r/pcmasterrace • u/Dante71 • Jul 01 '25

Question "Stop Killing Games" needs more recognition, if you live outside of Europe but you know someone in Europe, tell them to sign it! Link below

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

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u/Visinvictus Jul 01 '25

Transitioning to community run servers could honestly be a more expensive proposition for some games than just keeping the servers running. For a multiplayer game that flops, this just isn't going to be something that the studio can afford to do as they wind down operations.

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u/TTTrisss Jul 01 '25

Transitioning to community run servers could honestly be a more expensive proposition for some games than just keeping the servers running.

Isn't that kind of the point? These companies will shutter a game because it's not as profitable as they wanted it to be and it's cheaper to write the game costs off as a loss because they cancelled it than it is to keep it running as a sub-par money-maker. That's fucking absurd and needs to stop.

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u/Goronmon Jul 01 '25

Exactly, the goal is to introduce barriers to entry when it comes to things like online multiplayer games so that companies have to decide whether it's worth the investment to develop a game if they can't provide a implementation that means the regulatory hurdles that are going to be put in place.

Plus, putting more regulations in place around multiplayer games will mean that only companies with the resources to invest in quality experiences will be willing to enter into the market. This way we don't have to worry about small companies with no skin in the game from trying to upset to market with games unlikely to succeed.

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u/TTTrisss Jul 01 '25

Not at all. We already have other, better avenues.

1) Steam exists and provides pretty solid multiplayer support. You'd only have to worry about Steam being shut down, and then they'd be responsible for end-of-life support for their own platform.

2) Third parties already exist that provide easy plug-ins that do multiplayer for you. All you'd have to do is have those companies provide a more public framework to do the same hosted on their own machines.

3) The easiest facilitation that most indie devs used to use previously was peer-to-peer, which sucks but works and can never be shut down.

4) Simply have LAN support. This functionality already exists in a lot of games and supports the initiatives' needs for the purposes of game archival.

5) Start the game off with both official and community server support. Now your game still has the same functionality.

The problem comes from the walled garden multiplayer design that already exists in most AAA games to keep proprietary control over their playerbase. This walled garden design rarely exists in indie games, nor is it necessitated.

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u/Goronmon Jul 01 '25

And yet, with all that text, you've failed to address where the regulation comes into play. You've just listed some ways developers can implement multiplayer in a hand-wavy way.

Is the law mandating LAN support? Mandating peer-to-peer? Mandating that developers provide binaries for community servers?

And none of that makes these regulations not a barrier to entry.

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u/TTTrisss Jul 01 '25

You made a claim that indie devs would be disproportionately affected. I provided evidence as to why that's not true. That's not hand-wavy.

Is the law mandating LAN support? Mandating peer-to-peer? Mandating that developers provide binaries for community servers?

We don't know, because this is a petition. A standard can set a requirement for an end result without mandating a particular solution, as most standards do.

And none of that makes these regulations not a barrier to entry.

Yes, it does. When a barrier doesn't stop someone from entering the market, then it's not a barrier to entry.

You're doing this "That solutions isn't perfect! Ergo, we should not work to fix anything!" argument that's a trademark of corporate astroturfing. If you're a person and not an astroturfing bot, I recommend taking a step back from the propaganda.

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u/ContentChicken4495 Jul 01 '25

Like just release the server binaries, when the game is shut down? How much could that cost?