Sure, I just don’t trust results from subjective studies, unless it’s tracking trends over time. So maybe if they had opinion polls like this before smartphones were a thing in classrooms, while smartphones were a thing, and after they were banned I’d trust the results somewhat. But if we’re just tracking an after-the-fact poll, it just feels like confirmation bias. I believe teachers have an incentive to overstate the impact of policies that give them more control, because they want to encourage more such policies, even if they aren’t effective at achieving tangible results.

So yeah, I distrust this type of study. I don’t think it’s necessarily worthless, I just don’t think many conclusions can be taken from it.

Yet he has charisma for a certain demographic.

They should be compelled to either make those cosmetics available for everyone or have some technical means to prove ownership (e.g. blockchain or cryptographically signed file). You can’t lose stuff you bought just because the publisher shut down the servers.

Sure, you’re paying for a performance when you watch a film or play at a theater. If I pay to watch a video game tournament, I’m likewise paying for a performance, not the game.

When you buy a film (DVD, Bluray, or Digital Copy) or a recording of a play performance, you own that copy and can watch it as often as you want for as many years into the future as you want. What we’re saying is that video games should work the same way, if I buy a game, I should be able to play it whenever I want at any point in the future. That’s it, it’s the same thing as with a film.

? I’ve never used TikTok…

But yes, kids die all the time for various reasons. When talking about individual causes, it’s important to look at the impact on trends. Are more kids dying due to TikTok, or is TikTok merely replacing another cause?

Obviously no death is acceptable, but death will happen. The role of public policy isn’t to prevent all death, but to address the bulk of it with the least invasive policy possible.

It’s both fear mongering and a problem. I imagine there are a lot more unreported cases, since teens are especially unlikely to ask for help with something like this. On the other hand, it was used as an excuse to attack TikTok, which is stupid because the similar things happen on other platforms and happened before everyone was on social media. Kids will do stupid things as long as peer pressure is a thing.

Sort of. They need to have the tools as well. So I suppose they could release the APIs for their servers before shutting down their servers so community servers can be created, that would probably be sufficient. But they need to do something beyond just saying, “we won’t sue you if you reverse engineer it.”

True. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attack predatory behavior when we see it. If they want to sell me something, I need to own it, and that means I get to use it after they’ve stopped supporting it.

They still will, this will just limit their ability to force you to move to the next one once the servers shut down.

That’s a pretty beefy rig:

• top end CPU
• nearly top-end GPU
• probably a high end mobo and RAM

Yeah, I draw the line at the kernel.

If they want to protect against piracy (losing game IMO) or try to limit cheating, that’s fine as long as it doesn’t impact gameplay (i.e. I can still party SP offline) and it keeps working in 20 years when they’ve stopped supporting the game. If that means releasing a patch to remove server interaction when they shut the servers down, that’s fine.

I am not okay with needing to install a kernel module just to play a game. That’s a security risk, prevents compatibility tools like WINE from preserving the game, and makes the game more fragile (will a kernel update break the game?). That’s a red line for me, and I refuse to play any game with kernel-level DRM or anti-cheat.

What do you mean? Pretty much every game on Steam is “third party.” They do mention certain things on the store though, like kernel level anti-cheat or needing a third party account, though I don’t know how many people check that.

Yup, LLMs are a backup if traditional search fails. A well researched blog post is way better than whatever the LLM cobbles together, though the LLM is often better than nothing.

Agree with this, but I don’t supply my kids with phones at all, despite their friends having them. If there’s an emergency, they can go to the office or ask their teacher. If that’s not possible, the school will likely call instead (e.g. when there was a bomb threat a could of couple years ago).

I have chosen to not give my kids phones, but I also think other parents should be allowed to choose differently. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and I don’t want the government stepping in to make parenting decisions for me, even if my decisions would be the same. That’s overreach and I will absolutely oppose it.

Exactly, and that also includes online games like Minecraft. Nobody is going to sue Microsoft because of what someone said or did in a private Minecraft server, though they might if it’s a Microsoft hosted one.

I could imagine third-party companies springing up whose entire business model is JUST providing unofficial servers for discontinued games and moderating them

That kind of already exists, you can buy hosting for Minecraft and other games. AFAIK, moderation isn’t a part of it, but many private groups exist that run public servers and manage their own moderation. It exists already, and that should absolutely be brought up as a bill is being considered.

They retain copyright based on existing law, and trademark is irrelevant since it’s defended in courts, not EULAs.

If that’s their argument, then the counterargument is simple: preserve the game another way. If hosting servers is dangerous, put the server code into the client and allow multiplayer w/ P2P tech, as had been done since the 90s (e.g. StarCraft).

What they seem to be doing is reframing the problem as requiring users to host servers, and arguing the various legal issues related to that. SKG just needs to clarify that there are multiple options here, and since devs know about the law at the start (SKG isn’t retroactive), studios can plan ahead.

It’s just a disingenuous argument trying to reframe the problem into cyber security and IP contexts, while neither has been an issue for other games in the past.

The original article completely misrepresents the initiative:

We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

…

Stop Killing Games is not trying to force companies to provide private servers or anything like that, but leave the game in a playable state after shutting off servers. This can mean:

• provide alternatives to any online-only content
• make the game P2P if it requires multiplayer (no server needed, each client is a server)
• gracefully degrading the client experience when there’s no server

Of course, releasing server code is an option.

The expectation is:

• if it’s a subscription game, I get access for whatever period I pay for
• if it’s F2P, go nuts and break it whenever you want; there is the issue of I shame purchases, so that depends on how it’s advertised
• if it’s a purchased game, it should still work after support ends

That didn’t restrict design decisions, it just places a requirement when the game is discontinued. If companies know this going in, they can plan ahead for their exit, just like we expect for mining companies (they’re expected to fill in holes and make it look nice once they’re done).

I argue Stop Killing Games doesn’t go far enough, and if it’s pissing off the games industry as well, then that means it strikes a good balance.

At my school, they only cared if you used it, and you’d be forced to put it away if caught. A lot of my friends had phones, but they weren’t allowed to use them in class, and it was treated like any other gadget like a gameboy.

I don’t believe in bans (kids can use them between classes), but I also believe kids shouldn’t use any devices in class.