As we all know, when it comes to games, the dialogue is rarely level-headed. Gamers might be one of the most passionate crowds out there, and once the rally cry has brought the wheels in motion, they’ll keep turning for years to come. With that in mind, I’d like to address Video Games Europe’s statement, keeping the head as level as possible. Video Games Europe (VGE) write:
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
Background: Risk management
There are some things said in here which are perhaps not immediately evident to the average person:
For example, risk management: You cannot be 100% sure you’re not doing anything illegal at any point. For the average person, this is not a problem, you usually don’t get randomly snatched off the street by police for committing a crime you didn’t know existed, and even if, you’ll get freed by a court relatively quickly (unless you live in a country where the rule of law is suspended). You might even feel safe violating some laws (for example traffic rules while driving, or copyright law when sharing stuff online). And even if you go out there with the intention of severely violating all laws you can think of (robberies, murder, etc), you’ll probably take some steps to avoid getting caught.
The same sort of reasoning applies to companies: Software companies are always at risk of accidentally violating some copyright (or worse: patent), since there’s a lot more people involved in the creation of it. You’ll find time and time again outrage as yet another game has included someone’s art assets without crediting them, and the same happens for code. Companies do have a risk managing function, their legal team, which ideally tries to get all licenses in order prior to release (check your favorite game’s credits or main menu for legal notices!), but there’s only so much they can do about it – they in each case can never avoid the risk, only manage it.
Publishing a private server option increases the risk of getting caught: Server software is practically hidden from any prying eyes, so nobody is snooping through anything to check for copyright violations. However, publishing the server software makes a discovery of violations more likely. And unlike private citizens which generally will figure out a court case for a speeding ticket in the matter of weeks and months, a company vs company legal fight usually takes place on the scale of years and decades.
This risk extends to other areas, too: Maybe there’s some bit of software they’re using which is only licensed to “cloud” use, not for to-consumer distribution. Or which requires a license fee per machine running it. Or perhaps, looking at the updated EU Product Liability Directive, publishing the server software suddenly adds a new avenue of liability which previously wasn’t given.
There also are brand risks: No company wants to hear their game in the same sentence as “is a game where racists live out their KKK fantasies” or anything like that. Even if they legally aren’t liable for it, and have no control over it – any sufficiently paranoid lawyer will now look at these options and think to themselves “OH GOD PLEASE NO”.
With that background in mind, it’s hopefully a lot more understandable why the immediate reaction from VGE is as averse to SKG as it is. Though of course the industry concern lies elsewhere – buried under piles of cash.
Background: Monetization
The popularity of online games is of commercial nature, rather than player desire. Online games, especially of the “live service” variety, are significantly easier to monetize than anything else the video games industry has ever come up with, short of gambling. All you need to do is put in more skins, maybe the occasional minigame or map, and you’re good. By gamedev standards, it’s relatively easy to make these things profitable, and thus the advertising budget for live service games is enormous.
However, the profitability of live service games increases massively based on just how many people are playing them. And the player pool is limited. In a world where Battle Royale games are popular, but your only option is PUBG, PUBG is an incredible cash cow. However, in a world where Fortnite, Apex Legends, and everyone and their dog has a battle royale mode, the playerbase is going to be more scattered and thus, each individual game is less profitable. Though even in a scattered market, if you play your cards right, you can absolutely support games for a significant chunk of a century, as we see in EverQuest or RuneScape.
However, you also can stack the deck in your favor: You might innovate, create experiences no other game in your genre can provide, target new audiences (compare PUBG’s target audience to Fortnite!) …. or you kill off the alternatives.
While CS:GO isn’t entirely unplayable, Valve has pulled virtually every stop short of killing it altogether, by hiding it in the deepest, darkest corner of Steam. This was to force people over, as a split playerbase would’ve delegitimized CS2, and perhaps prompted Valve to actively support an additional game (so CSGO, CS2 and Dota2), which would bring the game count to 3 and cause GabeN to implode.
Other examples include Daybreak Games, which, while maintaining some positively ancient games like EverQuest, also have bought other old MMOs only to close less profitable ones right after the purchase.
Single-player games, or games which operate on a “we release the game, you play it for 60 hours, then we both move on to the next game” model don’t face this issue, and subsequently also tend to not feel any need to make their old experiences artificially unplayable. You’ll buy their next thing anyway, after all.
Response
So, with all of that background out of the way, let’s address VGE’s statements.
We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable.
As we just discussed: It’s a question on whether they can figure out a way to keep it monetized still. There are positively ancient MMOs out there (EverQuest) which have a playerbase playing and paying enough to sustain the thing for over 25 years, so it certainly is doable.
We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.
“in compliance with laws” is an… interesting statement to write to a petition that’s literally about changing the laws. This sentence can safely be disregarded.
Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable.
As discussed above, this is the risk management thing. There’s no actual unsolvable problem here, it’s just that these things appear scary at a distance. At a glance, I’d say
- Players’ data could be made available for download for some time and then deleted. Doing this would prevent keeping a potentially vulnerable game server running indefinitely.
- Incidentally, the game server software should be allowed to be modified, and ideally distributed as open source, so people can actually go and fix said vulnerable server software once the publisher has decided to no longer care.
- Removing illegal content would no longer be their problem if they don’t run the servers anymore.
- Combating unsafe community content would not be their problem if they don’t run the servers anymore.
- And if there’s any other liability issues which somehow survive this, guess what? SKG is literally designed to help the law get written, which absolutely can include a liability limiting clause which would arise from making games playable after they’re discontinued.
In each case, these issues are definitely not insurmountable for the industry.
In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
This is the idea that, in order to make live service profitable, you need to glue a certain amount of players to the game indefinitely. And with more enticing alternatives around, making live service games becomes increasingly difficult.
Which, honestly, is a good thing. If, say, Trackmania decided today to stop adding daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly content and shut down the servers, it’d stop being a live service game and start being.. just a good multiplayer game with an active community instead. The Trackmania team then could go on and make a new game and – the horror! – charge for it upfront. Like they’ve done the other 20 times or however many they’ve made by now.
If a business model is ultimately unsustainable, legislators really, really shouldn’t be afraid to pass a law which results in the unsustainable business model being forced out of business.
And just like the movie business can live just fine by releasing new Star Wars movies without destroying the old ones,
just like the music business can survive just fine by releasing new music without erasing the Beatles, and
just like artists can create new art despite the Mona Lisa not having been set on fire yet –
– the games industry most definitely can survive without making older games unplayable.
Leo Wattenberg 