Online Gaming Could Be Stalled by Net Neutrality Repeal, ESA Tells Court (arstechnica.com) 152
A video game industry lobby group is joining the lawsuit that seeks to reinstate net neutrality rules in the US, saying that the net neutrality repeal could harm multiplayer online games that require robust Internet connections. From a report: The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) yesterday filed a motion for leave to intervene so that it can support the case against the Federal Communications Commission. The lawsuit, filed by a mix of Democratic state attorneys general, tech companies such as Mozilla, and consumer advocacy groups, seeks to reverse the FCC's December 2017 vote to eliminate net neutrality rules. The ESA said its members will be harmed by the repeal "because the FCC's Order permits ISPs to take actions that could jeopardize the fast, reliable, and low-latency connections that are critical to the video game industry."
Re: "Robust" connection (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Devil is the only one that will fight fot ny rights, I won't stop him. Choose your battles.
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The Courts are not the Legislature.
You fucking morons who think that the Courts can do your bidding by overstepping their bounds will be the end of the nation.
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... Courts can do your bidding by overstepping their bounds will be the end of the nation.
There are no bounds where the rights of citizens are being sold to the corporate entity.
Check your Constitution. No rights are granted the corporation whatever, and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific did not demonstrate any such right.
It is a mere declaration absent supporting facts in the Constitution.
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I remember when video games fit on a single floppy disk. And where still just as fun!
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That's for 60 tick servers only.
Yes, but hosting 60 ticks is a health hazard.
Not recommended.
Strat
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Using UDP in a game like, say, Overwatch or Team Fortress doesn't really help much if you keep hitting latency spikes of a couple of seconds because your ISP doesn't like Blizzard or Valve.
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They don't care about the quality of your connection -- hell, most multiplayer netcode uses UDP.
They care so much about the quality of your connection that they refuse to trust the integrity of the protocol. They use UDP and wrap it in their own error checking.
I suppose I shouldn't rant at A.C. about something like this.
Everyone gets their cut. (Score:3, Insightful)
And?.. (Score:2)
If you wanted to present some horrible nightmare scenario, you failed...
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It's the end of the world!
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Yeah chill out I came across the ad for the FCC what ever that stands for, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com], have fun. Don't laugh too much, that resulted in this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] because some government got a little peeved and sought changes in another country and that was without much exposure. The Aussie viewpoint, always better to try to nip things in the bud even if it is beyond our shores.
Re: Everyone gets their cut. (Score:1)
A gaming tax would be illegal for the same reason the Supreme Court found the newspaper tax illegal. Taxes that apply to expresive media only are illegal, and the only way that expressive media can be taxed is a general sales tax.
This seems entirely backwards..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games. In fact, it makes sense to me that gamers should prefer a net neutrality repeal because it would now allow prioritization of that.
With complete net neutrality, traffic isn't supposed to be discriminated against when in fact it is a situation like this where it makes sense.
The counter-argument is "OH well, this will force ISPs to invest in improving network connections for all content", etc, etc. But that confuses ping latency with bandwidth.
Re:This seems entirely backwards..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, I already have a solution for that. I suggested that we should allow prioritization wherein no party pays (not consumer, not provider), wherein the prioritization is standard (not a "package" added to a service or an enhanced service level or whatnot), and wherein the prioritization does not impact any other service or user (when there's congestion--more demand than resource--prioritization starts falling back to baseline, becoming the first services to be degraded).
I hadn't considered latency,
Re:This seems entirely unrealistic..... (Score:1)
> I suggested that ... no party pays (not consumer, not provider)..
Why would any ISP go that route? Since it has only negative impact on the bottom line (time developing algorithm, more complex link monitoring, no added income).
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Comcast provides "Boost": your Cable Modem does 2Gbps but you pay for 200Mbit/s, and they de-throttle the pipe so you get a gigabit for that one TCP stream if you're downloading a large file.
T-Mobile allows any streaming music service provider to send them an e-mail and have their streaming media data exempted from all data metering, no charge. The only requirement is that you actually have a streaming media data service. They identify that type of data flowing from you and exempt it. Hundreds of sma
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Are there a lot of high volume network indy games? It's been a while since I've been in the gaming scene. It's interesting that indy developers are going that route.
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Minecraft started as an indy game, and it was single player for quite awhile, then the networking was small-servers. It still has not at all migrated into being a MMO and never will. It isn't even a large download.
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Oh no no, Steam would just step in and handle that, for a nominal fee mind you.
Regulation always favors the incumbents. Incumbents always use their size and status for lock-in. (if not their pocket-books to shut out competition)
The eventual result being monopolies, who then hem and haw about how bad regulation is.
Good times.
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That forces people to distribute their game through Steam who might otherwise have their own distribution channels.
It's like requiring book creators who want to self-publish to use just one particular print-on-demand service.
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Entirely my point good sir.
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I'm not sure why you don't see that as a problem.
Unless you figure that everything that ever needs to exist to support what might get created in the future already is here.
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Erm, sarcasm is sometimes lost in translation? I do absolutely see it as a problem.
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'Gaming" does not mean only "first person shooters". Most MMOPRGs play fine with a ping up near 100ms. MOBAs are little bit more sensitive, but not much. And the really popular games - free mobile games - don't care about latency at all, just the bandwidth for the ad traffic or altcoin mining.
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You miss the point entirely. By removing Net Neutrality, ISPs could now charge their subscribers a premium for gaming traffic or be subject to having that traffic throttled. "Don't want insane lag and getting p0wned all day while playing Call of Duty? Well, then you had better pony up another $20/month"
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OR, they could compete by saying "Hey, elite gamers! Join our ISP because have special gaming-oriented optimizations in place!" The point is, they could do either thing but there is room for competition, feedback etc.
What rational argument is there for someone watching cat videos on Youtube to have the same network prioritization as an elite gamer playing Fortnite or Counterstrike?
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They paid for the bandwidth. They're owed the bandwidth. Just like the gamer. Demand what you paid for. Don't ask to pay more so you may get more of what you're owed anyway.
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OR, they could compete by saying "Hey, elite gamers! Join our ISP because have special gaming-oriented optimizations in place!" The point is, they could do either thing but there is room for competition, feedback etc.
Most Americans have only one or two "choices" of broadband ISP, and none cater to gamers. And why would they want cater to a small niche market that uses lots of data and requires very low latency?
What rational argument is there for someone watching cat videos on Youtube to have the same network prioritization as an elite gamer playing Fortnite or Counterstrike?
There isn't one... ISPs just don't care about gaming.
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That would be a valid argument IF you could have competition for internet service, but the pole access and last mile problems have stopped even giants like google.
Because there is no competition ISP's must be forced to play neutral because you cannot go to a competitor for a differently prioritized service.
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OR, they could compete
I mentioned this in another reply, but what is this "compete" you speak of?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/
Many parts of the US it's a freakin' monopoly. THAT is one of the reasons Net Neutrality was so important. Now that the leash is off, everyone better get the lube and bend over.
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As long as Comcast/Cox/Verizon own the pipes, that won't happen.
Unless you're talking about a dial-up ISP, in which case -- I'm jealous, I wish I could too could live in 1999
(Sincerely. i miss Everquest; even with the occasional massive lag spike, and hearing my sister yell at me that she needs the phone.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Has it yet or are we still in the chicken little phase?
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https://www.freepress.net/our-... [freepress.net]
Everyone talks about fast lanes, but it is actual blocking that scares me, especially for political purposes. First it'll be for piracy and of course the blocks will be broad. But there is no reason that $POLITICAL_PARTY sites couldn't be blocked or slowed down to dial up speeds. With voter registration mostly over the internet, certain bad voting neighborhoods can be blocked from the registration site as well.
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This has what to do with the Net Neutrality repeal?
Next do the same comparison with unleaded gas prices from those same countries since apparently now we are just price checking different things
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It also shows that net neutrality doesn't effect the pricing in the US since the pricing is the same (or close enough) to what it was before.
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Net neutrality isn't about end user prices. It's about competition. ISPs will double dip, i.e. get paid by their customers, but also by hosting/content service providers. ISPs will reap more profits for the same service level. This will cost the users indirectly, through higher content prices and less competition. Games from a big publisher will work fine, because the publisher will pay for fast lane access to the ISP network and raise game or subscription prices. Independent game authors can't afford that,
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Those problems were dwelt with and fixed before net neutrality. Also, net neutrality doesn't automically add capacity for ISps
Nice copy and paste. I read through it the first time about a year ago
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I need to provide evidence that nothing will happen ever now that NN is gone. Provide evidence that nothing would have ever happened if NN had continued? Such as cell phone companies prioritizing certain services (oh wait - that happened during NN)
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You need to completely fuck the whole issue up with confusing arguement/counter-arguement, until eventually the mainstream population comes to understand that NN stands for 'ninny nerds.'
End-of-issue.
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NN is not about banning the prioritizing one protocol over another.
That is certainly one of the things that NN is about. Comcast was formally found in violation of net neutrality rules in 2008 [cnet.com] for throttling a particular protocol (bit torrent).
Also, I disagree with your and the parent's conclusion that prioritization would be good for gamers. When you start talking about giving one protocol a formal blessing over another, you're choking off future innovation. This is most of the point of net neutrality, after all: yes it allows for start-ups to compete with large compan
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They really spent weeks pushing the ISPs to update the firmware on the traffic shapers? Why not identify the mechanism (which apparently they did) and once their understanding was good, since the firmware was frozen in place, route around it? Has the Internet ceased to be The Internet?
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Actually, many game companies have had issues with ISPs throttling 'bittorrent'.
How is this in anyway different than what I said? The ISPs don't like BT which is why they throttle it, it has nothing to do with latency.
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Re: This seems entirely backwards..... (Score:2)
The way the TCP rate control algorithm works, bandwidth is determined by latency.
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> I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games. In fact, it makes sense to me that gamers should prefer a net neutrality repeal because it would now allow prioritization of that.
You'd think, but then what happens when another use comes along that is arguably more time sensitive and the fast lane for games gets the boot in favor of the other thing?
Or - FAR more likely - the ISPs
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I would prefer my ISP to prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other traffic: Youtube / Netflix / Facebook / bittorrent don't have the same latency requirements as online games.
Wait... If there is enough traffic on the high priority gaming lane couldn't that lead to dropped packets on the low priority lane? Why is that better than slightly degrading the performance of all services until you can support all traffic? Won't you just end up encouraging game developers to stop caring as much about network concerns?
No restrictions for trucks either! (Score:1)
What argument is there in support of "net neutrality", which would not apply to "road neutrality" and "parking neutrality": abolishing all laws and road-signs treating trucks, as well as business-owned vehicles, apart from cars and personal pleasure-vehicles?
Lorries vs cars = network packet size (Score:2)
What argument is there in support of "net neutrality", which would not apply to "road neutrality" and "parking neutrality"
There are some _really_ good arguments for height and weight restrictions on roads involving passing over or under a bridge. If you want to compare the network to vehicles the analogy with lorries vs. cars is in regard to the size of the vehicle and the equivalent for the network would be the network packet size. This is something which is strictly limited and controlled and networks will not treat all network packet sizes the same e.g. ethernet is usually limited to 1500bytes unless you have "jumbo frame"
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No, we do not. There are entire roads off-limits to business-owned vehicles [nyc.gov]. There are parking spots for commercial cars only. On many highways trucks and buses aren't allowed in the left-most lanes [findlaw.com].
You were saying?..
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Stop-signs are neutral. I was talking about laws, that ban certain cars from certain traffic lanes and parking spots.
Try again...
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You don't live in my area.
Here, you don't stop at a stop sign (full stop). You just slow down some. Your wheels NEVER stop turning. I have adopted the practice of coming to a full stop, and it really pisses people off.
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What argument is there in support of "net neutrality", which would not apply to "road neutrality" and "parking neutrality": abolishing all laws and road-signs treating trucks, as well as business-owned vehicles, apart from cars and personal pleasure-vehicles?
Do you have any real examples of public roads not being "neutral", e.g. FedEx vehicles are allowed, but UPS vehicles aren't?
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This is the best comparison. Roads do not discriminate based on who owns a vehicle with the exception of emergency services and I doubt anyone would argue that 911 calls should have priority.
Though perhaps that'll be the next thing, Amazon partnering with the toll roads to only allow Amazon delivery services on toll roads and if you want to buy from anyone else, well the package will arrive eventually and only cost twice as much for delivery.
re: Online Gaming Could Be Stalled by Net Neutrali (Score:3)
Geez Guys, it's kinda' a shame you couldn't pull your heads out'a your backside and TAKE A STAND about this issue when it could have counted.
Instead, you whine and moan because your cash cow got slam-dunked, and you suddenly realize that this issue - net neutrality - had a serious impact on YOU, and YOUR CA$H FLOW, and NOW you want to take a stand!
Sorry, but even if I get flame-bait / troll on this post, I just can't tolerate this type of 'Geez, this is BAD' after-the-fact type of response from an agent that gets it's lifeblood support from a full and open internet speed environment.
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Perhaps you have failed to notice that the FCC are not game developers.
It's not the people ever who wanted neutrality repealed that are complaining here..
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It's almost the same thing as what happened to BBSing. I was a sysop in the late 80's to early 90's. We had local communities, everybody knew each other. Hell, for awhile there was a group of social BBSes (including mine) that held Softball Games on Sundays almost every week in the summer.
LAN parties sounds so fun in retrospect. With wifi, it would be much easier, too.
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What, specifically, has been impacted by the repeal of NN? ... excluding lawyer and journalist revenue?
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In Canada, the ISP's are pushing to be allowed to block bad sites, starting with the evil pirates. Generally when a site is blocked, so is everything else on the same server as it is simple and once blocking sites becomes common, then blocking sites for other reasons will become common.
We already have examples of how blocking works with various porn filters that filter out much more then porn. Want to learn about breast cancer or how they check for prostate cancer, well breasts and anuses are sexual so we c
What about the Serious stuff. (Score:3)
In the debate very little people worry about the serious stuff that happens over the net that eding Net Neutrality could effect.
Business to Business communications over Web Services.
Business VPN's linking offices.
VoiP phone services.
Transferring Health Care information from your Primary care to the hospital securely.
There is a lot of stuff, from small organizations who will probably get throttled or cut, without the resources to get all the ISPs to allow then to get a pass.
The internet isn't just about your games and Netflix. But also a lot of communication with organizations of various sizes.
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Common city broadband moves in to replace the telco monopolies.
Within a wider selection of ISP a group of ISP will have a product for business, VPN use, health care in a competitive ISP market.
The USA cant afford to stay on NN paper insulated wireline monopoly networks for decades.
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The paper insulated wireline
Paper? That's just weird. I have quite an old house, it actually existed before electric house wiring. Even the oldest tube-and-post wire in this place is silk-wound with rubber or fabric insulation. Paper just doesn't sound practical at all.
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If you want a connection you pay for it.
Your radiologist will just have to wait with your brain tumor scans while we stream the sponsored Superbowl content to our paying viewers.
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While I've never had a brain tumor scan, I've had to deal with radiologists for other issues for a long time now. Can't think of a single occasion when a two hour wait would've made the slightest difference to me, my radiologist, or the doctors he sent me scan results to....
Come to that, can't think of a single occasion when a 24 hour delay would've mattered either.
IOW, come up with a real example, not a completely bogus one. You'll look smarter, and your side will too....
GeForce Now (Score:3)
I don't know how many of you have tried it, but nvdia's GeForce Now service is exactly the kind of thing that could be severely hampered by a lack of Net Neutrality.
[Before I continue, let's get one thing straight: Net Neutrality doesn't mean companies like Netflix don't pay for bandwidth. Of course they do. They just don't have to pay MORE for bandwidth than some other service that might have ties to the ISP. Ok, everybody clear on that?]
Anyway, back to GeForce Now. I've been beta testing it and it's just fantastic. It's basically a way to stream your video games to machines that aren't powerful enough to play them. So, if you have some i3 laptop with weak graphics, you can still play GTA V on ultra quality. No lag, no bullshit. You just play the game and it's like you're sitting at some sick $5000 gaming PC. And it works. Works perfectly. I mean, you can tell they're still dialing it in over at nvidia, because some days there might be some audio stuttering, but then it gets fixed. This is a beta product after all.
OK, so the only thing is, this GeForce Now service uses a shit-ton of bandwidth. You've got to have a pretty fast internet connection and a lot of data gets used, as you can imagine. I've been using it for a couple months and I still haven't gone over my Spectrum data limit (though to be fair, I don't know what my data limit is).
Now let's say that a piece of shit ISP, say, Spectrum, decides that they're going to start their own game streaming service, but they're going to charge nvidia five times as much for getting their data to your house. Or worse, they charge YOU more for getting nvidia's data to your house. Remember, nvidia is already paying for bandwidth at their end, and naturally, you're already paying exorbitant amounts for bandwidth at your end. THE BANDWIDTH IS ALREADY BEING PAID FOR. Nobody's getting anything for free.
In summary: 1) GeForce Now is going to be a really interesting service to watch and 2) the repeal of Net Neutrality could absolutely mess up gamers, and 3) Ajit Pai is a piece of shit. Here is a photo of Ajit Pai so you know who I'm talking about:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]:
online (Score:2)
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I hang out in blue/yellow Albion Online.
Cuz I'm chicken.
And this worries those at the top how? (Score:2)
the net neutrality repeal could harm multiplayer online games that require robust Internet connections
What possible worry is that to the bunch of corporate lackeys, fools and the hyper entitled?
They really only care if something that will affect their corporate owners profits. If people have bandwidth, they will use it. It might be playing games on a robust connection. If that doesn't work, they will be assuming that the masses do something else. Perhaps they will set up internet based The Price is Ri
Sounds like the sort of thing that loses customers (Score:2)
Re:Warning: Politicall incorrect opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Violent video games were disproven as a means of aggression, and in fact were repeatedly shown to reduce it when Trump's buddy, Hillary Clinton, went after them many years ago. I'm a firm 2A advocate, and voting member in the NRA, but video games are a poor scapegoat as the evidence was gathered already.
Not proven to cause, not proven to not cause (Score:2)
Violent video games were disproven as a means of aggression, and in fact were repeatedly shown to reduce it when ...
No.
The result of various studies were that violent video games were not proven to cause violence. This is not the same as "proven to not cause violence."
This distinction is important in evaluating scientific studies of all sorts: not proven to cause is not the same as proven to not cause.
The subject is still heavily debated, and you can find studies that show a connection, or more that don't show a connection. Here's a good overview: https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25... [cnn.com]
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You ignored the part where some studies that it reduces aggression. That was cut off there at the end!
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What, I ignored the part where you made an assertion with no evidence and no citation? How silly of me.
Oh, wait, I didn't ignore it. Studies so far are not conclusive. There, I addressed it again.
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As Trump likes to say "WRONG!"
But yeah, I did not cite anything because I'm not able to do a lot of research right now. I'm in the middle east, but nearing the end of this tour!
we need to update Godwin [Re:Not proven to...] (Score:2)
Why does every comment thread have to eventually be about Trump?
I think we need to update Godwin's law.
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I agree. Geoffrey's Law is now set.
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Dorothy: "I don't think we're in USENET anymore, Toto."
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The result of various studies were that violent video games were not proven to cause violence. This is not the same as "proven to not cause violence."
Can you PROVE that one thing does not cause another when the actual cause is unknown? There's no evidence that vaccines cause autism, and I have no reason to think that they do. There are even studies showing no significant link. But can you PROVE that they don't?
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I know you will moderate me away for saying this but "stalling" online gaming would be a good thing. As President Trump has rightly pointed out [youtube.com], violent online video gaming and mental illness are what is behind the rise in violence in our schools (and NOT guns).
Every credible study ever done has shown that video games do not cause violent behavior.
Mental illness is just another convenient scapepegoat. And more bullshit. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other than a gun, can't go into a building and kill 20 people. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other that a gun, can't kill 50 people from 500 feet away.
Guns ARE the problem.
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"A mentally ill person with any weapon, other than a gun, can't go into a building and kill 20 people. A mentally ill person with any weapon, other that a gun, can't kill 50 people from 500 feet away."
Do you even high explosives, you fucking n00b?
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Agreed. You could even hide a bunch of cans of beans (or corn!) in the ground where you know there will be a bonfire in a few hours. Completely innocent stuff to be carrying around.
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Ding! A few micro-BLEVEs and that bonfire is now covering everyone around it within 50 feet.
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No, he's right. Somebody else's network.
I've had my own network for a long time. A bunch of us have. The first time I did, it was 1994 and I had bought a bunch of cheap used (obsolete!) 3C501 network cards at a surplus store. I think I paid like $5 each for them. Anyhow, I strung the BNC Ts and all kinds of coax all over my apartment. (with the essential 50ohm stubs, of course. I think one end was a 50 ohm carbon comp on a Pomona BNC-bananna adapter) Then I hooked up a bunch of Linux boxes (cheap 38