This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own.
This should be illegal, companies should be forced to open-source games (or at least provide the code to people who bought it) if they decide to discontinue it, so people can preserve it on their own.
Edit2: Jesus people, please engage with the actual argument… not some strawman argument I didn’t make.
I must be missing something here.
Edit: I do think that abandonware should be opensourced at some point… but I don’t understand this level of entitlement.
Maybe I’m just missing some crucial info, but an amusement park seems like a fundamentally different thing than software.
It’s the designs and schematics part that makes them equivalent.
Good analogy. The battle shouldn’t be about forcing abandonware to be opensource. We should focus on DRM, it makes games almost impossible to play when servers shut down.
OP should have compared it to other medias such as movies. When you buy a box copy, you expect it to work long after the authors/studios/etc. are gone.
The issue is about the lack of legal ways to play older games as time moves on. It will only grow bigger in the next few years with even more games relying on DRM and online servers.
This is a good distinction.
Online only play models are difficult for the consumer. I personally don’t play that many online only games for partly this reason… and partly because I don’t play many online games at all.
It’s not a good analogy. Buying a one time use ticket to an amusement park is a very different thing than purchasing a game.
A better analogy would be buying a season pass to an amusement park, which then abruptly shuts down 3 months later.
That’s not the analogy I gave.
That’s my point, your analogy was a bad one so I made a new one.
No. I didn’t make the analogy you claimed I did. You strawman’d my argument and made one you like.
Well then, whatever argument you’re making, which I note you refuse to elaborate on, you’re missing the point.
Why would I need to elaborate on an argument I didn’t make? I don’t understand? I made my argument, if you don’t understand it, I don’t know what you don’t understand?
What are you misunderstanding?
It doesn’t matter. Whatever argument you’re making, you’re missing the point of the OP.
Because the analogy I drew was in line with the OP. And you said you were making a totally different argument. So whatever argument you’re making is irrelevant.
What?
My argument directly engaged with the original post that game developers should be forced to open source their software. The analogy you made has nothing to do with open source software, it has to do with payment models…
Edit: and ops position doesn’t make any claims about payment models…