It's impossible for the law to cause more games to die, because already the default fate of online games is for them to die. If, with the law, a studio chooses to use an LLC to create the game to conditionally release sources once it shuts down, that was a game that without the law would have died anyway because the studio wouldn't have chosen of its own volition to release sources.

If a studio on it's last legs is required to service a failing product instead of working on a new one the studio will simply close and not comply. That's what tends to happen with forced regulations like this.

And it's what would have happened anyway without the law. How is this difficult to understand? It's not like it's only a few games that shut down without recourse for the players. Ross Scott already did the research on this. Something like 95% of all online games that shut down do so without providing any way for the players to continue playing in some way or without issuing refunds.

Different person here, it's probably because they defensively reject anything that forces anyone to do anything, or would increase prices outside of market forces. Every argument that's used against this kind of legislation was also used against putting airbrakes on trains. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Seriously. If you ever want to see a discussion thread that demonstrates the difference between “reasons” and “excuses” (by being full of the latter), just propose a law forcing game companies to do literally anything and watch the replies.

Yes, gamers can be very tribal and quickly become defensive when you are critical of the companies they have formed a parasocial relationship with.

If they're closing they have nothing to lose by putting the source code up on the internet and saying sue us if you want. It's continuing businesses who are scared of liability.

Really the parent company should be held accountable for that. But that is a more general problem with LLCs that is already causing significant harm.

If they're spun out as an LLC then there's also zero legal risk to to the parent company to dumping the server code to GitHub as open source.

Technically in both cases the risk is nonzero as a wholly owned subsidiary LLC doesn't just let you avoid all risk while still keeping the profits.