Progress may be slow, but it’s still progress. While I’ve been talking about the importance of video game preservation as a function of our own overall cultural preservation, very few p…
I suspect one of the stumbling blocks will be liability. Software generally needs updates to stay ahead of new cybersecurity threats as they’re discovered. Any proposal for releasing serverside code (so that people have the option to continue to run servers themselves if they want to continue playing a heavily online-focused game) will need to address how to limit a developer’s legal liability from such a release.
Let’s say Blizzard discontinues WOW, and I, as a player, obtain serverside code from them to run my own server for myself and my friends. Now, let’s say that some hacker group discovers a new exploit that is unpatched on my WOW server, because no patch exists, because the serverside code is abandoned by Blizzard and provided to me “as is”. Do I have any legal avenue to sue Blizzard for whatever damage is caused? Because that question contains a lot of grey areas and “it depends on whether…” caveats. Which is by no means an insurmountable problem to solve, but the question does need to be asked, and both sides will have valid arguments in both directions.
The question of “what burden of legal responsibility will the developer continue to bear as a result of providing server code which continues to be used long after they’ve stopped maintaining it” will need to be clarified.
I suspect one of the stumbling blocks will be liability. Software generally needs updates to stay ahead of new cybersecurity threats as they’re discovered. Any proposal for releasing serverside code (so that people have the option to continue to run servers themselves if they want to continue playing a heavily online-focused game) will need to address how to limit a developer’s legal liability from such a release.
Let’s say Blizzard discontinues WOW, and I, as a player, obtain serverside code from them to run my own server for myself and my friends. Now, let’s say that some hacker group discovers a new exploit that is unpatched on my WOW server, because no patch exists, because the serverside code is abandoned by Blizzard and provided to me “as is”. Do I have any legal avenue to sue Blizzard for whatever damage is caused? Because that question contains a lot of grey areas and “it depends on whether…” caveats. Which is by no means an insurmountable problem to solve, but the question does need to be asked, and both sides will have valid arguments in both directions.
The question of “what burden of legal responsibility will the developer continue to bear as a result of providing server code which continues to be used long after they’ve stopped maintaining it” will need to be clarified.