What if Stop Killing Games win? Anthem, SpaceCraft and Warframe devs on the "massive undertaking" of reverse engineering an always-online game
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/what-if-stop-killing-games-win-anthem-spacecraft-and-warframe-devs-on-the-massive-undertaking-of-reverse-engineering-an-always-online-game
52 points · 22 comments · view on lemmy.world
22 Comments
RamRabbit@lemmy.world · 67 pts · 38d
Stop Killing Games is EXPLICITLY not retroactive. While this sucks for existing games, it keeps future games from being deleted and increases the chance we can actually get it into law.
However, none of this is hard from a developer's perspective. You just need to provide the server executable(s) to the public and add a .ini configuration to the client to specify which server URL to use instead of the default one.
paraphrand@lemmy.world · -30 pts · 38d
Oh yeah, every game uses .ini files. Yeah.
just
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 21 pts · 38d
Wilfully obtuse or just clueless? It's not like config files are some newfangled form of sorcery.
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip · 14 pts · 38d
ini files aren't real. it's just a file extension that tells the user it's a configuration file. the game can just be programmed to look for a single config line from a single file that happens to have .ini as its extension.
trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 37d
Oof, I really don't agree with that claim. INI files are generally a specific format, there's just lots of flavors of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INI_file#Example
But sure, the devs can decide to just not use sections for their server config. And if their parser implementation looks for lines starting with a specific prefix/key, then it would also correctly ignore comment-lines.
Then you could support a format like:
...which happens to be valid INI, without needing a library.
Funwayguy@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 38d
Yet another article written in bad faith, twisting the narrative, and parroting ESA talking points. SKG explicitly stated that their goals are not retroactive. None of these games would even be affected by the change. It only applies to NEW games which could include such accommodations in the planning phase.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech · 9 pts · 38d
Not mentioning that they don't need to do anything anyway. The ask is they do anything, meaning they could reverse engineer it, or they could simply release the source code. That by itself is enough to satisfy stk.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 37d
The industry keeps on it's trajectory, we won't have to worry about it, it'll all be mobile or indie
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 39 pts · 38d
Good thing you dont really have to reverse engineer to support local servers unless you intentionally rat fucked your development process to make it only compatible with cloud. You should be able to just have a local server catch all those client calls. If Team Clementine can do it with Phantasy Star Online 2 (same concept of always online and made in the same era as Warframe) then the official devs can definitely do the same for their own game. Sounds like the classic "where's me profit for this" argument.
AlphaOmega@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 38d
It's not reverse engineering if you wrote the code.
Peffse@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 38d
The title changed, and the article got an edit at the end saying they used "reverse engineering" incorrectly.
Katana314@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 38d
It is if your company aggressively lays people off / closes offices so fast that it becomes difficult to locate source code of any game not actively promoting a new battlepass.
Much of the game industry…
Folstar@lemmus.org · 1 pts · 37d
Setting aside for a moment that the proposal is not retroactive. That line of defense sounds more like a self own for whoever would make that excuse. "We have the laziest and scummiest business practices imaginable- there's no way we can keep all the puss out or stop putting chaulk in our milk."
Venator@lemmy.nz · 16 pts · 38d
There's no reverse engineering required... You just release the server executables...
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 37d
Yes and you don’t even have to worry about free servers competing with you, because you don’t have to release them until the day you shut down your live servers.
bufalo1973@piefed.social · 1 pts · 38d
Or at least the protocols.
Venator@lemmy.nz · 1 pts · 37d
I think in some cases the content could be partially server side and only transient in the client...
bufalo1973@piefed.social · 1 pts · 36d
That's part of the protocol too.
Dojan@pawb.social · 1 pts · 38d
Not that I’d complain about reverse engineering being made legal. I’m still salty about ATLUS essentially killing COMP_HACK. It wasn’t hurting them since they themselves killed the MMO years ago.
Dojan@pawb.social · 7 pts · 38d
What?
Raids were never PvP. However, they were notoriously buggy, and were left in the dust as Digital Extreme's design philosophy for Warframe changed. Thus they decided to sunset the raids instead of letting the content waste away.
PvP is a separate story.
Also, what other "larger chunks" have they removed? I've played since 2014 and I can't recall them removing large chunks. They've updated and extended systems. They removed companions dying permanently (which hardly counts as a large system).
That second part is obviously referencing Fortuna, which is less a commentary on indentured work and more a commentary on rampant uncontrolled capitalism. What exactly is "self-referentiality" meant to be though?
A what?
This part reads like AI.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 37d
Reads like someone who spent maybe 20 minutes researching Warframe.
Muscle_Meteor@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 38d
Anthem still exists? I thought it died within like 6 months of release.