One critique of the article is that the initiative explicitly <i>doesn’t</i> require publishers to give up IP or monetization rights. So if they release the server binary and a community tries to sell it to others, said community can be sued and the publisher takes their revenue.<p>Moreover, the publisher can release a server binary that still has advertisements and micro transactions, where revenue still goes to the company’s bank account. All logic to transfer the money can all be server, e.g. using Bitcoin, so the company doesn’t expend any resources (another thing the initiative explicitly doesn’t require). The publisher can release a server that is heavily DRMed and requires a copy of the game to start, then each connecting player needs a copy of the game (the server can even sell these copies). If the company wants to resume working on their game, the server can receive mandatory updates; it can even receive an update to permanently disable itself if the company restarts their own server.<p>Not to mention, the server binary is almost certainly obfuscated/encrypted, so extracting IP or disabling the DRM or microtransactions from the binary
is difficult. It’s also illegal, just like putting copyrighted assets in your own paid game or disabling a “free trial” of a DRM-ed application is illegal. Remember, the company is <i>not</i> giving up their IP or monetization rights.<p>All the initiative states is that game must remain <i>playable</i>; companies must provide “reasonable means” for consumers to be able to keep playing the game. It doesn’t even address companies removing game features or requiring more payment to continue using them, just the game as a whole.<p>I acknowledge the other issues: that providing “reasonable means” to run a game like an MMO is actually very hard; that if the publishers must continue to provide not just the “game” but specific features, it severely hingers creativity (though the proposal doesn’t require that); and that it’s simply impossible to preserve an online game’s community, which is most of the fun, so these “preserved” games are probably going to die out anyways. Yes, the initiative may have a lot of serious issues. But stealing IP and monetization isn’t one of them.