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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   22329 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Consider the regulation "a software seller cannot disable any offline feature in their client without refunding buyers". Sounds reasonable, right? But what if an indie game developer pushes a balance chance that nerfs an OP character by removing their special ability? What if they remove a poorly-implemented game mode almost nobody was playing? Both of these also sound reasonable, but both can be considered disabling offline features.

Surely that can (and imho should) be easily solved by just keeping the old version available for download? If you enjoy playing the OP character or the unpopular game mode, you can still play it in single player that way. Only if you try to connect to the servers, it tells you "please update your game to the latest version [Update] [Continue offline]".

Even permanently requiring the game to be downloadable may be too much for an individual or small company that has gone bankrupt.

But I support, if it works (or should work) offline, not having legal avenues to stop people keeping and playing the old version (including bypassing DRM for their offline copy).

Even permanently requiring the game to be downloadable may be too much for an individual or small company that has gone bankrupt.

That's not what I was talking about. I was proposing making older versions available alongside the newest, which adresses the specific issue of an update removing content.

If you go bankrupt, your customers get to keep (the offline part of) what they bought, but need to manage it themselves, including getting copies of games they lost when their hard drive broke or older versions they didn't save back then from third parties.

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