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Online Gaming Could Be Stalled by Net Neutrality Repeal, ESA Tells Court (arstechnica.com)
A video game industry lobby group is joining the lawsuit that seeks to reinstate net neutrality rules in the US, saying that the net neutrality repeal could harm multiplayer online games that require robust Internet connections. From a report: The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) yesterday filed a motion for leave to intervene so that it can support the case against the Federal Communications Commission. The lawsuit, filed by a mix of Democratic state attorneys general, tech companies such as Mozilla, and consumer advocacy groups, seeks to reverse the FCC's December 2017 vote to eliminate net neutrality rules. The ESA said its members will be harmed by the repeal "because the FCC's Order permits ISPs to take actions that could jeopardize the fast, reliable, and low-latency connections that are critical to the video game industry."
Read: Always-on DRM like Denuvo.
They don't care about the quality of your connection -- hell, most multiplayer netcode uses UDP.
ISP fast lane fee, console online subscription , App store fee, gaming tax, GPU cryptocurrency tax. Gaming is going to get more expensive, and a lot of fees for less game play.
I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games. In fact, it makes sense to me that gamers should prefer a net neutrality repeal because it would now allow prioritization of that.
With complete net neutrality, traffic isn't supposed to be discriminated against when in fact it is a situation like this where it makes sense.
The counter-argument is "OH well, this will force ISPs to invest in improving network connections for all content", etc, etc. But that confuses ping latency with bandwidth.
If you wanted to present some horrible nightmare scenario, you failed...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What argument is there in support of "net neutrality", which would not apply to "road neutrality" and "parking neutrality": abolishing all laws and road-signs treating trucks, as well as business-owned vehicles, apart from cars and personal pleasure-vehicles?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Geez Guys, it's kinda' a shame you couldn't pull your heads out'a your backside and TAKE A STAND about this issue when it could have counted.
Instead, you whine and moan because your cash cow got slam-dunked, and you suddenly realize that this issue - net neutrality - had a serious impact on YOU, and YOUR CA$H FLOW, and NOW you want to take a stand!
Sorry, but even if I get flame-bait / troll on this post, I just can't tolerate this type of 'Geez, this is BAD' after-the-fact type of response from an agent that gets it's lifeblood support from a full and open internet speed environment.
redneck geek
Violent video games were disproven as a means of aggression, and in fact were repeatedly shown to reduce it when Trump's buddy, Hillary Clinton, went after them many years ago. I'm a firm 2A advocate, and voting member in the NRA, but video games are a poor scapegoat as the evidence was gathered already.
Perhaps you have failed to notice that the FCC are not game developers.
It's not the people ever who wanted neutrality repealed that are complaining here..
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In the debate very little people worry about the serious stuff that happens over the net that eding Net Neutrality could effect.
Business to Business communications over Web Services.
Business VPN's linking offices.
VoiP phone services.
Transferring Health Care information from your Primary care to the hospital securely.
There is a lot of stuff, from small organizations who will probably get throttled or cut, without the resources to get all the ISPs to allow then to get a pass.
The internet isn't just about your games and Netflix. But also a lot of communication with organizations of various sizes.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know you will moderate me away for saying this but "stalling" online gaming would be a good thing. As President Trump has rightly pointed out, violent online video gaming and mental illness are what is behind the rise in violence in our schools (and NOT guns).
Every credible study ever done has shown that video games do not cause violent behavior.
Mental illness is just another convenient scapepegoat. And more bullshit. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other than a gun, can't go into a building and kill 20 people. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other that a gun, can't kill 50 people from 500 feet away.
Guns ARE the problem.
Since the FCC didn't give a shot at all about anyone's concerns and repealed it anyway, I don't see how you have an actual point to your argument.
Violent video games were disproven as a means of aggression, and in fact were repeatedly shown to reduce it when ...
No.
The result of various studies were that violent video games were not proven to cause violence. This is not the same as "proven to not cause violence."
This distinction is important in evaluating scientific studies of all sorts: not proven to cause is not the same as proven to not cause.
The subject is still heavily debated, and you can find studies that show a connection, or more that don't show a connection. Here's a good overview: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
> Trump's buddy, Hillary Clinton
LOL. Way to undermine your own argument, libtard.
Who cares. Bring back LAN play, and finally we can have LAN parties again.
Life is not for the lazy.
What, specifically, has been impacted by the repeal of NN? ... excluding lawyer and journalist revenue?
What argument is there in support of "net neutrality", which would not apply to "road neutrality" and "parking neutrality"
There are some _really_ good arguments for height and weight restrictions on roads involving passing over or under a bridge. If you want to compare the network to vehicles the analogy with lorries vs. cars is in regard to the size of the vehicle and the equivalent for the network would be the network packet size. This is something which is strictly limited and controlled and networks will not treat all network packet sizes the same e.g. ethernet is usually limited to 1500bytes unless you have "jumbo frame" support.
The analogy with network neutrality for roads would be if speed limits for a road were dependent on how much you paid and where you were going from an to on the same stretch of road. Current speed limits are based on maximum safe speeds for vehicles (or at least that's the claim). Would you be happy using a road system which imposed an artificial slower speed limit on you (which was rigorously enforced) unless you paid a lot more to be able to drive at the full, safe speed limit? That's the analogy.
Timothy McVeigh
I don't know how many of you have tried it, but nvdia's GeForce Now service is exactly the kind of thing that could be severely hampered by a lack of Net Neutrality.
[Before I continue, let's get one thing straight: Net Neutrality doesn't mean companies like Netflix don't pay for bandwidth. Of course they do. They just don't have to pay MORE for bandwidth than some other service that might have ties to the ISP. Ok, everybody clear on that?]
Anyway, back to GeForce Now. I've been beta testing it and it's just fantastic. It's basically a way to stream your video games to machines that aren't powerful enough to play them. So, if you have some i3 laptop with weak graphics, you can still play GTA V on ultra quality. No lag, no bullshit. You just play the game and it's like you're sitting at some sick $5000 gaming PC. And it works. Works perfectly. I mean, you can tell they're still dialing it in over at nvidia, because some days there might be some audio stuttering, but then it gets fixed. This is a beta product after all.
OK, so the only thing is, this GeForce Now service uses a shit-ton of bandwidth. You've got to have a pretty fast internet connection and a lot of data gets used, as you can imagine. I've been using it for a couple months and I still haven't gone over my Spectrum data limit (though to be fair, I don't know what my data limit is).
Now let's say that a piece of shit ISP, say, Spectrum, decides that they're going to start their own game streaming service, but they're going to charge nvidia five times as much for getting their data to your house. Or worse, they charge YOU more for getting nvidia's data to your house. Remember, nvidia is already paying for bandwidth at their end, and naturally, you're already paying exorbitant amounts for bandwidth at your end. THE BANDWIDTH IS ALREADY BEING PAID FOR. Nobody's getting anything for free.
In summary: 1) GeForce Now is going to be a really interesting service to watch and 2) the repeal of Net Neutrality could absolutely mess up gamers, and 3) Ajit Pai is a piece of shit. Here is a photo of Ajit Pai so you know who I'm talking about:
https://www.google.com/search?...:
You are welcome on my lawn.
Seriously, it is time to let this go and instead require that all states allow for municipal broadband. In addition, require that any state that does not have net neutrality, then requires that all monopolies for broadband be nullified.
Before net neutrality existed, there are a few things I was aware of that caused problems.
For example, Comcast would block torrents. I can see why, since torrents are said to account for more than 50% of internet traffic, but the fact is the customers paid for their internet access, so they ought to be able to use torrents if they want.
Why does every comment thread have to eventually be about Trump?
I think we need to update Godwin's law.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Doesn't the government understand that I DESERVE unlimited access to someone else's network?
[back to reality] - make them change by not buying their product if you don't like it.
Online gaming to me is UT2004 with bots. Easy bots. m-m-m-monster kill!
ISPs are going to have a ball with this one lol $$$$$
judging by your post, I suspect you've never actually been to reality, and only heard about it from your friends at Comcast
Waste? The internet is there for whatever each individual wants to do with it.
Pray tell, what is your definition of using the internet in a "non-wasteful" way? Shitposting?
In Canada, the ISP's are pushing to be allowed to block bad sites, starting with the evil pirates. Generally when a site is blocked, so is everything else on the same server as it is simple and once blocking sites becomes common, then blocking sites for other reasons will become common.
We already have examples of how blocking works with various porn filters that filter out much more then porn. Want to learn about breast cancer or how they check for prostate cancer, well breasts and anuses are sexual so we can't allow that.
There's also political reasons to block sites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"A mentally ill person with any weapon, other than a gun, can't go into a building and kill 20 people. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other that a gun, can't kill 50 people from 500 feet away."
Do you even high explosives, you fucking n00b?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
and why should my mother, who infrequently uses the Internet for email and occasional web browsing and Facebook, pay the same as my kids who spend hours each month on Netflix and Instagram and Snap?
without the bane of Title II restrictions, there will be lots of different offerings potentially for improving multiplayer game performance, and possibly yes at a higher price but someone has to pay for FREE.
I logged thousands of hours in online games like world of warcraft before net neutrality was a thing. It's not likely to change any time soon.
It's almost the same thing as what happened to BBSing. I was a sysop in the late 80's to early 90's. We had local communities, everybody knew each other. Hell, for awhile there was a group of social BBSes (including mine) that held Softball Games on Sundays almost every week in the summer.
LAN parties sounds so fun in retrospect. With wifi, it would be much easier, too.
No, he's right. Somebody else's network.
I've had my own network for a long time. A bunch of us have. The first time I did, it was 1994 and I had bought a bunch of cheap used (obsolete!) 3C501 network cards at a surplus store. I think I paid like $5 each for them. Anyhow, I strung the BNC Ts and all kinds of coax all over my apartment. (with the essential 50ohm stubs, of course. I think one end was a 50 ohm carbon comp on a Pomona BNC-bananna adapter) Then I hooked up a bunch of Linux boxes (cheap 386sx boxes were good for Linux in the early 90's) and had my little internet of my own.
My connection to the outside world was still a 56K modem, but I had a network that was mine.
Agreed. You could even hide a bunch of cans of beans (or corn!) in the ground where you know there will be a bonfire in a few hours. Completely innocent stuff to be carrying around.
Ding! A few micro-BLEVEs and that bonfire is now covering everyone around it within 50 feet.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
the net neutrality repeal could harm multiplayer online games that require robust Internet connections
What possible worry is that to the bunch of corporate lackeys, fools and the hyper entitled?
They really only care if something that will affect their corporate owners profits. If people have bandwidth, they will use it. It might be playing games on a robust connection. If that doesn't work, they will be assuming that the masses do something else. Perhaps they will set up internet based The Price is Right or Jeopardy? They don't really want people playing games that use any amount of intelligence. That tends to reinforce the fact that so many of them are considerably smarter than that bunch of art grads.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
> I suggested that ... no party pays (not consumer, not provider)..
Why would any ISP go that route? Since it has only negative impact on the bottom line (time developing algorithm, more complex link monitoring, no added income).
Last time I checked, Canada gave 0 f*cks about US FCC policy.
Are ISPs likely to want to do that?
Comcast provides "Boost": your Cable Modem does 2Gbps but you pay for 200Mbit/s, and they de-throttle the pipe so you get a gigabit for that one TCP stream if you're downloading a large file.
T-Mobile allows any streaming music service provider to send them an e-mail and have their streaming media data exempted from all data metering, no charge. The only requirement is that you actually have a streaming media data service. They identify that type of data flowing from you and exempt it. Hundreds of small and obscure services have signed up.
T-Mobile scales down video to 1.5Mbit/s 1080p and exempts it from metering; customers can opt-out (this is critical: this particular enhancement modifies the data, so it must be quick and easy for the customer to turn that off).
AT&T does the same thing with streaming music providers as T-Mobile, but only if the provider pays them. AT&T is violating Net Neutrality principles and must cease and desist this undemocratic behavior right this damned minute.
Most IT services have enormously-fractional labor costs: you work for 2,000 hours to provide something consumed by 200,000,000 customers. For a $250,000 engineer, that's $1.25 of revenue required from each customer one time to pay for that thing.
To put this into real-world perspective: Comcast has 22 million subscribers and an unusually-overpaid CEO with not just $3.6 million of salaries and cash bonuses (shrug), but $7.4 million of non-equity incentives (stocks don't come out of corporate revenue and don't count for anything important, such as service prices or the corporation's capacity to provide wages and benefits). Most CEOs of corporations that large have $2-$4 million of total CEO compensation excluding stocks. That's 50 cents paid per subscriber per year to pay the CEO (and $69 per employee).
For 159,000 employees, Comcast has one employee per 138 customers. For every $1,000 it spends on each one employee, it has to collect $7.25 from each one customer. That allows it to average $144,000 employee cost if every customer buys Blast! Internet for $87/month and Comcast has no other costs. You'd have to multiply that by the proportion of employee costs (so if 40% goes to wages, $57,600 average Comcast salary-plus-benefits-plus-payrolls) for a real figure.
Since that proportion is not 100%, the cost you describe is even smaller.
But yes, with the 22 million employees, the above scenario would be more like $12 from each of your customers to cover those 2,000 engineering hours.
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This could really threaten the games-as-a-service model.
Oh no!