Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was a game running all of these things (matchmaking, skins, anticheat ...). After Counter-Strike 2 was released, the servers for CS:GO were shut down. Yet, the game remains mostly playable. Sure, the skins no longer work and there's no official matchmaking, but third parties have stepped up. That's because Valve released (and have always released) server software.
replyI find this argument quite bad. It was done in the past and it's still being done today. There's nothing preventing any company from doing it except for a combination of laziness and greed.
Does it though? Just release the a standalone server once the game is done making money.
replyUpdated my original post to explain why this wouldn't work.
replySomehow I highly doubt that a small game company is going to run a "huge network of interconnected cloud services".
I've also yet to find a small game company running their own big online multiplayer game.
replyAnd most of the indie publishers usually comply with the law by not fucking over their customers by providing independent server executables or not releasing a server-tied game. AAA studios are the biggest offenders and they deserve to be fucked.
replyYour argument still doesn't hold, sorry. The law won't apply retroactively so the existing games can be killed. However, if the law passes, the EOL plan just becomes another product requirement you have to plan for. So you won't "rewrite" the server code, you write it to comply in the first place.
replyThis was also the excuse people gave for GDPR and California's privacy law and everybody got forced into complying after the date of validity. Simply having an "excuse" of money loss due to engineering your game user-hostile in the first place (especially after the law became valid) isn't a good argument. It will have some preparation time and if you didn't plan for it, it is your fault.
How many small studio games have online multiplayer? Like really?
reply> Releasing server code also exposes the inner workings of the company's technology.
replyAnd yet releasing standalone servers back in the 00s was the norm, rather than the exception. I don't buy the argument.