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My game's server is blocked in Spain whenever there's a football match on

https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1np6kyn/my_games_server_is_blocked_in_spain_whenever/
133•greazy•2h ago

Comments

4ndrewl•1h ago
Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856
pmontra•1h ago
Yes, we know. Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches.

It would be more interesting to know if something is getting done about this. Other businesses must work, people must communicate, the very same Spanish state must keep working. Is there any protest with at least a slight amount of hope?

Nyr•1h ago
Internet mostly works in Spain when there is a match: one can see traffic figures from the mayor exchange points: they are unaffected.

Big businesses are unaffected, since LaLiga will quickly reverse any block that impacts popular websites and risks triggering significant public outcry.

Most people in Spain don’t care — and many aren’t even aware of the overly broad blocks.

Cloudflare and RootedCON are challenging this in court, but it may take many years before a final outcome is reached.

CaptainOfCoit•51m ago
Apparently it's not being communicated properly, or you don't actually read what you come across, because "Internet does not work in Spain when there are football matches" isn't true at all.

Large parts are blocked, yes, as collateral damage. But it doesn't seem like they're completely switching it off, as obviously then there would be huge protests, mostly because people wouldn't be able to legally watch the games then!

Telemakhos•38m ago
> the very same Spanish state must keep working

“Vuelva usted mañana.”

chakintosh•1h ago
If only Tebas put this much energy into improving LaLiga's awful and outright shady refereeing and the rampant racism problem.
Lucasoato•1h ago
In Italy something similar is happening: they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly (that's very high for our economy). To this, add the facts that there has been a major hit to illegal streaming piracy and that football games are getting extremely boring in our country (compared to the Premier League or our Serie A of twenty years ago). The major effect of this is that newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents. These people are trying to milk a cow that will be dry in less than 5 years, unless a major revolution happens in FIGC (Italian Football Federation).
Hendrikto•1h ago
> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly

Same in Germany.

> newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football

Also the same in Germany.

But I am not sure which direction the causality goes. Maybe people are less interested in football because of the shenanigans they are constantly pulling. Or maybe they try to squeeze the remaining audience because people are less interested. It may also not be related at all.

BoredPositron•41m ago
>>Also the same in Germany.

Just because you want something to be true to make your argument...doesn't make it true.

Growth for memberships over the last few years are pretty strong especially in the under 16 age group with 9% yoy.[1]

Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend.[2]

The last EM also had new highs in viewership linear and streaming. As overall the non-linear media surrounding football is growing...[3]

[1] https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris...

[2] https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-ge...

[3] https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz...

wobfan•9m ago
> Same in Germany.

That's not right. Still expensive, but the dual abo for Sky Bundesliga + DAZN is 65€ per month.[1]

1 https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn

rootsu•1h ago
On the other hand, Serie A started streaming all matches free on YouTube for SEA countries.

https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_ann...

zwirbl•56m ago
So only a VPN is needed?
lifestyleguru•1h ago
So it looks like a self resolving problem? As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear, and hopefully kids will be encouraged to do more creative activities than kicking a ball.
zokier•57m ago
On the other hand kids (and adults) not getting enough exercise is a modern health crisis. More kids kicking a ball would be significant improvement over current status quo of kids staring at brainrot.
aeve890•57m ago
I agree with all you said except the last part.

Sport is good and team sport is better. A "lifestyle guru" should know that. Kicking a ball is maybe the lowest entry barrier sport in many countries. I'm from latin america and here you grow playing fútbol. Find a ball, gather your friends and you're ready to go.

dnh44•54m ago
you don't think kids should play sports? that seems like an unusual view and am kind of curious why you would think that.
lifestyleguru•12m ago
Kick a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, jump over the ball, stick a ball somewhere. A ball, a stick, a ring, a board. I hate that football is the default sport and was forced myself to play it in my childhood.
CaptainOfCoit•53m ago
> As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear,

You think these people would suddenly stop needing an outlet for their emotions? They'll find a different way of doing the same thing, around a different theme. If you've hanged out with people who are proud to be hooligans and ultras today, you'd see how removing football wouldn't get them to stop.

bilekas•53m ago
Given your username I wouldn't expect such harsh sentiment about people who enjoy playing football. I would prefer my kids play a sport they enjoy than sit on an iPad all day. But I'm not a lifestyle guru.
lifestyleguru•14m ago
European football is more about gambling, betting, and drug trafficking than about sport.
CuriouslyC•28m ago
Hooligans won't go away with football, they'll just find another outlet for their suppressed beta male rage and weak minded tribalism.
koakuma-chan•55m ago
> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly

It's the same for anime, and guess what, I just pirate and pay no one.

pfortuny•53m ago
Yes, but the problem is that you want to watch football live, and LaLiga is harming lots of unrelated businesses with this approach.
koakuma-chan•47m ago
Yeah, it's hilarious that, on the same planet, we have articles like "Nine things I learned in ninety years" come out, while the courts of an EU country give "LaLiga," which appears to be a private corporation (a football company), the authority to ban any IPs they want arbitrarily, for everyone, country-wide. People just don't care any more, if ever did.
xg15•23m ago
Couldn't they sue LaLiga for damages? Only because a court grants you some power you aren't absolved from the responsibilities that come with that power, or are you?
Krssst•36m ago
To be fair for anime you can get pretty good coverage with only crunchyroll and a minimal price. Though some significant shows often end up locked on random services unfortunately.
teekert•20m ago
To get subs in my language I do have to go to go-anime. Which is btw pretty bad (sometimes you have to reload 30 times before something starts, summaries are wrong, no chromecasting, etc.)
maeln•19m ago
> To be fair for anime you can get pretty good coverage with only crunchyroll and a minimal price

Depending on if crunchyroll is available in your region :) . And they have some truly awful subtitles for some shows.

XCSme•7m ago
Best way to watch sports now is to go to a bar that broadcasts it. If you have a drink, it only costs you 5EUR/match. Maybe you watch 5-6 matches a match, so still cheaper than 100EUR/month and you get drinks and service included.
meindnoch•1h ago
Only boomers watch football (or any sports for that matter, or television for that matter). The problem will solve itself in time.
Zealotux•37m ago
I live in Spain, that's absolutely not true, football is as popular as ever.
betaby•14m ago
Unlikely, younger generation doesn't care.
pedrogpimenta•1h ago
My server is also unreachable: my website, my projects (which people use)... Because it's on some IP that Vercel uses.
illusive4080•1h ago
Mobile users should remove old from the url [0]. The old Reddit website does not load properly on my mobile device.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1np6kyn/my_games_s...

Edit: commenters below made me realize that my extension StopTheMadness messed up old Reddit. Sorry

QuantumNomad_•59m ago
Old Reddit loads perfectly fine for me on iOS.

What OS are you on and what is the specific problem you see when you try to load this Old Reddit link from OP?

illusive4080•49m ago
Your comment made me realize that it was an extension I’m using on my iPhone on iOS 26 that is causing the issue. The extension is StopTheMadness.

I had an option called “Protect page zoom controls” which allows you to zoom on sites that disable zoom, but it breaks this website.

SSLy•36m ago
while at it consider 'sinkit for old reddit'. makes it palatable, certainly superior to the shreddit app
sebtron•57m ago
Works fine for me (Firefox on Android)
piva00•56m ago
For me it's much the opposite, I even use an extension on iOS Safari to redirect "www.reddit.com" to "old.reddit.com".
givinguflac•54m ago
Stop trying to make new reddit happen, illusive Steve Huffman! /s

Seriously though, seconded that old works great still on ios 26.

asddubs•56m ago
I obviously don't agree with spain doing this, but I also have trouble feeling sorry for cloudflare, since they're also in the business of randomly blocking certain IPs from accessing half the internet
dncornholio•40m ago
Cloudflare created a problem where everything is centralized.

It's also, not that great. Even the most crude WordPress vulnerability scan requests aren't flagged or blocked. It seems most DDoS attacks may come through as well.

Don't get me even started on the checkbox.

It's a US data-hoarder.

forinti•47m ago
And I thought things were bad in my country where all "sports" shows are about football and you can have 3 different FM stations broadcasting the same game and they'll discuss football even when there is nothing going on.

It's a monothematic sporting desert.

I'm glad I raised my kids oblivious to this football religion.

iamzenitraM•45m ago
Some of us are tracking their blocking over at:

https://hayahora.futbol https://tinyuptime.sconde.net

It's not only Cloudflare, but also other not so tiny CDNs are being blocked - currently an entire Backblaze B2 region is blocked in 3 out of 5 ISPs (!).

Particularly hurtful, the entire Cloudflare R2 is blocked during football matches so you can't pull Docker images or Ollama models.

teekert•35m ago
Man, and I was already annoyed that my tax money went to extra police to prevent idiots from fighting and wrecking stuff around matches.

I for one think that football streaming should be blocked when I'm pulling docker images ;)

pzlarsson•17m ago
The amount of resources that goes into soccer in many countries is really astonishing. It can be seen as a modern equivalent to bread and circuses however.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

FullMetalBitch•33m ago
My external home assistant doesnt work either, I have to use the VPN.

Thanks Tebas.

CodesInChaos•31m ago
I find it interesting that cloudflare is okay with those piracy sites getting its shared IPs blocked, while a couple of years ago they forced a casino to shell out for the enterprise plan and dedicated IPs to contain the fallout of banned IPs.
iMerNibor•16m ago
I would assume they'd just decline and shut operations for that particular domain and create a new domain/account on cloudflare for the new site?

Not sure how attached these sites are to their specific brand/domain (or if this is indirect where main sites link to other sites that host the video)

christkv•25m ago
I think companies need to start suing for damages when their business applications get blocked.
aucisson_masque•19m ago
I’m surprised it’s still going on. There are things a southern Europe government shouldn’t mess with, gas prices and football are part of them.

Spanish are surprisingly quiet about that or they bought vpn en masse.

nromiun•15m ago
That is wild. Which other country gives a private body the power to ban any IP address for the entire country?
npteljes•9m ago
Larger discussion here:

"LaLiga's Anti-Piracy Crackdown Triggers Widespread Internet Disruptions in Spain"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

rock_artist•7m ago
In the reddit there's a link to another article related and there's response from Laliga (If I got it right):

> Desde LaLiga también advierten que "aquellos clientes de Cloudflare que puedan sufrir bloqueos en sus webs, pueden dirigirse al email afectadoscloudflare@laliga.es con el fin de hacer llegar a Cloudflare que el contenido ilegal alojado en la IP de su misma web no tiene su autorización".

So they eventually made an email to report if you're being affected by their blocking.

aosaigh•6m ago
I might be naive, but this is absolutely outrageous. What laws allow a private company dictate what IPs can be banned across an entire country? Are the ISPs voluntarily cooperating or are they now all obliged to follow LaLiga requests?

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