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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."
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.
That sucks for the indy game developer though, because their traffic would get relegated to the slow lane until they got big enough to be able to afford to pay for it. With high latency, their games might not ever become popular enough for them to get big because the latency would interfere with play enjoyment.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
If the Devil is the only one that will fight fot ny rights, I won't stop him. Choose your battles.
They paid for the bandwidth. They're owed the bandwidth. Just like the gamer. Demand what you paid for. Don't ask to pay more so you may get more of what you're owed anyway.
Actually, I already have a solution for that. I suggested that we should allow prioritization wherein no party pays (not consumer, not provider), wherein the prioritization is standard (not a "package" added to a service or an enhanced service level or whatnot), and wherein the prioritization does not impact any other service or user (when there's congestion--more demand than resource--prioritization starts falling back to baseline, becoming the first services to be degraded).
I hadn't considered latency, though; only throughput and data metering. The ESA's argument has brought up an important concern.
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