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I think that generally, it’s harder for game companies to successfully even threaten a frivolous lawsuit, than to defend a legitimate one.
The game company’s lawyers can defend the government’s lawsuit, or the hobbyist sued for bypassing EOL-not-EOL software can get enough people and attention on their side to recover any financial damage and Streisand the game company.
The problem with adding regulations is that they may be applied to smaller devs. Removing regulations, so that some smaller devs’ software may be deemed EOL too early, is less of an issue; because smaller devs already have weaker DRM and lawyers, and thus rely on good faith to defend against piracy (which seems to work well enough).
We have examples now that show this isn't how it will work in practice. I think the recent case around Bambu Labs' software is illustrative.
I won't go into all the details but what I find notable about that case is that, when served with a legal threat, the developer who made a workaround to now-removed functionality immediately took it down without any attempt to fight a legal case. This happened despite a significant number of people interested in his success and despite the developer appearing to believe the threat was legally unsupported.
It shows very clearly that legality is not sufficient to protect game preservation efforts. Under the current legal system threats of legal action often work even if the target believes the case is meritless.
I'm not convinced the requirements from Stop Killing Games will be much of a concern for small developers. They're far less likely to use DRM and turning off Steam's DRM would put basically all of them in the clear of even your more stringent requirements. They're also far more likely to stop supporting a game because their company has gone bankrupt, at which point fines for non-compliance are irrelevant.
I'm far more concerned that SKG and similar laws will be added to the pile of laws that are effectively unenforced than I am about seeing them enforced strictly on small publishers.
Of course he did, because others already forked it. And if Bambu still tries to sue him, Louis Rossman has pledged to pay his legal fees.
The FULU repository went up May 12. The developer took his repository down on April 23rd.
Apparently he received the threats from Bambu in late April. Unless some very fast-paced discussions happened behind the scenes, he could have had no idea a replacement would go up when he took his repository down.
Furthermore, is FULU maintaining the code or just re-hosting the original? Now the developer is out of the way all Bambu needs to do is make a small change to obsolete the backed-up version.
He pledged $10,000. This is good of him but probably insufficient for even a simple legal case, and doesn't cover the personal cost of dealing with this either. Fundraising might cover the rest if the developer actually gets sued. I wouldn't want to take that bet. Would you?
Others went up earlier: https://github.com/dafik/OrcaSlicer-bambulab
Nowadays, when a popular repository goes down, one can be confident someone will upload a backup, even with a weak legal threat
(Although it's not the only possibility and maybe they're wrong) that Bambu didn't make this small change is evidence they expect someone would fix the repository.
Not personally, but the multiple people re-uploading the repository are.
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