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If a software license wants to say "you cannot hack the client, ever" then who is the law to prevent that? In general, we allow all sorts of things in software licenses.
To my knowledge, courts only enforce IP law against "hacking the client" projects whenever the companies can prove they're being financially harmed. Most of the time it means they have some version of the service up already. I suppose there might be cases where a very edgy fan fiction tarnishes the brand's IP, but presumably the company does believe there is financial damage in this case.
Well there is one other case, which maybe is the real discussion: if the fan-made project is making money, companies will go after it to get a piece of the pie. I think that's fair. If a company wants to stop service for their online game, I don't think it means the IP should become public domain. For example, the service might be unprofitable after merely 1 year. The company should still be able to expect royalties, for example. Or, be able to veto a fan-made service, even if it is profitable in the market.
I say this as someone who has played MMOs, as someone who is sad many have changed or shut down, and as someone who follows various emulator projects (And am sympathetic to the community).
You’re right about breaking the client. I don’t know why people have a hard time with this. You realize “the cloud,” is someone else’s computer, right? Whether that’s social media or online banking or an MMORPG, it doesn’t make any difference to the point. Client side apps often run in containers like Docker or Kubernetes, which adds a layer of abstraction between the user and the actual application, so you’re not directly in control of the binary to examine. If you’re messing with it you’re often doing things like looking for and intercepting API calls to look for keys, OAuth tokens, looking for misconfigured servers, fuzzing endpoints to look for IDOR and SSRF.
Whether you're messing around to cheat on their systems, playing a joke or have criminal ambitions from their standpoint, they don’t know what your intent is, not to mention your activity is actively damaging the integrity of their infrastructure and impacting them financially. If I was in their shoes, I’d be ‘somewhat’ sympathetic to that viewpoint too. It’s not like dissecting assembly on a Super Mario cartridge. If the product is EOL and being retired that’s a bit of a different issue.
I didn't have in mind any kind of service exploits when I said "hacking the client." Of course companies can ban you from their services, for essentially any reason.
I only had in mind white-hat "preserving a retired product," but I think its kind of silly to think the community or the market is entitled to that. Of course, the relevant punishment here is getting sued, not getting banned.
I know, but it was sort of implied when you referenced MMO’s at the bottom of the comment. The problem with a lot of video games today is that they often depend heavily on a backend infrastructure or continued service updates to the product in a way that video games pre-millennium didn’t have to. EOL’s on the other hand are more of a case where a large company is “hoarding” a dead IP but still wants to prevent interested parties from keeping it alive or taking it in a different direction. If it wanted to collect fees and license it to private “player communities” or indie developers, I don’t think it would be as hotly debated, but the company shouldn’t be obligated to provide the tools or infrastructure to keep it active.
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