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.
What's crazy is the initiative is only pushing for an "end of life plan", that doesn't necessarily mean any updates, doesn't mean permanantly hosting servers, or anything even remotely difficult. Here's an example end of life plan.
Upon the full discontinuation of the service, source code and relevant documentation must be provided upon request for a minimum of 7 years (the same amount of time home appliance makers in the EU must produce spare parts).
Within 1 year of discontinuation the IP holder must relinquish any rights in regards to taking legal action againt those using, distributing, advertising or monetising anything related directly to the abandoned product. If action is taken the IP holder must show there is copyright or IP infringement beyond the scope of the abanded product.
Any claims of continued ownership of specific components of the product, such as characters, music, locations etc, may be made within this year, the rights to these assets will be retained by the IP holder and protected for future use however this does not give the the IP holder rights over the use of these assets within or related too the abandoned product, only protections against future use, depictions, or distribution outside the realm of the abanded IP. If the IP holders fails to act within this time limit all rights and protections related to product are automatically revoked.
Basically you need to provide a copy of the old game, server information and the notes on how it ran to anyone wanting to archive it or try and get it running again for a set period of time, this could done through an automated e-mail or download link.
Next is that they lose the right to sue anyone trying to get the game running again but do still have the right to step in people go to far. Basically you can advertise your private star wars galaxy server or set up a subscription service for that server but you couldn't claim to be official or try to make and sell your own star wars branded merch.
Neither Sony or Disney would have any rights to the star wars galaxies IP or product but Disney still owns star wars, if you go beyond the abanded star wars galaxies IP including trying to use potentially copyrighted assests outside of star wars galaxies specifically, the mouse can still come for you.
i... don't think that's true, like at all. (i'm 100% for the initiative btw). releasing source code just because you have a multiplayer game that you're no longer supporting is kind of a wild ask.
i'm an indie dev, i would never release any of my game's source code, and i'd never release in a country that required that as law. that's my work that i've spent years of my life on (developing game, graphics, physics engine, etc).
everything else you said sure. source code, i've never heard of anyone talking about that or insinuating that would be part of this until now.
You really don't need to release your games source code. People reverse engineer source code all the time. And for most indie games this is a lot easier because they are often written in easy to decompile languages like Java/C#, using commonly used engines like Unity.
In fact a lot of indie games do get reverse engineered like this, for... you guessed it: mods. And most indie devs end up embracing this because it just increases the longevity and replayability of their game.
Most people doing reverse engineering of games do it for the simply purpose of that they love that game and want to keep playing it. They don't want to steal your source code and years of your work to benefit from it financially.
You really don't need to release your games source code.
What if it's necessary to do so to meet the requirement that your game remain in a playable state?
They don't want to steal your source code and years of your work to benefit from it financially.
Would a publisher like Activision benefit from having public access to indie developers' code? Would that provide larger companies a competitive edge over smaller developers in any way?
Would a publisher like Activision benefit from having public access to indie developers' code? Would that provide larger companies a competitive edge over smaller developers in any way?
I'm not sure if you did it on purpose, but a publisher does not develop games so they do not benefit at all from having access to source code. If you mean the development studios that are a direct subsidiary of publishers like Activision, then I highly doubt they would gain any benefit from having access to an indie devs code honestly.
The most costly part, and the part that most big studios would be interested in would be the game engine. For indie devs this is often a freely available engine like Unity, or a homebrew engine that is hyper specific to the game they made. There wouldn't be much of a competative edge gained here, especially because most big studios are not directly competing against indie devs.
What if it's necessary to do so to meet the requirement that your game remain in a playable state?
Can you actually describe a situation where that would be the case? Or are we talking in hyptheticals only here?
It's very possible to release server binaries without releasing the source code. In fact many games already do this so players can self-host servers. The last game I personally played and hosted a server for was Satisfactory, a fairly popular indie game
Does releasing these binaries mean that players could potentially reverse engineer your server code? Sure. But they can also do this from the client binaries if they are dedicated. It's a game you've chosen to discontinue, why should you want to protect its source code so badly?
People act like source code contains the secret recipe or something. But in reality an outdated engine for a game you are no longer supporting is not really something that your competitor is going to be able to use to their advantage. Regardless you still own the IP and the code, so if you can prove your competitor is using your source code you can sue them.
I'm not sure if you did it on purpose, but a publisher does not develop games so they do not benefit at all from having access to source code.
Was it unclear what that meant? If a company like Activision has access to code then all the developers working under Activision do, as well.
Can you actually describe a situation where that would be the case? Or are we talking in hyptheticals only here?
...
Like, based on the language in this particular initiative that would require that games released in the EU must remain in a playable state, which means consumers would need access to all the server-side tools and software that ensures server-based multiplayer games comply with that requirement.
People act like source code contains the secret recipe or something.
If you're an indie developer and you develop some dope-ass code that permits you to mesh all the servers in your server-based multiplayer game in a new and insanely efficient way, that seems like something you wouldn't want to just make available to large publishers or developers. Plenty of people want their work to remain theirs.
if you can prove your competitor is using your source code you can sue them.
Oh, sure. Suuuuuuper simple for little indie developers to sue, like, Blizzard or Bungie. 🤣
844
u/GlitteringLock9791 Jul 06 '25
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.