Stop Killing Games - Ross Scott Responds To My Concerns (As A Game Dev)

Going back to the Stop Killing Games movie, it's close to a million signatures. Let's go. How close? 990,000 They're not represented in the way that The recent hype man, they were at like I think below 50% right before Asmongold, MoistCr1TiKaL, Pyrocynical got into their big beef and then that brought a ton of awareness. The thing that I want to talk to Ross about is I want to see what he's talked to engineers about. So, when I first came across this, I was First of all, I'm I'm not a big fan of regulation. So, I don't know if you know anything about my background. I've been an entrepreneur for 2 and 1/2 decades, built multiple successful companies, and ran up against regulation when I was in the food industry that was really obnoxious because it was just biologically incorrect. And so, I developed a very aggressive frustration with regulatory bodies that don't understand the thing that they're trying to regulate cuz I'm a game developer as well, but admittedly that's the thing I'm probably least known for because we haven't released our game yet. So, it's like I've been in game development for 3 and 1/2 years. So, it's like such a huge part of my identity, but publicly there's like 150 people that have played the game, and so that's like all that have any sense of that's a big part of what I do. Admittedly, I'm not the person coding. So, there are going to be things that you might be able to help me understand that I have an aversion to, but it's just out of ignorance and you can help me see the path forward. First, read your documentation. My initial response was very similar to Pyrocynical. And I was like, "Hold on. There There are agreements that I have with third-party vendors that make my back-end software work. And so, how would I leave this stuff up because obviously they're not going to go for it. And so, now I'm beholden to like only being able to use people that also agree." It's just like one of those things where you're like, "There There's an onerousness to this potentially that I didn't feel there was an awareness of in the documentation." But you you very kind and came into our post and said, "Hey, actually we've looked at more of this than you think we have and like this is going to be easier than some people think." So, as somebody building an MMO, help me understand from a technical challenge perspective, um why this won't be the kind of thing that becomes problematic for a small developer. The first thing I would emphasize right off the bat a lot of people miss is this is not retroactive. So, all these existing games that are out right now, that's something the industry would have a voice in the room on. So, one compromise that might emerge through this process is, "Hey, you know what? This is going to go into effect in 2028, but we're just going to grandfather in all existing companies." So, the game you have out right now, it's going to be exempt. That could be an option. Uh but, after that point, then you would have to start adapting and And so, Ross, on that, is your thinking that the the server-side architecture developers will just go, "Look, this is an easy enough problem to solve. We've just never had the impetus to solve it and so we're going to make this happen." Is that the kind of thing you're hoping comes out of this? I think it's Well, the analogy I made before is kind of like back in the '60s, auto manufacturers were fighting against having seat belts be mandatory in making the cars. And thing is, they can be an upfront cost, you know, if you've made your factory that's not tooled for that, that is a cost, but then once it's set up, it becomes relatively negligible. But, that was an inconvenience. And one thing I'll mention quick, you'll be glad to know that this is a last resort for us. We didn't start off thinking, "Oh yeah, let's regulate the industry." It's more we just kept seeing game after game after game get destroyed and the industry promising more of it. It's And what do you think drives that? And I assume the answer's going to be profit motive, but walk me through what you think, and I know that that this will be largely projection, but it'll help me understand how you see it as a lover of games, why do they kill these games? They don't have to put any forethought into it, so they don't. And the people making decisions on it aren't necessarily the same people making the games, so they see it as just kind of raw product. You know, for to them it could be toothpaste, insurance, whatever. And it's like even if it's a minimal cost, especially planned for up front, well, that could still be a 0.1% cost, so let's just get rid of it and not even worry about it. That'd save us hours. And for a few companies, there's it's more intentional where they have a sequel in that series and they want to usher everyone over to the sequel. So, we're going to shut this down and we think our sequel is going to make more money and uh that's the way to do it. Overwatch might be an example like that. Yeah. Where they just kind of had 50 million players, shut them all down. Okay, now you get Now you're on Overwatch 2 and you can't play the old one. How long did they overlap for? I I'm not sure they did at all, but I mean maybe it was a couple months. Really? So, it was like, "Monday, we got Overwatch 2 coming out and what a shame that on Tuesday, Overwatch 1 no longer works." Yeah, I I'm not certain on that. It It might have been like a beta phase for a few months or something like that, but Now, is there a company out there that is doing this well that you guys hold up as like, "Yo, model yourselves after these guys." The thing is actually most video games, this isn't even an issue because as long as like when the company just end support, as long as it's playable in some fashion, then it's already compliant. There would be no change. So, you usually have to hone in on the ones that do have an online only requirement. There's a handful. Uh recent one was the game Knockout City where it was kind of a dodgeball game with multiplayer and they realized, "Oh, the studio is is down." So, they patched in a capacity to have private servers to connect to one another, and now they can wash their hands of it, but people can continue playing it. On that one, cuz that this is where I wish I were more technical than I am, cuz I would be able to solve my own problem here, but when you look at that, is there a way to what and maybe this is exactly what they did, where you like package up your server-side application architecture and you give it to the community, but in a way where they're not able to grab what could be proprietary IP? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, two aspects of that. One, they wouldn't be gaining any new intellectual property rights beyond what was sold. It's just that they wouldn't be able to have those taken back from them. As said in the comment, you know, if you buy a Grand Theft Auto disc, you don't own the rights of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. You can just run that game for you or, you know, in your living room or something, and that's it. For the security aspects, there are ways of doing this. Um I can give some suggestions, though we're not actually mandating any one way for two reasons. One is that actually could run a foul of copyright, existing copyright law. If I say, "No, you have to release the server binaries or you you have to release your source code." That could interfere with other laws. So, what we're doing is we're focusing on the end outcome where, okay, the game just has to be in a working state, and it's up to the developer or the publisher how they that works best for them. And we're also not asking for necessarily 100% of all features, too. If they can give you 95% of the game, but then including something like matchmaking is going to be a nightmare, they can cut that out and it's a reasonably playable standard. Now, the suggestions I'm being given from talking to a dev, but out of my comfort zone here, um well, one, they won't give out the source code. Um you won't have to give out anti-cheat code because who's worried about cheating then if you're all running it privately, you can kind of police yourselves after that. I I've heard the risk wouldn't be that much different than just trying to reverse engineer the game while it's already active, also. All All private keys and codes and security features can be removed from the game. Uh I'm told being preserved with feature flags. You're actually giving me the exact kind of things that I'm trying to think through. So, when you're building something, whether it's a game or it's a manufacturing process, there are two ways that you can go about um something that you've done that's novel. Way number one is you patent it and then you obviously have to defend it and way number two is you keep it as a trade secret. And so, unfortunately, I just don't know enough about how you would package up server-side stuff where it can't be viewed. It may be easier than I think and then this is really easy. That would be the kind of thing where I could see games really pushing back on is, "Hey, wait a second. We did this novel thing. Game didn't work. We're shutting it down or for whatever reason we want to shut it down, but we don't want to give up this trade secret, this thing that we've done that makes our stability, uh distance from server, we can still keep ping really low, whatever, you know, obstacle it is that they think that they've done something fancy on that they want to port over to their next game. They don't want people to know how they did it. I'm just so aware that you can have stable code that will It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It will degrade over time. It's like, how do you permanently give something to people that won't begin to break? That sounds like an exotic scenario I think we would need more details on. I mean, there's stuff like bit rot, but uh What I'm talking about is as people upgrade their computers, you'll see that things just stop working. yeah, that that's easy. Yeah, for that, no burden at all on the developer. It would just have to comply with whatever you were supporting the day you shut it down. So, if Windows 12 comes out tomorrow and it doesn't work on that, well, tough. That's not on you, that's on the customer They can figure out how to get that working. Yeah, no, this would not be endless support whatsoever. Ross, this is it's really been interesting diving more deeply into you because you are eminently reasonable. When you hear people talk about this whole scenario, it's eminently emotional. What made you so passionate about this? From my perspective, it's almost like a Twilight Zone episode where why do why don't other people find this to be like a norm? You know, that you buy things that you get to keep them or that this is a creative work. We and it's preventable that it's getting destroyed. So, we should just take the minimum steps to keep it. I don't know. I guess my brain is just wired differently where I just kind of jump to the conclusion of what's going to happen, you know? So, if a game could just run indefinitely, oh, great. Well, then I have my life to enjoy it. I'll get around to it when I want to. But, if it's on a timer, then well, wait, what's a what Well, if the game was wonderful, I want to come back to it in 10 years or something like that. Has there been a game that you were like, "Yo, I this one meant something to me and now it's effectively gone forever?" The bigger ones I think are Well, we'll see. The crew was actually kind of like that for me because I actually think it's a so-so game overall, but the map is just astounding where it's like a miniaturized version of the continental United States. I have I have not played any other game that kind of gives you that feeling of just driving across the country the way it does. Like, you know, it it it's just staggering. So, the thought of that being shut down, I would have done it anyway even if I didn't really care for that game because it was a target of convenience because a lot of things checked off with us being able to send that to the consumer agencies and get it checked and that sort of thing. As a health check on the industry as a whole, so as a developer and the for better or worse, I'm old. Uh Uh I have probably a very different view of uh what gaming is, where gaming is going, gaming culture than somebody that's really grown up in the era of always online, building friendships, you know, while playing games. That wasn't a thing for me. Like, I came up on the original Nintendo. Uh I didn't start playing PlayStation until after I'd graduated college. Never got into PC gaming until I was in my 40s. So, it's like I have a really different sense of what the um gaming community is. Like, if you had to give us a health check, what are the frustrations? Why is like you start hearing even people like Elon Musk make games great again? Like, what what is what's working? What's broken? What does the community and I know you can't speak for everybody, but if you had to kind of as the the proving to be very reasonable person that you are, if you had to sort of aggregate the the biggest, most shared loves and frustrations, what does that look like? Yeah, I was going to say, I'm not too far behind. You have some gray in my beard. Uh the Yeah, this actually probably isn't where most of the focus is. So, I'm I'm really happy it's on that. Uh price is going up. That's a big one. Yeah, with new games coming out at $80. That's cuz we it was at 60 for just the longest time. And then it was at 70 for a little bit. Now, we're at 80. I I think I may have heard 100. Uh nickel and diming Yeah, nickel and dime games is where say you buy the base game and that was 60, but then you know, there there's an extra level or two. That's an extra 20. And then, oh, well, here's some weapons that you want. That's another $10 and stuff like that. That that a lot of complaints about that sort of thing. What's the community vibe on free-to-play? Uh well, it all depends on the game. I think a lot of people love it if it's done right. I enjoy it if it's done right. What does done right look like? What are some free-to-play games that you're like, "Okay, this is honorable"? Okay, I enjoy Path of Exile. That's a fun one. Do you make a distinction between Path of Exile 1 and 2? I haven't played 2 yet. I'm waiting for it to go to free-to-play. I'm on the cheap scale. Hey, that's good. That means you're going to be fighting for the average person, which is pretty clear in the way that you are. Oh, yeah. Like I almost always do my shopping around right now when there's a major sale that I'll just get like 12 or 15 at a time. I'll be like, "All right, now I'm set for 6 months or longer, you know." Oh god, okay, this is embarrassing. I forgot if it's free-to-play now or not. It was given away for free on Epic Store, but Destiny 2 I thought was interesting. Oh, free-to-play, man. That was my jam for years. Yeah, that game See, I can really appreciate the aesthetics of the game. That game is gorgeous. The the levels in there you feel like you're in an alien world. See, that's really what lights this fire for me cuz I want to go back eventually and see that game again or hey, maybe want to hack on it later so I can get it working in VR like I'm in there. So The idea of people are creating these worlds and you know, for a minute we get to live in them, but there's always this risk that they go away. That's the thing that really resonates with me. The thing that drew me to game design cuz I always thought I'd be a filmmaker, long story, but that's my background, went to film school, all of that, but the gaming industry just ended up completely consuming the film industry. As I got more into game development, you really realize you're building a simulation. You have to think about physics and you have to think about the way things move and you realize wait a second, I'm building a rules-based world. And you put all that time and energy into building this rules-based world and for me as a developer, it's like I just want that to keep developing forever. And listen, there are economic realities. You can certainly hit a wall and get to the point where you can't anymore. Being able to continue to push something to make it bigger, to create that world that people can come in and inhabit, I don't want to see it end. And it was pretty shocking for me when I realized how expensive servers are. So, it's like you really can hit a point where it's like, well, I've got the game, uh but I can't afford to support the servers anymore cuz we don't have enough players or whatever. And that, you know, is ultimately the thing that would kill a game's legacy. Even like if we will grant some developers that that they love the game as much as you. They don't want to see it die either. But there are certainly, if you've gotten to that point and hadn't planned for it, there is just that brutal reality of this is thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, or in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars per month just to run the servers. I think it's tough for companies to start scaling that stuff back. So, if there is a way for myself, I mean just speaking selfishly, to button that up in the end so that it you know that it can live on even if you end up, God forbid, uh hitting that wall is uh pretty interesting. For the winding it down, I I talked to a developer before try to prepare before coming on here. I was actually surprised how much can be wound down that's for all the stuff that might be on like an Amazon Web Services or Google stacks. A whole lot of that isn't parts of having the part that would be needed for end-of-life game. I mean, for end-of-life bill. Because thing those are about either running the business or you're talking about the cost maybe having up to like 10 million simultaneous players or something. That's where the cost really spike. So, you could get rid of stuff like cross-region save, anti-cheat, payments, analytics, 99% uptime, crash reports, voice chat, failover. So, you can just rip out all this stuff that we you do need those online service for and just kind of give them the the shell that still runs the game and instead of, you know, supporting thousands of people, it might support, you know, 20 or 40 or something. Which might be all that's needed if it's at end of life anyway, because the the player base has dwindled. Uh the other thing I was going to say what the one to emphasize cuz people don't realize, none of this would affect your business model aside from having a plan until end of life. So, if you want Actually, one of the examples that we give in this is the game Guild Wars. That was sold in 2005. It is still going. So, it never they never stopped. And so as long as a developer wants to keep supporting indefinitely, they can. They don't have to give out any code at all. And do you know, are they what's their business model? Are they DLC? Are they skins? How do they keep the revenue? I'm not sure. Now, there was originally like box copy where you bought it in the store for $60. They went to free-to-play later. I imagine they did go the microtransactions. I know more about two because my wife loves that one. That's the other free-to-play one. Uh she she goes nuts about the Yeah, she she gives me a few of the gray hairs because she'll want the these skins. I'm just like, you have like a hundred. Why does you have to pay for another one? Like And yeah, that works. Now, let me ask. So, as you um see this moving forward, one of the hurdles is going to be legislation. Certainly in the US is going to be tricky. Are there developers that you think that you could get on board that would help navigate the legislation in terms of hey, ripping things out is actually hard, so that's not the way that we want to do it. We want to do it like this. Do you have anybody that's been responsive or have you gotten blanked by all of the major companies? Well, for major companies, it's been relatively radio silence. Uh probably the largest ones we Well, not that large. They're kind of you know, was running with scissors who made the Postal games. They're all for this. Uh GOG gave some limited support of it. Uh but but they're more of a publisher rather than developer. I mean I mean I guess they do kind of develop a lot of infrastructure-related things. Oh, yeah, with the US Look, we're approaching this as the US is a lost cause, or I am. The EU market's pretty large, 450 million people. So, if companies if this goes through and companies realize, "Okay, we have an end-of-life bill if we want to sell our game in the EU." Once it comes to end of life, they may as well roll it out globally because the work will have already been done. And there's example of this happening before where I think I think it's in 2014, around there, Australia sued Valve for not allowing refunds in their games. And Valve fought it, and they lost. So, rather than just allow refunds for Australians, they said, "You know what? We don't want to deal with this with every country. We're just going to roll it out globally." And everybody got the benefits. I think it'll be a lot like that. Well, Ross, brother man, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been great. I'm very impressed with what you pushed through. I got one more. Hit us through. We got to ask, what's your favorite game? What what started the love of gaming? It's like asking your favorite movie or your favorite song. I got to put your feet to the fire. Okay, I'll I'll I'll I'll rapid-fire some. How about that? Uh Deus Ex, Supreme Commander, They Are Billions, uh Subnautica, Super Metroid. Nice. Uh I could keep going, but it's just tough to think. It's a good list. I've not heard of They Are Billions. It's a strategy game where they just send just thousands upon thousands of zombies at you, and you have to like hold walls, and I don't know. I just loved it. It was interesting. Nice. That's awesome. Uh man, tell people where they can uh find the petition, sign it if they are on board. How can they support? Uh it's at stopkillinggames.com. However, it's only open at the moment if you're an EU citizen for the big one. There is one going on for UK citizens or residents, though that one's way iffier. I'm not eligible to sign it. I I live in Europe, but I'm not a resident, so I don't even qualify. My wife signed it though. That's right. So, well, God bless your wife. Ross, thank you, man. This has been wonderful. Uh hopefully we can connect again. This has been great, man. I appreciate I appreciate everything you're trying to do to fight for people that love games, man. I'm here for that. Sure. Thanks for having me. All right, brother. You got it. Take care. Peace.