The Stop Killing Games initiative is gaining traction. At its core, the idea is to prevent situations where a great game is just disabled and no one can play it anymore. But will publishers and distributors agree to such a law?
Hi, my name is Tom Smykowski. I've spent 19 years building software and now write about the intersection of technology, business, and consumer rights. On this blog I explore how regulation shapes the tech products we use every day.
The idea is quite simple: if you publish a game and decide that you won't offer services required to run the game, you're obligated to provide tools for the players to run the game anyways. So basically a game server anyone can run, and no limits to playing the game.
Such a model is popular for quite some time now, and it is technically possible. There are various Minecraft servers, and there's no one kill switch that can disable people playing on various servers. There's a lot more games that support it. And Minecraft by no means is a game that didn't earn money.
So it's not that revolutionary to offer such capability. At least from a technical perspective, because from a business perspective it can be quite confusing for game developers, publishers and distributors.
The full article explores who pays for these changes, the deeper problem with microtransactions, and why I think this initiative doesn't go far enough.