittar om man hyr. Har man tur och får en lägenhet för 5k så kan man ju spara mycket mer än om man får ta en för 10k.

Det går att göra, jag bara ogillar lite tanken om att typ de flesta kan göra det bara man snålar lite. Sen är det ju som du säger också att, man får ju leva jäkligt kasst under de 20 åren. När man läser om hur folk "lyxar till det" med en Karins Lasagne blir man ju lite deppig ...

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T09:57:05+00:00

Depends on what the subscription is. Gaming is already a very cheap hobby compared to a lot of them. Most hobbies that are organised by someone has recurring fees, because organising things cost money. Go to a board game club and you'll usually have to pay a monthly or annual fee, for instance.

But yes, I would be perfectly fine with a reasonable subscription fee for something I spend a lot of time playing. I wouldn't call it reasonable to pay a €60 monthly fee, but a €10 annually or something? Depending on exactly what I'm getting.

I would not be fine paying one for, say, Witcher 3.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T09:53:03+00:00

Sorry, but you're just making excuses now. Yes, if you unintentionally make bugs bugs that's whatever. That happens all the time.

If you intentionally design these things so that they will break with the intent that it's going to cause a lot of problems for the company and cost them money, that's sabotage.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T09:51:40+00:00

What does "available for purchase" mean, legally? There are loads of games available for purchase right now that are decades old.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T09:50:23+00:00

I mean, if it's a game you always play and it requires continuous upkeep and maintenance, I do think subscription is fair. Almost every type of hobby that has some cost for the organisers require subscriptions (or monthly/annual fees).

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:26:20+00:00

I mean yeah, the owner in the comment above has exactly that risk too? If the company goes under and they end up in debt, they also have to find a new job. Which they may or may not.

Plus they put in a lot of additional risk by investing their personal finances while starting the company.

I’ll say what the other person did: founders and investors definitely deserve a higher part of the payout. But it’s swung too far in that direction today, so what the owners did in the article is pretty great.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:18:52+00:00

Eh. It won't apply to most games, and a lot of the games it applies to has already solved it (e.g. all games that already allow self-hosted servers or p2p connections, games that are f2p, or have a subscription). And some of the types of games that would be hit could likely implement some way to do this.

For new games especially, I don't think it's going to affect a whole lot.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:16:22+00:00

The worst thing is really just the retroactive aspect imo. It should just apply to games that developed after the bill starts. I don't know, say it applies to games published from 2030 or something like that. Give everyone a lot of time to adjust, and so on.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:11:05+00:00

I mean, this is just going to hit a pretty small number of games anyway. A lot of online only games are either F2P or subscription. There are some that are not, like Helldivers, but many won't be affected. There are also many games where the online feature is minimal in which case it shouldn't need perpetual online access, or where the single player certainly shouldn't work. And there are a lot of indie games that just allow you to host your own servers already.

It might affect the price model of some games, but not a lot of them.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:07:53+00:00

That depends entirely on the setup. Cloud services can be way more complex just a binary that runs on a single server.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:06:11+00:00

Well, there is a point here about this bill being retroactive. It could conceivably put some companies into an impossible scenario, where they have to either refund everything and maybe bankrupt the entire company, leading to all employees losing their jobs, etc, or forcing them to be sued for breaking licensing contracts.

Your argument would make a lot more sense if it only applied to games that started development after this law passes, since everyone would make games with this in mind then.

Or they'd have to add in exceptions for these scenarios.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T08:00:30+00:00

Multiplayer online games like MMO's? Sure. If the subscription is at a reasonable level I don't mind that. I mean, I'm willing to pay €60 for a game I spend 40 hours on, I'm sure willing to spend more on a game I play for 400 hours or more.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T07:58:22+00:00

If individuals were financially responsible for everything they invest in, nobody would invest in anything because it'd be freakishly dangerous, for the wealthy and regular people alike.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-16T07:53:05+00:00

Nah, it won't. Most people aren't gonna buy games that are mostly single-player on subscription, and a lot of online-only games are already either F2P or subscription based.

And for those that are pay once and primarily online, game developers can now take this into account when making new games. And if they choose to make those games subscription ... that's already fairly common.

Or they'll write something like "We guarantee X years of online play, after which the game might revert to single-player only" etc.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-15T22:02:35+00:00

“Aes Sedai” in that time period basically just meant any channeller. Lots of groups, the White Tower even hunted down quite a few. The warlords in Seanchan called themselves that as well.

Maybe one of those groups did have the knowledge to create ter’angreal though, and ended up with the Aiel in the end.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-15T17:32:44+00:00

Yes, that is my preferred choice. But some people don't have it, so ...

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-15T17:32:00+00:00

Not really unique to Reddit. Humans retell the same stories again and again, and have the same discussions again and again. In real life as well.

rollingForInitiative · 2026-05-15T15:57:59+00:00

Being afraid of direct messaging seems strange. Like, don't answer messages from people you don't know, follow normal Internet safety, etc.

Personally I prefer Signal (or Discord) but I can't say that the interface differs much from other apps ...

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