The game has millions of pokestops, gyms, and players. A game of this scale CAN'T run on one server.
Even if you could host it on just one or a few machines, if you sign up for one server and your buddy joins another, you can't do raids or anything together. And each of these player hosted servers has a player limit.
Anti-cheat that isn't being actively updated is next to useless. Community servers would be botted to hell.
The game requires a maps tile service. Expecting Niantic to provide map tiles for anyone to download is insane. They might not even own the rights to do that.
It's virtually impossible for Pokémon go to remain in a "reasonably playable state" after the servers shutdown.
Adding a blurb about "guaranteed to continue working through yyyy/mm/dd" to its app store page would likely be sufficient to satisfy what this is asking for.
I don't know where you and other people in this thread are getting that idea from. That's not what the petition says, and that's definitely not what Ross Scott says in his videos.
The game that sparked this movement was shutdown 9 years after it came out, and had 3 months notice.
Right the problem is that they didn't do that. 3 months notice isn't the same as "making it clear to the customer at purchase time how long this product might reasonably be supported"
I'd certainly encourage a more sustainable solution like a self runnable server, but I'd settle for replacing the word "buy" in marketing with "license" or "rent" with actual terms other than "until we decide to turn it off".
You don't get to make software a "license" but then not have any obligations to your licensee.
That might be "the problem" for you, but that's not the problem as far as stop killing games is concerned. This petition is asking for games to remain in a reasonable playable state after the servers shutdown. No if, ands, or buts. Adding a "playable through" disclaimer changes nothing as far as this movement is concerned.
I agree that clearer language about what you are actually "buying" would be good for consumers, but it's tangential to Stop Killing Games.
How is this problematic? New law impedes on previous practices and renders them unfeasible all the time.
In the specific case of Pokemon Go, and with end-of-life plans in mind, you could probably design the game around that expectation. GDPR has had similar consequences, at the very least.
Also, this text is not law. This will be negotiated and I doubt the gaming industry would leave the initiative as-is.
There is no feasible way for Pokémon Go to remain in a reasonably playable state after the servers shut down. I outlined my points here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44449575
If you're okay with games like Pokémon Go being harder or impossible to make, that's fine, but dont pretend like it's trivial for all game developers to meet the requirements in this petition.
Again, I don't see the problem with new regulation disabling old design.
And I don't see how your points make the game impossible to morph into a playable state. For one thing, that's not what the campaign advocates for anyway.
Let's start with the basics: why would it need to remain in a playable state? The game is free-to-play. You could make such a game without micro transactions and the new regulations would be powerless. Second, these regulations wouldn't be retroactive, so Pokemon wouldn't have to comply.
But let's assume they want to anyway. Let's review what's blocking according to you. First, servers. "Reasonably playable" can be a subset of the features. I mean, the game could be made to run offline and things would be fine.
But maybe the game is too coupled with multiplayer features. Again, you could allow the player to select server IPs, and allow people to run server binaries on their own hardware. The initiative is very lenient on what you would have to provide, and I can imagine people determined to run big servers would exist if they still want to play. Player limits and server choice are not a major problem for other community driven games (WoW private servers, which I would argue are vastly more complex than Pokemon Go, do not really suffer from this). There might be friction, but that's reasonable.
Who needs anti-cheat? The game would still be reasonably playable. If the servers have a problem with the induced load, they could moderate and/or introduce their own anticheat. That's completely outside the scope of the regulation, though.
Map tiling is not an issue either. First, this responsibility could be offloaded to community servers. Second, I'll admit I might be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure low resolution maps are available for free, maybe some under the Open Street Map project. I'm unfamiliar with it though.
I doubt that when developing the game smaller development servers did not exist so developers could test their changes. Or local mocking. Anything.
So... I don't think such a game would be impossible to make. Harder? Sure, maybe. I do believe, however, that when you ask for payment, you are also supposed to act responsibly and allow your customers access to what they purchased. If they purchased a service, they ought to know when it stops at time of purchase.
If you decide to pull the plug, that's on you to untangle. Either make the plug repluggable, or make it so it doesn't need the plug to be able to run. That's all there is to it.
