from Hacker News

EA has made five of its accessibility patents free for any studio to use

by bdz on 8/24/21, 11:12 AM with 22 comments

  • by andrewzah on 8/24/21, 10:28 PM

    "It only has one exception: if someone files a lawsuit against EA for infringing a different patent, EA will refuse to share the accessibility patents with them."

    How nice of EA.

  • by gmueckl on 8/25/21, 12:06 AM

    Does anyone have the patent numbers?

    I want to understand the music related patent, but I have nothing to go on other than the one sentence blurb that every news outlet seems to copy verbatim from EA's press release. Google doesn't turn up anything useful for me.

    Edit: spoke too soon. Just found this article that links to the patents: https://htxt.co.za/2021/08/ea-to-allow-other-developers-free...

  • by rPlayer6554 on 8/24/21, 11:25 AM

    This seems like a good thing. Especially the ping system....Apex's Ping system is miles ahead of any game. It increases the playability for all players by a tremendous amount.

  • by smoldesu on 8/24/21, 11:22 PM

    This is a step in the right direction, but no game studio has yet matched the insane generosity of id Software. When they released a GPL-licensed version of the Quake 2 source code, I immediately understood that I wanted to be a developer. I grew up playing the game like sacrament, so seeing such unparalleled benevolence from the devs was highly inspiring for me.

    All of it makes me fantasize about a utopia where all game logic is open, and what kind of incredible community that might spawn.

  • by MattGaiser on 8/25/21, 12:06 AM

    I only see 4 patents?