Petition: Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state
petition.parliament.uk
Require publishers to leave videogames (and related game assets / features) they have sold to customers in a reasonably working state when support ends, so that no further intervention whatsoever is necessary for the game to function, as a statutory consumer right.
  • NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 months ago

    Whilst I agree in the spirit of the petition, the wording isn’t great.

    Server infrastructure has significant opex costs to run & maintain - it’s impractical to demand publishers to keep them alive, especially if the running cost far exceeds the player demand & potential revenues. What happens if that publisher goes bust? What happens if a significant security vulnerability is found?

    Might be better to have legislation for software publishers (not just games) to both plan & implement a sunsetting strategies when they intend to retire software.

    Eg. If the online component was just performing license checks, make software publishers remove the DRM. If it’s to host a DLC store, release all DLC items for free & remove the store. If its for multi-player mechanics, release both the client & server software as limited open-source license so the community can maintain those assets going forward.