California bill would require patches or refunds when online games shut down

Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by Chaosvex on Saturday May 16, 2026 @02:08AM (#48157288)

I've also worked on MMOs and the architectures there can get quite hairy, particularly when they're deeply plumbed into shared services and infrastructure that they couldn't operate without. Those layers occasionally have closed-source licensed tech mixed in there.

Untangling the entire lot to make the game available upon closure would be a nightmare in some cases.

I've also contributed to game server emulation (pre-professionally) to keep them alive, so preserving games is a cause I support, even if I don't think it's necessarily always going to be trivial.

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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by atq2119 on Saturday May 16, 2026 @02:53AM (#48157525)

> Untangling the entire lot to make the game available upon closure would be a nightmare in some cases.

This is only true if the game wasn't architected with open-sourcing in mind. Which affects how this kind of law should be structured.

For example, it makes sense to require the server code to be submitted to an escrow service from the beginning. Part of that process would be a license evaluation, which acts as a forcing function already during the development process.

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Re:California bill would require patches or refunds when onl... by furyofantares on Saturday May 16, 2026 @02:19AM (#48157351)

Oh yeah, I definitely agree with you there.

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