Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Game Industry Pushes Back Against Efforts To Restore Gameplay Servers (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the state-of-play dept.

Kyle Orland reports via Ars Technica: A group of video game preservationists wants the legal right to replicate "abandoned" servers in order to re-enable defunct online multiplayer gameplay for study. The game industry says those efforts would hurt their business, allow the theft of their copyrighted content, and essentially let researchers "blur the line between preservation and play." Both sides are arguing their case to the U.S. Copyright Office right now, submitting lengthy comments on the subject as part of the Copyright Register's triennial review of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Analyzing the arguments on both sides shows how passionate both industry and academia are about the issue, and how mistrust and misunderstanding seem to have infected the debate.

21 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright is a hell of a drug by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if they can't do anything with their code, they refuse to let go. And when the copyright finally expires sometime next century, no one will be alive who remembers the game and no hardware exists which contains the code. Such is life with digital ephemera.

  2. Nothin new by Luckyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idea of "owning the means to play" was one of the key changes in gaming industry. The entire concept of multiplayer on modern consoles is predicated upon this principle, and with windows 10, PC gaming is headed in the same direction.

    Not giving players servers they could control was just one step on this progression.

    1. Re:Nothin new by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This no longer applies to just games. A lot of enterprise software won't work once they turn off the servers due to a change in business model, or a breaking software change.

    2. Re:Nothin new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Im going to post this anon because Im about to talk about work lol

      I tried pointing this out to the bosses as they moved to office 365 in the cloud. I pointed out that if Microsoft goes under or the servers go down, we will not be able to work. I pointed out that Microsoft only guarantees a 99% up time and that is not acceptable as we currently run a 99.999% up time.

      They tell me I dont understand that the world is changing and we have to move forward.

      I asked what happens in 15 or 20 years when all that is antiquated and the servers are off? Im told that will never happen as we will upgrade to stay current. I point to the servers I run that were made in 1994 and we can not upgrade because federal regulations require a specific process for documenting and gaining approval for the underlying format changes. I point out that someone decided that spending multiple millions of dollars to upgrade archival data that did not have an ROI was not a smart financial move. I then ask what makes them think this will be any different. Im told "It Microsoft, that's whats different. Now stop being such a pessimist."

      I am so glad I am retiring in a few years. I would hate to see the state of IT in 20 years when all this shit falls apart.

    3. Re:Nothin new by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Valve disagrees with your optimism. See: their linux gaming project that they started the moment they saw win10 and understood what it meant for them.

      For now, it seems that they made a deal with microsoft however, which is why it's basically shelved. Remember: boiling the frog needs to be slow enough. It seems that microsoft was a bit too hasty with initial introduction of win10. But they learned and slowed it down.

      While keeping the direction intact. Here's a question: do you think that from the point of view of the process, it really matters that much if we arrive in the walled garden five years later?

    4. Re:Nothin new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hate to be working for that company.

      Here is why you don't trust Microsoft:
      1) They have a penchant for obsoleting software on purpose. Please tell me why we needed upgrades from WinNT 4 to 2K to XP, to Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10? With the exception of 64-bit support not being miserable, the only upgrade needed here would have been the jump from NT4 to Win7.
      2) Their Office software is even worse for obsolete pushing. I'm quite fine with Open Office thank you. Really the last necessary features were added back in Office 97 (Spelling and Grammar checks) , everything after that, I'm hard pressed to tell you what changed other than the god damn macro languages.
      3) Microsoft owned the smartphone market and then just walked away from it when the iPhone beat it up and stole it's lunch money one too many times. Seriously, nobody remembers WindowsCE, but I assure you that Windows CE was "the" thing if you were not on the blackberry platform.
      4) Remember Microsoft's iPod clone? Me neither.
      5) Remember the Xbox 360 RRoD plague?
      6) Even Microsoft has fucked the donkey with the Surface Pro 3 and later.
      7) Let's not even mention all the other hardware gadgets Microsoft has put out over the years and then promptly abandoned.

      Suffice it to say that Microsoft's track record for abandonment of technology is as bad as Google's. Only Apple tends to be aggressive about it however. Apple abandons tech when everyone else achieves parity with them. Apple has also thus far been right about most of their decisions, except when it comes to battery life, or support of the analog 3.5mm audio jack.

      So to go back to the topic. You know why the game industry doesn't want the servers restored? Because that would allow people to play old games that don't have their fucking microtransactions, lootboxes and whatnot in them. If it were permitted to re-activate, or build private servers for these games, the next step is monetizing them again, and because the copyright holder has basically abandoned that game, they can't really say anything about it.

      There are some cases (eg FFXIV v1.0, classic WoW, classic UO) where there is a preservation aspect that needs to be taken, where people who play with the game need to be blocked from "speed running" the game without the anti-cheat systems that came with those older MMORPG's. The reason a lot of those old games were ruined was because of botting, spamming, and various ineffective ecosystems that were easily overwhelmed by the "sharding" system in place.

    5. Re:Nothin new by Altrag · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Outages aren't really the biggest concern. Yes they're annoying, but everyone experiences them once in a while and there's a significantly higher chance that your own personal server (ie: probably a slapped together PC that you also game on, browse the web on, etc) will break than AWS will. Not that AWS never breaks as noted, its just a far, far lower chance.

      The big problem is the question of what happens when Amazon goes out of business. Or decides they no longer care about AWS. Or jacks up the price by 200%. Or changes the terms of service in a way that's untenable for your needs.

      Outages aren't the issue.. control is the issue. If you build your business on AWS (or Azure or whatever Google's cloud offering is called or any other) then you're essentially betting your future on those companies being rock solid both financially and contractually for as long as you intend to remain in business yourself.

    6. Re:Nothin new by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Having the ability to run your own server is a good way to deal with cheating... Run a small private server and play with people you know.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    7. Re:Nothin new by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I asked what happens in 15 or 20 years when all that is antiquated and the servers are off?

      This question shows you don't understand the nature of the type of business contracts these cloud computing companies run. Migrating entire companies to the Office365 has a few implications you don't understand:

      a) The cloud services are just there for backup and remote access. There's no requirement as part of this for you not to have access to your data locally.
      b) The cloud services are perpetual. Servers are coming and going all the time. You've subscribed to something that is continuously evergreen and won't be obsoleted in a way that the user sees (i.e. backend servers are just replaced and you'll never know) or if the entire service is obsoleted it won't be done so without a migration strategy. Your un-upgradable servers are completely different thanks to your platform being tied to your hardware. That hasn't been the case with most things IT in many years, and goes doubly for cloud based services.
      c) The contracts engaged in the business side will have an out. Sure you may need to download a few TB of data back locally, but this isn't your consumer level up and disappear act, the lawyers make sure of that.
      d) You do not require 99.999% uptime on your Office suite. If you did you may as well close your business now. And I will happily challenge you to prove you actually can provide that level of uptime of your network services to your staff.

      Something completely aside: You say there's no ROI on upgrading archived data? If you are going to let it rot and become unreadable due to age, then why did you archive it?

      I would hate to see the state of IT in 20 years when all this shit falls apart.

      People have been saying this every year since the dawn of IT. And we're still here. There's a lot of money involved here, and everytime there's money involved there's someone willing to make it all work out, for a fee, which is kind of why you have a job in the first place.

      Don't compare business services to some screw the consumer crap.

  3. I seem to recall by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Didn't Turbine explicitly say they'd be happy to let players run their own servers when Asheron's Call went down for good, but them WB lawyered up and acted like the assclowns they really are?

  4. The point of copyright. by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Copyright was introduced to allow authors a temporary monopoly on their works (something pretty much unheard of before then), in order to encourage creation and the proliferation of creative works. The point was not to give authors complete control over their works.

    So it seems only fair that a cultural work is free for all if the author chooses to no longer sell it. And that would include running servers for discontinued games. Offer the server or let others. And in that light, the argument that people running servers for older games would compete with newer similar games offered by the studio, is interesting. If there is a lot of interest in the older game, would it not be profitable for the company to keep its servers up? And if there is only interest in the older game because it would be free, wouldn’t that mean that most of those players would not pony up the cash to play the new one, with only a small resulting loss of sales?

    Of course I know that copyright has been perverted far beyond its original intent. But whatever.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    1. Re:The point of copyright. by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, that's a good argument for reducing the length of copyright. Copyright exists to allow content creators to profit from their works for a temporary time. If these game companies no longer feel they can profit from these games after approx 20 years and have shut down the servers, then clearly the duration of copyright is too long. The copyright holder's own actions constitute testimony that the length of copyright is too long and needs to be reduced to about 20 years.

    2. Re:The point of copyright. by omnichad · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So it seems only fair that a cultural work is free for all if the author chooses to no longer sell it.

      There needs to be a "shut up and take my money" clause in copyright law. If a company refuses to accept a reasonable amount of money for a discontinued product - and will no longer sell it in any form, they should lose some aspects of their copyright protection just like an undefended trademark.

  5. Hurt their business... by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So resurrecting abandoned servers -- which means that people can't play those games -- would hurt their business?

    This means one of two things:

    1. They're lying
    2. Their new games suck so badly that players would instantly drop them for the older versions.

    Either way, not a good thing for them to say...

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    1. Re:Hurt their business... by Pseudonym · · Score: 4, Insightful

      3. The GaaS business model relies on planned obsolescence.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  6. To heck with them by fyngyrz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So resurrecting abandoned servers -- which means that people can't play those games -- would hurt their business?

    No, it means that people can play those games. They don't want that.

    Their new games suck so badly that players would instantly drop them for the older versions.

    Not quite, but it will mean some people play the older games without the revenue from that going into their pockets. This (a) could reduce new-game purchases and/or play, and (b) means that abandoning software (something they all do) implies that they are abandoning the rights to that software, an idea that scares them silly, because their entire business model is based upon providing a temporary product that they have complete control over so they can make you buy again, and again, and again until your patience finally runs out.

    I am 100% in favor of the idea that if the software developer stops supporting the software, they lose ALL rights to controlling its use by the people who purchased it. If they want the benefits from providing a thing, then they have to support that thing. Support gone? Benefits gone.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  7. You Crack Smoking Assholes by bistromath007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is an interactive medium. If it's not playable, it's not fucking preserved! That's not blurry at all!

  8. Re:Profit != Community run by Ambiguous+Puzuma · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not only has Sony (now Daybreak) not run Project 1999 into the ground, they took the unusual step of officially endorsing it in 2015.

    We have recently entered into a written agreement with Daybreak Game Company LLC that formally recognizes Project 1999 as a fan based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project. The agreement establishes the guidelines that we as a project must follow, but it will allow to us continue to update the game without risk of legal repercussions.

    This is quite a change from their attitude a decade earlier, when they forced Winter's Roar, a customized emulated server, to shut down.

  9. Re:It almost seems as if... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Riiiight...you never hear of GameCopyWorld? Takes less than 15 seconds to crack any Steam game, Steam is to DRM what "pick the pictures with cars in them" is to security, its a joke designed to give someone a bit of security theater, nothing more. In fact if you go download a pirated game in 2018? Its almost always the Steam version because its so easy to crack.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  10. Re:Push back against TREASON by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Democracy in context of modern western state is a system of electing political representative based on established ruleset in a democratic fashion.

    I'm genuinely confused as to why you think that overwhelming majority of Western nations are "a farce". Most Western states don't actually have a two party system, and have prime minister rather than president as the political top job that leads the country. Which means that these people are elected by far fewer than a quarter of people in the nation.

    And there's nothing farcical about it. The best part about Western style liberal democracy is that pluralism of opinions is what results in the outcome, and that whoever gets to the top must secure sufficient support from the political representatives of the populace who are in turn elected in a democratic vote by their constituents.

  11. Re:The bought-and-paid-for-EC by Rakarra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's actually called the oligarchy of the electoral college ignoring the voters.

    As far as I can tell, almost every Electoral College voter actually voted the way the general populace in his/her district voted. There were seven EC voters who voted differently from their state. Seven out of 531. Not much faithlessness there.

    If you want to complain, complain about the "winner take all" that almost (almost, because they don't have to, and some don't) every state uses to decide its electoral vote. I know people are all up in arms about the "popular vote," but the United States is a confederation of 50 states, not a giant conglomeration of 323m people. Each state votes. Moving the EC away from WTA would cause the EC vote to more closely resemble the overall popular vote anyway.