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A comment on California bill would require patches or refunds when online games shut down. Parent comment

Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by parliament32 on Friday May 15, 2026 @06:56PM (#48155002)
Gaming might be unique in the sense that it's the only industry where 1) consumers make a one-time purchase of a product, but then 2) the manufacturer remains responsible for the online component.. forever? I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry (maybe a few niche products).

Maybe this is the reason MS has been pushing Game Pass so hard, to get rid of the "purchase" part entirely.

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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by jcranmer on Friday May 15, 2026 @07:42PM (#48155363)
> I can't think of any other examples in real life where this happens across an industry

Vehicles? Maybe not necessarily forever, but I'd expect the large car manufacturers to all still have some level of support for a 20-year-old car...

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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by fragmede on Friday May 15, 2026 @10:27PM (#48156258)
Large car manufacturers in the US are required to support their cars that they give warranties for by the the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which are 10 or 12 years long by this point.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by jandrewrogers on Friday May 15, 2026 @10:36PM (#48156316)
The contracts underlying the support for consumer automotive commonly run around 10 years. After that it is best effort and unofficial support by other companies if there is enough money to be made by offering it.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by limagnolia on Saturday May 16, 2026 @12:37AM (#48156881)
Cars don't really need an online component in order to continue working. Some manufacturers have tried to force some features into online components, but the cars continue to work without it once they turn it off.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by voidifremoved on Friday May 15, 2026 @07:47PM (#48155400)
Amazon just ended support for older Kindles. Not sure how that's any different.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by Dylan16807 on Friday May 15, 2026 @09:05PM (#48155833)
Well I don't want the company I bought the game from to be completely in charge of the online component. If it helps them make more money then good for them but they need a winddown plan.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by LocalH on Friday May 15, 2026 @09:17PM (#48155899)
Any company that willfully chains a device to their cloud platform in such a way should get the same treatment, whether the cloud offering is free as in beer or paid. It's happening a lot more than you might think.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by ajvs on Saturday May 16, 2026 @04:45AM (#48158219)
The way Kindles are being forcibly deprecated lately is another good example.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by account42 on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @05:49AM (#48191292)
Yes, cases where the service deprecation causes physical e-waste are particularly egregious but we should also not underestimate the societal cost to breaking peoples workflow just because some company can't be arsed to responsibly sunset a service in a way that gives users options to continue it themselves.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by jayd16 on Friday May 15, 2026 @10:14PM (#48156189)
It's more like it's the only software industry that still has a relevant amount of non-subscription based one time sales. I guess this will be the end of that.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by account42 on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @05:53AM (#48191314)
Or maybe it will allow those developers that still provide fully offline games to more easily compete now that others with less consumer friendly business models are forced to make their deal more clear to the customer.
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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by XorNot on Friday May 15, 2026 @11:17PM (#48156533)
Am I the only one who remembers that multiplayer was just peer to peer? Like we had multiplayer before every studio decided they wanted to host their own servers, it was just what the guy with broadband in the neighborhood ran or something my ISP provided.

The issue is nobody gets that option if the ability to run a server is made unavailable to the public.

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