Setting aside piratesoftware’s concerns (that it’s economically untenable to require devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly releasable), I’m not clear on why games should have this requirement and no other media, particularly when games are so much more complicated.
If we can’t even require physical releases of any show or movie or album, because the company still owns the copyright and might choose to profit from it in the future, how can we expect active investment in the unwinding of their copyright from devs? Seems a double standard.
Nothing about the initiative says anything about “requiring devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly available”. Where did you see that?
Seeing multiple people pushing source code to misrepresent the movement makes me start to think they are bad faith actors.
Other media should. But getting it to happen on games is a good first step considering games are the MOST profitable form of media.
require devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly releasable
That’s not a requirement or even expectation. The petition just requests that the game be reasonably playable after support ends, and only for people who bought it. That’s it. That could mean:
- release the server binaries so they can be self hosted
- bake server logic into client and allow P2P play
- for some games, merely remove the server requirement and allow single player
Or whatever other option the studio prefers. The only expectation is that the game is still playable in some meaningful fashion after support ends. How they achieve that is up to them.
For all of these options, they don’t need to:
- release source code
- give up any IP rights
- allow anyone who hasn’t bought the game to play
The petition is intentionally vague on solutions to give publishers and studios as much choice in how they comply as possible.
Why do people trying to advocate against the movement push the narrative that source code is being asked for or that it is the only solution to make games work after it is sunset?
Just put in an offline mode like was done for Redfall. https://www.ign.com/articles/redfalls-final-update-is-live-bringing-with-it-offline-mode-dlss-3-and-more
Knockout City provided tools for gamers to run their own private servers after it shutdown
https://www.knockoutcity.com/private-server-edition
Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League has servers still running but put in an update to provide offline mode
And fans have picked up the slack in Hitman with the peacock project when the companies lock certain things to online.
To reimplement the server side part of Hitman to run locally. So that if/when the official servers go down, anyone can still play the game. They’ve also made it easier/better to mod the game in various ways.
This includes leaderboards, contracts, game progression and unlocks, bonus/event missions, as well as being able to play elusive targets with scoring. All things that are unavailable when you play offline
https://old.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/12o76t3/what_is_the_purpose_of_peacock_project_mod/
So that’s what I’m guessing the movement wants. Just to leave the game in a playable state as opposed to inaccessible when servers go down. And source code wasn’t provided for these solutions.