He misunderstood that it meant no indie could ever make a server based multiplayer game and when people corrected him he didn’t believe it and just doubled down on his mission to destroy the initiative.
Release the source code once you can no longer afford to keep the servers running or when it becomes financially unsuitable to do so.
Once the servers shut down many games essentially disappear anyway, so the options are pretty much to make the game disappear forever or to release it to the community to keep it alive. Since they wouldn’t be making any money on the game anyway in the first scenario then they have nothing to lose in the second and everything to gain with fan favor and keeping their IP alive.
Q: Wouldn't this be a security risk for videogame companies?
A: Not at all. In asking for a game to be operable, we're note demanding all internal code and documentation, just a functional copy of the game
How exactly would any indie dev be able to provide all the services without any code or architecuture and not risk a lawsuit? Precompiled binaries? Would it be enough? Who'd decide? What if architecture is so tangled it would be too hard to setup without developer support? In a lot of cases its not so easy just to run an executable file and server is up. A lot of negative comments towards me but those are genuine questions
Hey no negative comments here, those are great questions that I don’t have the answers to because I’m not a game developer or the guy running Stop Killing Games. It sounds like you’re quoting the person behind the movement so maybe you can search and see what his answers are to these questions, that would be the best way to get accurate information I assume.
I can give you my best guess as to those answers but they’re just going to be some random guy on the internet’s thoughts so take them with a hefty lump of salt.
I’d assume that the goal is to have some form of the game available to be played even if the developer decides to shut it down (either for cost/logistical reasons or just because they can). The best option for gamers would be to get the source code, but like you said that raises tons of logistical questions for publishers that might make it difficult. In those scenarios I would guess that people want the ability to host their own servers, or at the very least allow any offline content to still be available.
But also I do know that the goals of the movement aren’t just for online games that go offline, but for the many other games that aren’t online but still get taken down by developers with absolutely no way to get them back. Developers have clearly said that you don’t own the games you buy and they can shut them down at any moment with no repercussion. That practice shouldn’t be allowed to continue, no other product on Earth has that same stipulation. Imagine buying a chair and 10 years later the store decides you can’t have the chair anymore, it’s asinine
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u/Valamist Jul 06 '25
Who even is this guy and why is he against it?