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Notes -
Let's talk about software revocation: when a seller limits or disables their software after release, like an online game shuts down, particularly when customers aren't refunded.
Examples
Egregious example: Microsoft plans to remotely disable Office 2019 and 2021 for Mac. To be clear, this software was a one-time purchase and works completely offline, Microsoft even explicitly stated at one point it would continue to function. I can't even play devil's advocate.
Another example that I personally believe is stupid: when music from games is removed because the songs are licensed for a fixed duration (e.g. GTA4). Because, why include songs with these licensing requirements, when there are plenty of great songs without them? (And I don't think the removed songs from the GTA4 list are especially popular, I don't recognize any of them and only a couple artists.) Many games are simply delisted when the licenses expire; alternatively the licensed songs could be gated only for new users. At least these gamers weren't explicitly told the music would last forever (I assume), they just assumed.
Less egregious cases: when online-only games shut down. It's expensive to keep servers running; if the seller is an individual or small company they may obviously not have the funds. Providing users self-hostable servers can also be expensive: the server code should be changed for consumer hardware and documented, and the client code should be changed with UX and functionality for custom servers, or gamers will have trouble running it. Sometimes, the seller legally can't release server binaries, for IP reasons I don't really understand (the client code has third-party libraries, why is the server code different?). The most justified cases (albeit rare): the game is free-to-play with only temporary (e.g. seasonal) micro transactions, so there's nothing to refund.
The archtypal example: The Crew. A paid game released (by Ubisoft) in 2014 and permanently shut down in 2024 (without refunds). Online was a big part of the core gameplay, but the game had an offline mode which included a single-player campaign. Regardless, when Ubisoft shut down the game, they disabled the online mode and stopped players from re-downloading it. This shutdown spawned Stop Killing Games and lots of discussion about software revocation. Fortunately, the community has created a mod that re-enables the game and emulates its server (The Crew Unlimited).
Reactions
Stop Killing games campaign/NGO (mentioned above). Most known for collecting 1 million EU signatures so the EU Commission must eventually discuss their initiative, they also collected enough UK signatures for a UK parliament debate, and lobby in the US. Their voice has reached mainstream audiences (more or less: the world is so complicated there's not really one mainstream, but besides millions of signatures, they also got endorsed by celebrities including PewDiePie and Notch), but they haven't (physically) accomplished much, yet...
California's Protect our Games act. Passed the state assembly (not yet law). It requires publishers to post a notice 60 days before shutting down their game, and provide some offline functionality or refunds, although it doesn't apply to subscription games (and may have other exceptions). Backed by Stop Killing Games.
French consumer group sues Ubisoft over shutdown of online game 'The Crew': "UFC-Que Choisir alleges that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights". An earlier lawsuit in the US was dismissed. Backed by Stop Killing Games.
Cory Doctorow has (of course) written about this. I still support his crusade against enshittification, centralization, and unreasonable DRM (regardless of underlying goals), but I admit my general opinion of him has lowered, as this recent article has subtle xenophobia.
A road paved with good intentions
Of course consumers shouldn't lose access to things they've bought. You wouldn't remotely shutdown a car, or remotely disable its heating, or make previously-free heating a paid upgrade...(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.) Back on topic, surely at least egregious cases like Microsoft's are unjustified, so why shouldn't we prevent them via regulation?
It's not so simple:
Generally speaking: regulation doesn't intrinsically prevent anything, it's just a strongly-worded suggestion to the government and population. Moreover, all regulations have drawbacks: they cost money to enforce, discourage businesses, and hurt good-intentioned violators. Selective enforcement leads to the worse of both, where good-intentioned individuals and small businesses are targeted (sometimes frivolously but it still hurts them) while big businesses are ignored; an example I think is copyright, with false DMCA claims hurting individuals while big AI companies train on everything.
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. Even if no indie is successfully sued for such a frivolous reason, a failed lawsuit (motivated by the law) would harm them; even if there's no real lawsuit, the potential may discourage them.
My proposal
For now, media pushback and patches seem to be working for the most egregious cases. The Crew is playable via mod, more games are explicitly stating they won't remove licensed songs, I predict Microsoft will walk back revoking Office and am confident otherwise there will be a widely-available patch.
For the future, I support removing regulations on buyers circumventing end-of-life software, rather than adding regulations on sellers. At least after software becomes "end-of-life" (but preferably in general), there should be no restrictions on hacking the local version, only trying to hack the server. This won't stop determined sellers who put the entire game on the server and don't stream important gameplay logic (effectively recreating Stadia for only their game); but it's an improvement, and that streaming would make their game accessible to gamers with low-end PCs.
I like this in theory. In practice I think the massive disparity in legal resources will make this no different from the current situation.
If the game company with lawyers on call says their game doesn't count as end-of-life because of some transparent bullshit and threatens to sue a buyer sharing how to circumvent their restrictions then the likely result is that the buyer gives in or goes bankrupt fighting an expensive legal case (and then gives in).
The government might be inconsistent and heavy-handed but they do actually have the resources to threaten a company like Activision if enough people demand it.
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.
Apologies for the late response.
That one does seem to have been created before the original went down, fair enough.
I think it's more likely that two things are true
If I was a soulless corporate bastard in charge of killing this open-source product off I'd get the teams working on this product to rework the APIs in a way that just happens to break this method and look to deliver that in 6-12 months. This gives plenty of time to work on it, plausible deniability as to why the workaround broke, and hopefully everyone has forgotten by then.
But are they, actually? FULU isn't a person so while the organization could be sued it seems much less likely for any of the people behind it to be vulnerable. It's hard to tell in a foreign language but that "dafik" fellow seems to be fairly anonymous, with a common name, few projects, and little information.
I'm also not sure if just hosting the repository is legally problematic. Most of the claims Bambu made sound related to development of the repository and it's not clear to me that any of the people rehosting intend to continue development.
In practice, I’ve noticed pirates tend to do this: a big software or repository will be taken down (drawing attention), they’ll wait a bit (well past mainstream attention span), then a fork will start accumulating software updates or re-uploaded media.
I’m sure they don’t want to be arrested. Usually they’re in a country like Russia or Brazil where they’re safer from legal action. But the result is the same, the data is re-uploaded.
Maybe. It might also be the case that some new 3D printer is announced that is open and has enough features/price, so developers and consumers focus less on Bambu.
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