The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games

superkuh

Good cause, but society has rapidly moved passed them just switching off games after people bought them. Now the hardware production companies for gaming are winding down and not producing gaming computer parts because megacorp datacenter parts have a much higher margin. The future of gaming will unfortunately be renting from the cloud; a context in which these "stop killing games" arguments will have much less leverage.

dpcan

I’m a devils advocate on this argument. Yes, a big company can take it away, but I think they have to leave it online long enough to get your money’s worth. So if I have a game for a year I paid $70 for, that’s fair, if it goes away, I hope I had a few hours of fun with it.

ryandrake

The goal is a good one, but it's too specific. It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for. This problem is sneaking into other non-game software, and even physical devices! If you buy a thing you shouldn't need to tether that thing to the manufacturer, and it shouldn't be possible to make it useless when they decide to turn down a server. As a developer or manufacturer, if your software or device absolutely requires a server that costs money to maintain, then your business plan should take that into account: You should be charging customers monthly to keep that service running. You shouldn't promise a one-time payment, take the customer's money and then yank the service away on a whim. Nobody is asking for free labor to keep services running. I'm asking that you 1. only tether your product to a server if you absolutely need to, and 2. charge for that kind of product monthly so that you can leave it running while you still have customers. That doesn't seem like too much to ask.

ChrisArchitect

Related on U.S. developments: The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328365

KolibriFly

Just don't design the game so that, when the business model stops working, every paid copy becomes a brick

phyzix5761

Why California's New Save Our Games Bill Could Kill Indie Studios: https://arkvis.com/blog/2026-05-15_why-californias-new-save-...

amazingamazing

I imagine the end result will be another layer of online subscription.

sph

A lot of “yes, but…” in this comment section. Hard to tell if it’s HN playing contrarian as it usually loves to do, or just people so brainwashed they default to defending corporate interests. Nothing makes me as hopeless for the future as reading people trying to one up the negativity about any initiative at all, and if no one did anything, they’d hit you with the snarky ‘go vote to make your voice heard instead of complaining’ It takes big balls to fight publishers and even more massive to fight the internet and the pseudo-intellectual snark of internet commenters. The entire SKG initiative has my support and perhaps it’s the only thing that might convince me that ordinary citizens actually have any say at all in directing legislation.

emptybits

Tell gamers how many months, for the advertised price, they will receive a guaranteed level of service and features for. Then let gamers decide. Example: If I'm reminded, at purchase time, that this $70 game will work online for 24 months and single-player offline for 36 months, then I can make an informed decision before I buy. Studios would be forced to bring their business plan into visibility and be held to a level of service, and then gamers can't complain when a game is "switched off" according to plan. This is already implied, just not explicit and quantified in advance. Personally, I wouldn't buy a game that had early expiry of online already contemplated. And offline play should be rich and complete indefinitely. But I still live in the glorious console cartridge era in my head and in my emulators.

customguy

Here's an idea, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's not new: instead of forcing all game devs to ensure longevity, just make clear criteria for what constitutes that longevity, and developers that meet them (or promise to meet them when they shut down) can slap a nice bright logo onto their game. Something like the rating system, except it's a line that's only there for games that claim they are "yours forever". Steam would have a filter for it, and so on. Then you can make the punishments/fines for breaking that promise draconian, since nobody has to opt in. Most single-player games would have the logo out of the box, gamers would come to expect it for those, and take a good hard look at single player games that don't have it. With multiplayer games it would be more varied, but there would now be a very clear incentive to see if it might not be possible after all to do what is needed to get that label, especially if none of your competitors have it. And most importantly when planning new games, you'd double check every decision would disqualify the game for it.

shmerl

Releasing source code for games (including server part) should help.

aogaili

Am I the only one finding the dependency on those videos games to be concerning?

binkHN

I still miss Stadia.

datsci_est_2015

My lateral solution: don’t let the companies use the words “purchase” or “buy”, force them to use the words “rent” or “license”. You can only use the words “purchase” or “buy” if you can install / move the files to a device that is completely airgapped from the internet and continue to use the product indefinitely. Extend it to movies and music as well. Use established language to enable consumers to make an informed decision.

StillBored

Part of this is simply fixed by a tweak to copyright that if the IP isn't available for sale at a reasonable price the copyright no longer applies. Games, books, movies, music, etc.