alt Hacker NewsThis seems tough-to-unworkable for some games. I'll use World of Warcraft^1 as an example.
WoW launched in an essentially unfinished state. Molten Core, the first 40-man raid, didn't have a loot table. I'm not sure it was even accessible on launch day. And when it did get a loot table, it had placeholder graphics for the tier 1 set.
This was fine: it would take months for players to be able to tackle end-game content, so the game didn't need to launch with it all ready to go. But a law requiring Blizzard to keep a launch-day WoW available wouldn't be especially satisfying.
Even if you changed it to be "its full functional state" or something similar, that gets weird. After Molten Core was BWL, which you couldn't reach on launch. And so on and so forth. WoW changes a ton over an expansion, and each expansion brings even bigger changes (do you play pre-Cata or post?). Do we require Blizzard to keep available each and every patch version? Hotfix version? How do players decide which they want to play? I really enjoyed the Argent Tournament, but I bet most preferred actually reaching ICC (which itself had a bunch of time locks before you could reach Arthas, himself).
[1]: Even beyond everything outlined, WoW gets weird when you consider Classic and now Forever.
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I didn’t really read the bill, but I see no problem in subscription games. I don’t remember how wow was ‘sold’ when released. But if I buy a game on a 12 month subscription, I understand I’m not purchasing a game forever.
Problem is with “purchase” imho.
Guess they'll have to release their version control history so that every player can select the experience on their own launch day
Did they only sell the first unfinished version? if they ever sold the finished version, that should be also included.
Your complaint is probably moot foot dragging. Companies aren't held liable for breaking a law that didn't exist at the time they released a product.
An ever-evolving game with properties of a SaaS would likely not exist under this new law.
Blizzard already knew how to build self-contained products with self-contained expansions even before WoW was released. StarCraft was the original game and StarCraft Broodwar was the expansion. It will affect game release cycles and properties of what you get with the game, but that's seems like part of the point of the legislation.