
5:59 PM ET Tue, 29 Feb 2018 | 00:43:20 The war between game developers and publishers over who will get the rights to their work has taken a sharp turn for the worse, with the industry now demanding that publishers pay for their content and work to be released on consoles and other platforms.
The publishers and developers have been feuding for years over how to handle the growing demand for games and other content on consoles.
That conflict was exacerbated by the arrival of console-based games in 2015, which saw console-heavy platforms such as PS4 and Xbox One, with their increasingly powerful graphics processors and powerful hardware, taking over the market.
That demand also brought about a proliferation of online game communities that allowed gamers to trade their time on platforms such and Facebook and Twitter for real-time play of games, and players had the ability to upload their own content to compete with each other.
While many publishers, including EA, Ubisoft and Valve, have publicly supported the move, it is the publishers themselves who have been at the forefront of this dispute.
In the past year, the publishers have filed an extensive lawsuit against Valve and Sony to have them to pay royalties on their titles.
The case has been winding its way through the courts since last year, and last week, the court agreed to hear the publishers’ request to have the case heard by a judge.
The publishers and their lawyers are hoping that Judge Jed Rakoff, who has the authority to grant the request, will order that the game companies pay royalties.
If he does, the dispute will be put to a public vote in March 2019.
If no publisher votes to make the royalty payments, it could have a ripple effect throughout the industry, with publishers going out of business and leaving their games out of reach of consumers.
That’s not the only thing that’s been changing in the industry lately.
Publishers have also been pushing for better game quality standards, with Valve and EA pushing for stricter game certification, while other major publishers have been pushing back against the idea of “quality first” for their games.
But this new legal wrangling is taking a toll on the industry’s standing, with some game publishers calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the dispute and to block all future royalty payments.
In an op-ed for Ars Technic, the game publishers’ chief legal officer, Jeffery Schwartz, argued that the fight over royalty payments should not have taken a year to begin, and that the industry should be allowed to have a free market for all the games that it wants to publish.
“The gaming industry has long been a marketplace for all kinds of content.
The problem is that it’s been hijacked by publishers who are intent on locking the consumer in,” Schwartz wrote.
“We believe that this is a matter of public health.
We believe that it threatens to create a system in which games are controlled by publishers that cannot be changed or modified by anyone.
And we believe that we can make a difference.”
If the game industry can’t have a fair market for its games, he added, it will eventually cease to exist.
Schwartz also cited the recent wave of “furry violence” on the internet as an example of a game publisher attempting to make a profit off of violence against women and children.
He argued that it is irresponsible for game publishers to allow these kinds of games to be sold to consumers, even if the violence is in the name of artistic expression.
“If you can’t do your job, then you’re not in business,” Schwartz said.
“The question is: Are you in business?
If you’re in business, you’re doing it for the right reasons.”