Eniko Fox

Some indie devs have really bad takes on the Stop Killing Games thing, sheesh

"How am I going to comply if I make an MMO as a solo indie??"

Well 1. I have bad news for your odds of making an MMO lmao and 2. why are you so concerned that dropping the non 3rd party proprietary parts of your source code into a repository somewhere with a no-warranty license would bankrupt you? 🙄

Jun 26 at 8:54amWeb
Show threadEniko Fox1d ago
If you can't even do that much wait til I tell you about your obligations under the GDPR and or the DMCA as a live service provider, which are far more onerous than simply "please have some kind of end-of-life service sunset plan"
Show threadEniko Fox1d ago
And let's not even get into players using your "I'm just a little guy" indie live service game to coordinate crimes. Yes, that does happen
Show threadEniko Fox1d ago
Hate to say it but running a live service game already requires putting on the big boy pants and if you're not ready for something as mild as "please have a sunsetting plan" then you're definitely not ready for the realities of running a live service game
Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
Also I find it hard to believe that indies who achieve something as grand and community oriented as a live service game wouldn't be exactly the type of people to find some way to keep it playable in some form or another once they couldn't support it any longer themselves
Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤23h ago
@eniko in fact, indies usually try to release open servers along with their open games
Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@efi yeah turns out its a lot easier to sidestep all the legal liability if someone else runs the server
Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤23h ago
@eniko oof, eniko, plz, minecraft was already bleeding (lol)
Show threadJosh Simmons23h ago
@eniko the cost here isn't about success, it's about when the game fails. It's an extra risk on top of your existing highly likely outcome of failure. If you're successful it doesn't matter you can just keep supporting the game.
Show threadLucas Moura22h ago

@eniko I really can't think of any indie that took the form of a "live service" game, really. Not in the traditional sense anyway. I seen some that got updates over the years or like, a dev added something yeaaars later but thats it

(No man's sky doesn't count)

Show threadCadmus 🌲18h ago
@DrTeflon @eniko Perhaps Helldivers 2?
Show threadAurani the Crime Cat16h ago

@eniko reminds me of City of Heroes.

Game closed down, so the community figured out the server software and began running open servers.

And the company went after them. For daring to run free instances of a codebase that the owner had given up on.

A deal was originally reached, but the company did not make it easy.

The very small team releases like 2 updates a year, but the game still has a decently sized community; much of the content is user generated.

Show threadKatja ｢Amethyst｣1d ago

@eniko

I think I know who this is referring to, and my understanding is that he was a developer on a live-service game at one point. he's still full of shit, though.

aside: he did a game on Steam that used the achievements system to save, which is just bonkers.

Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@VulpineAmethyst it's only partly about him. people on bluesky are having opinions
Show thread(Matthew)=> 🏳️‍🌈🇿🇦🎮💻📖23h ago

@VulpineAmethyst @eniko Are we obfuscating his name for any specific reason? And yeah, it's a ridiculous anti-piracy measure. So just... No multiple save slots, eh? What happens when you want to replay the game, AFAIK there's no way to reset your steam trophies. Also his game hasn't left early access for like five years.

There are things I respect about the dude but his clownery has reached circus overwhelming levels. Let's not forget the parody streamer game lawsuit.

Show threadKatja ｢Amethyst｣23h ago

@mdstevens0612 @eniko

not that I expect him to be one of them, but there are people who name-search themselves to pick fights. hell, someone even paid $10 to go on SomethingAwful to pick a fight.

anyway, nah. I don't think he deserves the name recognition, is all. die in obscurity, etc.

Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@VulpineAmethyst @mdstevens0612 is he even on fedi?
Show threadKatja ｢Amethyst｣23h ago

@eniko @mdstevens0612

no clue, tbh. he does seem like the type to pick fights, tho.

Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@VulpineAmethyst @mdstevens0612 i can take him lmao
Show threadMolytov8h ago
@mdstevens0612 Him calling his game "unpirateable" for using Steam achievements to track progress was hilarious. He either had no idea that Goldberg Emulator exists, or was praying very hard that none of his fans would ever come to learn of it. That's not even mentioning how it just harms replayability.
His new "anti-piracy" tactic for his Undertale ripoff appears to just be to never finish developing the game lol.
Show thread(Matthew)=> 🏳️‍🌈🇿🇦🎮💻📖6h ago
@molytov I won't speak to the game's quality, I don't know and doubt I'll ever play it, but this is one of those over-engineered solutions that *feels* clever but just punishes paying customers, like most DRM. And I get it, piracy sucks for indie devs, especially when your asking price is already low, but maaaaaan... Tattoo "Keep it simple, silly" onto the forehead of every bedroom coder, we'd over-engineer boiling water if left to our own devices.
Show threadGiles Goat23h ago
@eniko .. servers costs .. "someone has to pay for them" .. subscriptions .. and before you know you have to deal with DLCs .. "updates" .. "loot boxes" .. "cosmetics" .. "in game economy" and stuff like that ? ( plus a lot of people moaning about this & that ) 😅 ?
Show threadDave?19h ago

@eniko Random story but I brought this 'indie game dev quirk' with some people in the film industry and they referred to it as a leap of fools.

Very similar to the leap of faith, but its more plunging a project to its death out of stubbornness than it is making a risky but calculated decision.

It seems it happens in the indie film industry as well, where someone comes in with a lofty plan that anyone experienced will just look at them like this 😬

Show threadDave?19h ago
I guess I can't even think of how many times I've seen an indie Dev say "We're going to make XYZ better than any AAA game ever could!" And just leap for it... As they careen themselves right off that cliff.
Show threadCatSalad🐈🥗 (D.Burch) 1d ago

@eniko It does, and not even the fun crimes either.

https://www.404media.co/martyrdom-or-bust-texas-man-caught-plotting-terror-attack-through-roblox-chats/

‘Martyrdom or Bust:’ Texas Man Caught Plotting Terror Attack Through Roblox Chats

According to the FBI, a Texas man talked about killing christians on Roblox and searched for ‘are suicide attacks haram in islam’ on his iPhone.

404 Media
Show thread Tired Bunny  22h ago
@eniko

Or using an online game aimed at children for adult-only roleplay (the specific one I had in mind only recently made changes to combat that, requiring connecting google account and having a report system, because before it didn't require any account at all to connect to online play, so even apart from just not having enough moderation, it was impossible to prevent anything, and there were always a couple of such servers in public)
Show threadCassandrich21h ago
@eniko Not just coordinate, commit. Like money laundering.
Show threadCassandrich20h ago

@eniko Like, there should be a named theorem for this: Any game that has all of:

1. In-game trade/commerce.
2. Any way to buy in-game currency with real-world currency.
3. People who want to play.

is inherently a money laundering platform.

Show threadCassandrich16h ago
@eniko Since someone asked then deleted the post, here's how you get your money out: item 3 makes it so you can sell in-game currency out-of-game way below face value (normal practice when laundering) to people who just want it for use in the game.
Show threadEniko Fox15h ago
@dalias so you buy in game money with real money, then sell it for real money out of game at a discount?
Show threadCassandrich15h ago
@eniko After plausibly exchanging it around in the game across a multitude of mixer accounts so it's not trackable. I mean in theory it would be trackable, if the devs realized they had a money exchange platform subject to anti money laundering laws and not just a game. But...
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦15h ago

@dalias I hereby dub it the Cassandrich Theorem.

@eniko

Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤1d ago
@eniko lmao lol I forgot gdpr applies to mmos
Show threadJosh Simmons1d ago
@eniko making an mmo has some pretty wildly diverging degrees, many of which are more or less easily achievable by indies. The easiest example would be something like elden ring, the tech there could be applied to all kinds of games and is entirely tractable to implement.
Show threadJosh Simmons1d ago
@eniko the tricky part as always is going to be what you rely on to implement the server stuff, and how well engineered it is with respect to third parties running servers.
Show threadJosh Simmons1d ago
@eniko tbh my main issue with the whole thing is how vague it is, and I don't see any possible concrete version of the idea that would actually be effective. Plus it's a huge amount of legal work to try and resolve an issue that more or less never actually happens. Like, have you ever owned a game that stopped working due to an online requirement? Mostly I think it'd affect mobile games, and they literally are all MMOs so idk.
Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@dotstdy it's vague because the petitioners are not the ones who make new law, the EU is
Show threadJosh Simmons23h ago
@eniko "and I don't see any possible concrete version of the idea that would actually be effective"
Show threadJosh Simmons23h ago
@eniko like it's really simple in the cases where you're talking about a single monolithic server which doesn't interact with any first parties, doesn't use any third party libraries that are not distributable, and doesn't contain anything that's likely to cause you more issues down the line (people typically don't re-write their servers every game). But none of that is really how mobile MMOs are architected for example, they're all micro services in the cloud.
Show threadJosh Simmons23h ago
@eniko is it fine to dump a set of binaries that requires access to a shitton of gcp api endpoints? Binaries that may also just stop working if gcp decide to change their bullshit next year? One that no longer works because the entire system is based on top of first party authentication for user management? One that also uses some other library for networking that you'd have to license in order to run the server? Super hard for me to see how you'd make that work.
Show threadJosh Simmons23h ago
@eniko like, concrete example, an MMO style mobile game I worked on was entirely implemented on the server side using aws and and particular dynamodb for both gameplay endpoints and save logic and... well everything. Even if one was to package and hand out that server it's not possible to package the dynamodb local implementation with it, so anybody wanting to run the server would have to have an aws account and potentially to pay for access to the APIs
Show threadSobex22h ago
@dotstdy @eniko Hmm, software that get unusable because the licensing server went down are also a thing.
(Which would be a reasonable extension of that petition)
Show threadJosh Simmons20h ago
@Sobex @eniko yeah I mean, drm is a whole other aspect. Personally I'd be happy to just remove drm from the world, but idk how that'd go in the context of this specific problem. Like is the games thing a proxy for all software? (In which case you'd be making the action into something much larger) Or is this a weird special carve out for games, and then, why are games special?
Show threadArma Bellum21h ago
@dotstdy "Like, have you ever owned a game that stopped working due to an online requirement?"
Is this a (misplaced) rhethorical question? I stopped buying games from many companies because their single player games required a constant online connection for anti-piracy purposes. IIRC GetsuFumaDen is a recent example, but this goes as far back as Assassin's Creed II at the very least.
@eniko
Show threadJosh Simmons20h ago
@shaperOfDefiance @eniko I'm not asking whether you personally would not buy a game for some reason, I'm asking what specific games you have owned have had their online requirement cause the game to stop working because the developer stopped supporting the game.
Show threadArma Bellum20h ago
@dotstdy ???? What does that have to do with anything? "It hasn't happened yet" doesn't mean there shouldn't be protections in place for when it happens.
@eniko
Show threadJosh Simmons20h ago
@shaperOfDefiance @eniko well the petition is called "stop killing games" not "don't you dare one day consider killing games", it implies the issue is already a problem worth addressing. Beyond the name also, the entire text of the proposal is written in that frame. "When support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function", "This practice is effectively robbing customers of their purchases..."
Show threadArma Bellum20h ago
@dotstdy Excuse me but this is the dumbest post I've read this week and I have a bluesky account.
Show threadJosh Simmons20h ago
@shaperOfDefiance thanks, I aspire to even greater heights with every post
Show threadStygian Abyss Pie Factory1d ago
@eniko expecting indies to remember gdpr exists in the first place is a tall order
Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤1d ago
@eniko at least they clarified it's not retroactive; so many people were saying it must be retroactive, which is... largely impossible
Show threadMartijn Frazer21h ago
@efi @eniko It's not anything anyway. It's not a proposal. It's addressing an issue. Whether and how this issue is solved is an entirely separate matter for the future, which is in the hands of the law-makers. The only thing this campaign is about, is putting the current situation in front of them and asking to come up with a way to improve consumer protection.
Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤20h ago
@Tijn @eniko I'd reather people lobbied for healthcare
Show threadMartijn Frazer20h ago

@efi @eniko people can lobby for different things at once.

There are many different ECIs for many different causes.

Addressing one issue doesn't mean not addressing another.

Show threadEfi (nap pet) 🦊💤20h ago
@Tijn @eniko no, but, they're not doing that
Show threadjelte1d ago
@eniko perhaps they fear the shame for the quality of the code will kill them
Show threadMartijn Frazer23h ago
@eniko The most surprising thing to me is the disregard for the player. Those people paid real money to play your game and you're willing to just shut them out of their purchase because you no longer feel like running the server?? It's wild to me devs don't want to have an end-of-life plan anyway.
Show threadEniko Fox23h ago
@Tijn one of the City of Heroes devs clearly wanted an end of life plan so badly they broke the law and leaked the server source and binaries to their pals. Like. Devs don't want to see their games dead lol
Show threadDaniël Franke 23h ago
@eniko @Tijn There will be some exceptions, but the vast majority of the times, the "just let it die" decision will be made by executives who never cared about the games outside of the money it could make them.
Show threadMartijn Frazer23h ago
@ainmosni @eniko This is about indie devs opposing the Stop Killing Games campaign though!