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Scaled • today at 6:24 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Yeah, the idea of game companies (especially MMO or live service ones) being mandated to release server binaries or code is completely unworkable. Companies are not going to want to give away their main proprietary advantage that they've invested into. Games are already a high-risk investment and this would make it even higher risk because the little competitive moat between studios would be eliminated. The industry has been hit hard by layoffs and making gaming even less desirable for investment will further accelerate that. Any failed game (which is most games, because gaming is a hits driven industry) would be saddled with even more liability. Not to mention most commercial middleware is under NDA, so having their source become public would likely destroy those companies, too.

I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc. But straight up requiring server binaries is not going to be viable for a whole swath of online-only game studios like MMO/live service/subscription games etc.


Replies

saghm • today at 6:46 PM

How about "you need to release the binaries for the servers if you turn them off"? The intent of this sort of regulation is to prevent bait-and-switches were games become unplayable after players have invested their time and money.