proprietary -> BSD/MIT -> GPL -> AGPLNo? How would the "rights holders" be in any way liable for someone posting illegal content on a community-hosted server after a game has gone end-of-life?
Also, community servers not having to adhere to the publisher's standards of what community content is safe vs unsafe is clearly a positive in my humble opinion.
Obviously they're not, but hey, just joining them in making things up. Protect the children!!
I work in games and in my last workplace I was CTO of a racing simulation; that means I was working with brands that were not only my own in a pretty big way.
The stipulations that were put on us was pretty strong. For example (and it’s not just these guys), Mercedes will not permit you to allow the logo to fall off; If you have a damage model in the game this is annoying. Some won’t allow the car to get dirty, or to deform in a realistic way because it harms a copyright (did you know that the front lights of cars are part of their brand and trademark in most cases).
I’m using a pretty obvious example, that by selling a product that contains these other brands, we are beholden to not represent them in a way they don’t like; it’s part of the transaction for having it.
I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic. The most annoying ones are the little background things; Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
It’s a quagmire. Honestly, I’m not even sure why we bother making anything, there seems to always be some random popping their head up seeking another slice.
Here’s hoping though!
That's intensely frustrating to be caught in the middle of. At times you end up feeling that the politicians are coopting you and your work for their ends, that they are underhandedly enveloping you in the public administration. That is in a way exactly what they are doing, but you have to remember that it's what your customers want. You are still making for your customers, they have just made their wants known though a process other than the free market.
What was passed was a petition for the EU to listen to the needs of a million EU citizens. It is not yet a law, but it might become one. Laws are the rules of the market. A 100% free market is anarchy.
The companies that develop and publish games amortize plenty of things out into multiple years. That's why live service is so increasingly common. The same developers and publishers should also factor in that they might have to remove some assets when they want to stop providing active support.
When you EOL the game and release the server, just strip the licensed content. Remove the logos. Nobody gives a flying toss anyway.
People want the community and the GAME. They don’t care whether the actual logo is there.
Heck, if the game connects to a community server, have it hide all licensed content. you’ve satisfied your contractual obligations. Whether people mod the game or not to re-add things has no bearing on you.
Steam even says that in the event of that they go out of business, measures are in place to ensure gamers' continued access to their games.
> I can already hear people thinking: but, most games don’t have any third party intellectual property. But that’s less true than you think, even fantasy games will inevitably wind up copying something from our world that is not completely generic.
Then please give us some proper examples we can learn from.
> Rockstar for example will almost assuredly have issues with using the shapes of famous buildings and licensing issues if they make their radio stations too easy to pirate.
GTA is hardly a "fantasy game", its entire schtick is getting as close to the real-world setting as possible, going as far as to parody real-life brands. They're quite unique in doing so, an extreme outlier.
Take a look at the current top 10 games on Steam by player count. You'll see that indeed the only real-world brands featured are potentially gun brands, and none of them have things like famous buildings. DOTA, Apex Legends, Stardew Valley, Rust, Palworld, Elden Ring and a bunch of idlers and shooters (CS2, PUBG, Delta Force).
Fun fact: a lot of game audio is licensed too, sound effects and such.
Regardless, the issue of sublicensing goes beyond what you’re allowed to let people do, it also goes into the idea that you’re often forced to disallow people from harvesting those assets from the game, or allowing the game to turn into derivative works - and because you yourself do not actually own the asset, you’re forced to confront it.
To avoid these issues, games would have to be very small (2D? Chiptunes? idk how small), but it’s one of a million tiny issues that comes up in game development, and each one of those tiny issues risks not allowing you to release the game.
Games are really, really hard to make, there are so many issues waiting to kill it- and even if you manage to make it, there’s no guarantee it’s successful, so spending time on these things is stealing time from making it fun or viable.
Why do you mix your awful DRM scheme with something completely separated from the subject matter?
Are you trying to claim that the licensing scheme establishes by contract that the players must be stripped of their consumer rights by not being able to own the game they bought?
Well, good news for you, maybe the regulations that will come out of it will make this sort of licensing contract illegal. Perhaps it will make it easier to make games for you.
Forcing games to be moddable is unrelated to stop killing games.
If developers want to get the rights to distribute a song for 5 years with their game, they can still do that.
There are multiple such cases in stores such as Steam or GoG. I own games that are not available for purchase anymore.
Those games were not killed. I can still download and play them.
If that’s what you mean then I’d say maybe but doing so would definitely increase the cost and complexity in using licensed content. Which is likely to be passed on.
Interestingly though reading the EU petition and the petition authors views it would be fine to remove the content once the licence expired.
Stop Killing Games doesn't change this in any way.
The digital equivalent would be: you get a license to sell digital copies of the game (containing the licensed material) for a limited time, to people who are allowed to re-download them once your sales license has expired. (And you are allowed to provide that downloading service, but not continue to sell the games, nor make them available to people who have not purchased them.)
It's not that hard – and the existence of Steam demonstrates that many people are already doing things this way.
Looks like the possibility of regulations will fix that. That in the Year of our Lord 2025, when online channels are many times the only possibility of purchasing a game, licensing agreements do not cover that, it seems that proper regulation is very much necessary.
I suspect if you’re expecting to undo decades of IP law with this then you’ll be disappointed. I also suspect that the requirement to be functional rather than complete could also mean as long as the game continued to work removing the content would be fine.
No, I only expects regulations that dictates I get to own the games I purchase. As any other consumer good.
And if that is not possible, then the agreement should be that games are leased for a set number of years, no gotchas to the consumer.
For some reason I think that the second would be much worse for the videogame industry. I don't think many people would be super excited about leasing a game for a few years for 60+ USD.
(small hint: https://www.reddit.com/r/needforspeed/comments/1ceaq0r/where...)
You start your argument from a presumption that releasing an offline game is almost an impossibility. Are you trying yo argue that offline games have zero things licensed? This sounds like a major argument in favor of offline games.
Sounds to me that the simple solution is just stop licensing things with such draconian requirements. If I play a racing game I care about it being fun. If the car I am using in-game is a BMW or a made up brand for the game is immaterial.
Never making a licensed product or using third-party IP is definitely one solution but I don’t think is the intent nor without adverse effects.
Then the solution seems simple. Making the game available offline does not seem to have any impact in terms of licensing.
To them, it is as “simple” as not using the things that require onerous licensing. Whether the game is offline or online only matters as much as the licensor might prefer one or the other; obviating the onerous licensor (making your own assets and/or doing business with more agreeable people) is a simple solution. Simple meaning the complexity to understand it, not to implement it.
In my experience, the more casual the player the more this mattered to them, but it was still a huge market
Interestingly enough, I used to be an avid Football Manager player, where real teams/players is an important deal.
I can still download Football Manager 2010 (that is not available for purchase anymore), and I can play with Borussia Dortmund with all 2010 players without any issues.
If they could figure out how to properly license those teams/players so that the game is not dead in 2025 (considering how much anal football teams/leagues are with licensing deals), I am sure that racing games (and others) can figure it out as well.
That expiration date should, of course, be on the box. The consumer deserves to know.
Before anyone says that its as simple as a switch statement, it’s not, its date enumeration and a switch statement, and an alternative codepath for testing and more assets: on every hot path, when you already only get 8ms for your frame is an annoying cost.
The expiration date properly visible is not a terrible idea though; or at least a “this edition is valid for x years” after which, updates that fix issues may remove content. Hrm.
You see? It’s not that hard. You can license music and still make a game that doesn’t die after a few years. If EU law changes to make that a _requirement_, then you simply stop signing any licensing deal that would break the requirement.
The current state of affairs is that the net result is such that consumers are stripped of their rights. I find it more unacceptable.
If the licensing costs without fucking over consumers is prohibitive, then maybe those games should not exist. If no one is licensing the brands/assets/music/whatever because the licensing costs are too high, it's likely that in time the costs will come down.
Wow, who is killing games now?
I am not going to defend predatory practices. You think you threw me a gotcha, but you are actually only exposing yourself.
Only because you are being purposely obtuse, gesturing at licensing as something that makes game development impossible without making games previously purchased by consumers unavailable.
If you make cakes that are poisoned with lead, and regulations say that you cannot sell lead-poisoned food, you cannot say "but all egg suppliers only sell lead-poisoned eggs, this will kill the cake industry".
If regulations say that games should be made accessible for people that purchased them past EOL, licensing agreements will have to adapt for it. Differentiating distribution as in "new copy being sold" and "previously sold copy being available for download".
Please show me where I said that! If that’s what you think I’ve been saying it’s definitely not. And you accuse me of arguing against straw men!
For others you may not be able to license it.
Example: have you seen a street racing game with Toyota’s in it?
There’s a reason that Need For Speed games fell off after Most Wanted (original) and it’s because they themselves don’t get total artistic license on their works.
And part of the agreements is a reasonable expectation that you will not assist anyone else to violate the agreement - and, the agreements are not perpetual either.
So, depends on context. There are examples where licensing opportunities dry up.
The presumption was that sales were not perpetual- and reselling isn’t leasing a license in the same way.
Maybe there’s a way though
Yes, it is unlikely that legislators, bought and paid for by big corporations, will ever change the rules to reduce help to big corporations, but it's at least humanly possible.
Is your game not allowing the Mercedes logo to fall off intrinsically tied to it being online? Is the server code the only thing keeping the logo in place?
Or are you just making shit up because you find the initiative icky?
I find it bizarre how game developer companies try hard to antagonize the public that keeps buying their things.
Mercedes is supposed to have a trademark for automobiles and you're making a video game. That's a different industry so you shouldn't have to license anything from them -- no one is going to be confused into thinking your video game is a motor vehicle and buy it instead of a Mercedes, and that's all trademarks are supposed to be for.
Make it clear that these things don't have to be licensed for video games -- which there is absolutely no sound for them to be -- and you won't have these problems.
We had this a decade ago with Asetto Corsa, PES, and Skyrim, but it appears to be falling out of favor. Are the publishers or developers not doing this because of legal liability or because they want to get a financial piece of the mod pie?
Working with external brands is an obvious example of third party licenses that, as a consumer, you can perceive.
Games are made of hundreds (maybe even thousands) of these licenses that you will have trouble perceiving; Sound effects, certain harmonics, programatic audio cues (as a technology), procedural generation and even likenesses are non-perpetual in nature.
The landscape of artistic works is mired in copyrights, the more art the more likely you get too close to someones copyright even if you have an entirely home-built texture, it might look inspired by another texture and thus litigious individuals can request royalties: royalties which will come with their own restrictions.
I’m not saying that its impossible to comply, merely outlining the current state of things. If licenses won’t be granted but copyrights are maintained then it will be extremely burdensome for developing games that are large- as the risk and operational overhead will be quite punishing.
For what its worth; I’m all for the movement of stop killing games, but people seem to have this notion that its game developers doing it out of spite in order not to cannibalise future sales, when in reality developers would prefer to release more games with more innovative ideas. The issue is that games, by default, don’t exist; and making them exist is a perilous journey so fraught with failures that I am personally surprised we have any games, yet so many. Everyone wants a slice when its successful and eventually theres nothing left, spending time one this will come from somewhere else and in all likelihood certain things will become impossible due to license holders not permitting use of their works nor something that is similar.
You might thing you’re giving developers power to fight but we’re stuck in the middle and they don’t give a shit, they want their 30 pieces of silver and we don’t have a product if we can’t find a way to work within their parameters.
Mojang (creators of Minecraft ) is an unfortunate good case study for this. It's sale to Microsoft is in part down to not being able to balance freedom for server owners and the PR issues caused by people scamming others, in this case children, while obscuring it under the Minecraft brand.
I don't agree that we should be coerced into being in the kid safe padded play area, but I ain't blind enough to not see why we are.
That isn't how liability works. The judge isn't going to let you sue the wrong person because you're confused.
Source? This is the first time I’ve heard this claim.
For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
EULA sometimes differ depending on location because a lot of the bullshit software companies get away with in the US is illegal in other parts of the world.
Another extreme example is the hoops companies have to jump through to sell in China. Again, this generally does not affect the same products in the rest of the world.
It is a problem that we know how to solve.
Well, partially they do. For example when it comes to the Right to be forgotten, there were attempts to apply this also to data which is stored and displayed outside the EU. Only after ECJ ruling (C-507/17) such attempts were stopped.
> For some time Microsoft had EU specific versions of Windows.
Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide. Other than that it is the same version of Windows, which just behaves differently when it comes to browser choice etc. depending on your location.
They care to the extent that the situation in the EU is resolved. They did not make any extraterritorial jurisdiction arguments like the US government did with Microsoft’s data centres in Ireland.
> Microsoft does have the N (formerly called "Reduced Media") editions of Windows created in response to legal demands from the EU, but these are available worldwide.
You are right, I got confused. The browser ballot screen was shown only in the EU, but it was not a separate product. Regarding Windows N, I don’t think the ruling forced them to sell it worldwide; it did not even stop them from selling their usual Windows versions in the EU.
that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
seems like 'video games europe' is gearing up to lobby/influence the lawmakers to distort this initiative.
the bare minimum would be to ban these kind of things from describing themselves as products instead of a service in their marketing. no "Buy" or "Purchase", instead "Rent" or "Lease" possibly with a stated minimum guaranteed time online / expiration date.
EDIT: reminder, if you're from the EU and over the age of 18 it's still a good idea to sign the petition even though it passed the threshold since there could be invalid signatures (bots, underage people, etc ...) if the valid signatures are below the threshold after the verification is done this petition will get dropped.
And others may not even realize the negative issues at all but still they create network effects that drag other consumers along the ride anyway, regardless of if they like it or not.
It seems like "abstinence is a birth control method"
that said, more occurrences of this situation might make your argument more powerful over time.
Personally I don't believe a real free market can exist anyway. There always has to be a balance between socialism and capitalism.
All the big publishers are bound by these strings such as the wish for more recurring revenue. Hence the microtransactions and online models. You can't really avoid those.
I 100% share this but I can’t understand how even the most capitalist (ideologically) person in the world would not want to create rules to at least avoid actors to become too big.
Monopolies are a bug of the capitalism and they break it from the inside. When monopolies aren’t kept at bay, you aren’t even in capitalism anymore.
This is definitely true. I don't know if this is true, but my instinct is that it's much harder to create a monopoly if you don't have a government willing to write rules to enforce your existing advantages.
Only with very very poor pattern matching. If people don't buy something, there is a 0% chance it will exist. That's better than any birth control method you might recommend.
In the real world, things exist that are not bought.
Did Ubisoft clearly advertise the fact that the game would stop functioning entirely in the future when it was selling it?
> the better way to do this is to have industry standards similar to PEGI that describe the game's future support, not to hit them with EU-specific regulations.
This is the EU. We don't believe the market fixes everything. As an EU citizen I really applaud the restrictions on bad business practices of tech companies. A lot of those are US-based but they'll have to play by our rules if they want to operate here.
> that's kinda the point, many users don't like having their single player game be online only because the devs thought it would give them more control.
I think the criticism isn't centered around single player games at all, but rather MMORPGs and the likes.
That’s asking developers to make different games. That’s not the same thing as “stop shitting down games like the crew”
I don't know if amazon kindle books "you are getting a license" wording has affected anything.
But what if you can't call them "games" anymore? Call it "time-limited entertainment"?
It is all about IP, and like Hollywood nowadays, how to repackaged it in remakes and emulation.
A bit hard if we're allowed to just play the original versions.
This has happened a lot in the past. EverQuest, Pirates, Lots of mmos have changed studios and with that, the backend services needed to run them.
Now, that said, there are a few countries in the EU that you could reverse engineer the server and it’s totally legal. Some of the best fun I’ve had were on private WoW or Lineage 2 servers.
How? Can't wait to hear them substantiating this tidbit, because from a regular enterprise operations viewpoint this does NOT pass the smell test.
In the following paper, CPs refer to content providers, as defined in the paper.
https://estcarisimo.github.io/assets/pdf/papers/2019-comnets... [pdf]
(more at https://estcarisimo.github.io/publications/ )
canonical link for above paper, which is the lead researcher's GH from what I can tell:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01403... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2019.05.022 )
> Studying the Evolution of Content Providers in IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Cores
> Esteban Carisimo, Carlos Selmo, J. Ignacio Alvarez-Hamelin, Amogh Dhamdhere
[I have edited out some hyphens that made this really hard to read but were helpful due to the layout of the original document as typeset. If that bothers you, I'm sorry in advance. Links are included above.]
> Our goal is to investigate what role CPs now play in the Internet ecosystem, and in particular, if CPs are now a part of the “core” of the Internet. Specifically, we motivate this work with the following questions: How can we identify if a CP does or does not belong to the core of the Internet? If the core of the network does indeed include CPs, who are they?As the overall adoption of IPv6 has been slow, do we notice that delay on IPv4 and IPv6 core evolution? As the AS ecosystem has shown striking differences according to geographical regions [15], do we also see geographical differences in the role of CPs and their presence in the “core” of regional Internet structures? Finally, as more CPs deploy their private CDNs, can we detect “up and coming” CDNs that are not currently in the core of the network but are likely to be in the future?
> We use the concept of k-cores to analyze the structure of the IPv4 AS-level internetwork over the last two decades. We first focus on seven large CPs, and confirm that they are all currently in the core of the Internet. We then dig deeper into the evolution of these large players to correlate observed topological characteristics with documented business practices which can explain when and why these networks entered the core. Next, we repeat the methodology but using IPv6 dataset to compare and contrast the evolution of CPs in both networks. Based on results, we investigate commercial and technical reasons why CPs started to roll out IPv6 connectivity.
> We then take a broader view, characterizing the set of ASes in the core of the IPv4 Internet in terms of business type and geography. Our analysis reveals that an increasing number of CPs are now in the core of the Internet. Finally, we demonstrate that the k-core analysis has the potential to reveal the rise of “up and coming” CPs. To encourage reproducibility of our results, we make our datasets available via an interactive query system at https://cnet.fi.uba.ar/TMA2018/
[…]
> Finally, we study the core evolution of nine other remarkable CPs that belong to the TOPcore but were not included in the Big Seven. Seven of the nine selected ASes are the remaining ASes in Bottger et al.’s [47] TOP15 list, except Hurricane Electric (AS6939) which we do not consider as a CP since it is labeled as Transit/Access in CAIDA’s AS classification [80]. These seven ASes are OVH (AS16276), LimeLight (AS22822), Microsoft (AS8075), Twitter (AS13414), Twitch (AS46489), CloudFlare (AS13335) and EdgeCast (AS15133). The other two ASes are Booking.com (AS43996) and Spotify (AS8403). Interestingly, Booking.com or Spotify are not normally considered among the top CPs, however, they are in both TOPcores.
Now this proposal requires you to also continually release your server code.[1] While adding documentation, support for different systems, while ensuring safety as the server can now be reverse engineered and while possibly being liable to abuse created through those servers. Even though your game (and its clients) aren't tailored to working on any server other than the official one anyway.
At least that's my understanding of the issue.
This proposal is obviously aimed at big publishers like EA and Ubisoft, but it hurts small developers. I argue we should just stop playing EA and Ubisoft games, who are the only ones who continue to pull this crap.
[1]: As TheFreim pointed out, this isn't necessarily required. But the server program has to be released when the official servers are shut down. Which means this possibility has to be prepared for throughout development.
This is not accurate. From the FAQ:
> Q: Won't this consumer action result in the end of "live service" games?
> A: No, the market demand and profitability of these games means the video games industry has an ongoing interest in selling these. Since our proposals do not interfere with existing business models, these types of games can remain just as profitable, ensuring their survival. The only difference is future ones will need to be designed with an "end of life" build once support finally ends.
I suggest reading the proposal or /at least/ the FAQ page: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
From my understanding, a company does not have to release a private server alongside the client while the official servers are live, what I said previously was inaccurate. But when the official servers are closed, they are required to provide them.
However, I don't see how a bankrupt studio can release their server code when they don't have enough money to keep their servers running. An MMORPG shutting down it's servers may not even have any developers left. It may also not have any players left.
The FAQ suggests that this won't burden developnent at all, but I believe that it will.
Regardless if they continuously release their server code or not, they still need to develop an "end of life" plan which means having the server code ready to release when they want to kill their servers.
I think one of the most relevant part of the FAQ is:
Q: Isn't it impractical, if not impossible to make online-only multiplayer games work without company servers.
A: Not at all. The majority of online multiplayer games in the past functioned without any company servers and were conducted by the customers privately hosting servers themselves and connecting to each other. Games that were designed this way are all still playable today. As to the practicality, this can vary significantly. If a company has designed a game with no thought given towards the possibility of letting users run the game without their support, then yes, this can be a challenging goal to transition to. If a game has been designed with that as an eventual requirement, then this process can be trivial and relatively simple to implement. Another way to look at this is it could be problematic for some games of today, but there is no reason it needs to be for games of the future.
I too want online games to be killed responsibly, but I don't think Stop Killing Games is being honest about how this will influence small budget game development as opposed to the big publishers they keep talking about.
Then if they go bankrupt, the job is already done. It isn't more work, it's just knowing a feature needs to be implemented, and knowing that before you even start.
This feels like trying to poke small holes for no reason.
Let’s say bankrupt studios are off the hook. What then? Most games still be saved. EA just announced they are killing Anthem in 2026. EA won’t be bankrupt next year. There you have one game already immortalized thanks to regulation.
We can "say" this, but it would need to be part of the proposal. To be honest I haven't read the proposal, just the FAQ. But I would expect some nuance to be added to protect small studios.
Like I said in my first comment, I feel like this proposal is just targeting studios like EA. And I am sure it works well for that. Though personally I would've hoped that consumers would just stop buying EA games.
To my understanding, this wouldn't affect MMORPGs where you're explicitly buying X months of access (so long as you do get the access you paid for, or a refund if it's shut down early) which is how most I'm aware of work.
> Now this proposal requires you to also continually release your server code.[1] While adding documentation, support for different systems,
The proposal requires leaving the game in a reasonably playable state, but not any specific actions like these. In fact the FAQ specifically says "we're not demanding all internal code and documentation".
> while ensuring safety as the server can now be reverse engineered and while possibly being liable to abuse created through those servers
I don't see why the company would be liable for this. Moderation of the private servers would be up to those running the private servers. If there is something to this effect in EU law that I'm unaware of, it seems like it'd already be placing undue burden on games that do currently (or want to) release their server software and that this initiative would be a good opportunity to exempt them from that liability.
> but it hurts small developers
If anything I'd speculate small developers are likely to have less issue releasing server software/code, and more likely to have a game this doesn't even apply to in the first place, giving them an edge over larger publishers.
But even if it were a significant burden, I feel it's really just providing what was already purchased. At the extreme, do you think it'd be okay to take $70 from someone for a singleplayer game, then shut down authentication servers (rendering it unplayable) a few minutes later?
... which is why it doesn't pass my smell test.
Say you're working on either a monolithic game server codebase, or just a microservice that's a part of a larger service mesh fulfilling that role. Are you writing any tests? You probably (hopefully) do. So where's that code gonna run the first time before it's even pushed up to version control? Locally. So some extents of it definitely have to run locally, or if you have good test coverage, all of it.
But okay, let's go a layer further. Say you're trying to go into production with this. As the saying goes, everyone has a production environment, but the lucky folks "even" have others. This sarcastically implies that you need to be able to deploy your solution into multiple environments. And you don't want to be doing this manually, because then e.g. you have no CI/CD, and thus no automated testing on code push. That's not even considering multi-geo stuff, because for multiplayer games I imagine latency matters, so you really want to deploy either to the edge or close to it, and will definitely want to be all around the world, at least in a few key places.
So you can test locally, and can deploy automatically. Tell me, what is the hold up then? It would take me approximately one entire minute to give you the binaries for anything I ever touch, because if I couldn't do that, the automation wouldn't be able to do so either. At some point, the bullshit has to end, and that's at operations. Not much docs to write either: if your stuff does anything super super custom, you're doing something very wrong. And respectfully, if the aforementioned do not apply to you, you shouldn't be operating any online service at scale in production for anyone in 2025.
Really the only technical wrenches you can throw into this that I can think of are licensing and dependencies. Neither of these are reasonable spots to be in from an economical or a technical standpoint. Like what, you can't mock other services? How are you testing your stuff then? Can't change suppliers / providers? How is that reasonable from a business agility standpoint?
So clearly if there is a salient technical rationale for this, it's going to have to be a very sharp departure from anything I've ever experienced in non-gaming enterprise, or my common sense.
Regarding all the other points (and this will read dismissive because I've already rambled on way too long and I'm trying to keep it short, I genuinely don't mean it like that):
- if you're writing an MMORPG as a small up-and-coming indie, you're definitely going bankrupt
- if you're writing an MMORPG, I'm pretty sure you'll have more than just one or two servers running, or there's nothing massive about that multiplayer online role playing game after all
- it does not require you to continually release anything
- it does not request you to release documentation (what is there to "document" btw? I'm certainly not imagining too much)
- it does not request you to support different systems
- it does not request you to release anything before EOS, thus, security concerns for the official client are null and void - and even if it wasn't (e.g. sequels), security by obscurity is not a reasonable security story anyways
- the dangerous parts of the reverse engineering efforts still routinely happen without access to server binaries anyways (see all COD games and their players getting hacked to pieces right as we type away)
- possibly liable is not liable, and I trust you're not a lawyer, just like I'm not
- it's just a client-server setup like any other - remember, other environments must be possible to connect to as well, if nothing else then for testing
All of this is completely ignoring how we had dedicated servers and competition events with private setups since forever.
I legitimately cannot imagine that you can cock up an online service architecture and codebase bad enough, that a team of devs and devops/SREs/ops, or even just a few of those dudes, couldn't get something mostly operational out the door in a few day(!) hackathon at most. Even without planning for all this. And how this would skyrocket the costs especially mystifies me. Surely asset development, staffing, operational costs and marketing are the cost drivers here? How would you surpass ALL or even ANY of that? Just doesn't make sense!
Developers should absolutely not have that choice. It's fine if you want to run a live service game where the optimal experience happens during active support. However, unless you as a dev are willing to refund every single purchaser of the game, in full, when you discontinue a game, then you are stealing from purchasers. Moreover, even if you are willing to give a full refund to all players, it's really shitty to just rip an experience away from people, never to be experienced again (whether in a watered-down or limited form, or not).
It's the same reason I don't agree with perpetual copyright, nor a copyright owner's right to suppress a work's availability. In almost all jurisdictions, copyright is intended to be a limited time right, with the rights eventually entering the public domain. If people can't access the work when it would become public domain, then that work is effectively stolen from the public in a way that mere non-commercial copyright infringement can never be theft.
I fail to see the principal difference between a "centralized" and a "private" server here. Just publish the code for running the "centralized" server, as you would do for the private server, and add a possibility to configure which server to connect to in the game?
I could see this becoming an issue when the server is hardwired to require some publisher SSO login, but given how everyone + their dog uses OIDC nowadays, a requirement to make authentication interoperable is only a very mild restriction.
sometimes it's not even that -- it's to prevent the older version from competing with new releases. See Overwatch 1 -> 2 or Counter-Strike 1 -> 2
I hate live service games like the next guy but legal advisors can bend these to form powerful counter-arguments.
I'm sure that with current games, licenses were indeed acquired for a certain limited time. But if you start development and you know you'll have to sunset it according to the rules one day, I'm sure you'll come up with other licenses or just a way to strip out content like that.
I think that's still fairly favorable to game publishers compared to most other purchased goods. If you manufacture an office chair and license a patented swivel mechanism, the license you acquire cannot require you to break purchasers' chairs after the license expires, nor even to go around their homes swapping out the mechanism (which analogously may still be permitted for games).
Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
The big difference here is that you’re applying B2C terms on B2B licenses. This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
Both are cases of B2B licensing with the latter business then selling a product on to consumers.
> This would essentially ban enterprise B2B licenses for video game software which is insanity
I don't see how. If for instance some company develops an audio processing library, they can still license it out to a game development company for a limited time - just that the license would be "the company can no longer sell games with this technology after the license expires", opposed to anything that would prevent functioning of the already-sold games. Or rather, they could stipulate the latter in their license, but then their market would be limited to game development companies willing to patch it out after the license expires.
Yes it can.
Fairly notably quite a lot of publishers sell their physical books and newspapers and require retailer unsold copies to be destroyed - but they were sold to the retailer.
> Moreover if the rightsholder for that patent had been licensing only under the terms that the purchased chair is destroyed after 5 years but then a change in consumer protection law prevents that practice, they'd need to license it out under more reasonable terms (like you can only sell the chairs with the mechanism for 5 years, but there's no limit on how long people can use the mechanism in their purchased chairs) - otherwise they'd get no business.
They quite possibly already have an alternative business of licensing the component for non-game offerings that they won't jeopardise.
Issue is with A->B->C due to business B being unable to legally fulfill the terms that'd require them to go around consumer C's homes destroying the chair they have bought (even if such destruction is hidden in some fine-print, given decent consumer protection laws). Some business B can still agree to terms impacting themselves (and as a business, typically have greater capacity to review/negotiate contracts), like destroying their unsold stock.
> They quite possibly already have an alternative business of licensing the component for non-game offerings that they won't jeopardise.
I think generally it's a large enough market (especially if this eventually expands beyond games to all purchased software, which I hope to see) that existing suppliers would adapt to either allow their component to be easily severed/mocked, or accept some probably-long-outdated version of their component being included in end-of-life releases (as it would for client-side components), else an alternative would emerge to fill that void.
With games it’s often not the case. You buy them and then at unspecified moment you might lose a significant portion of functionality or the whole game. At the time you buy a game you don’t know if it’s for a time, what time, or what will stop working.
You should be able to do this for any game. I understand them fighting it during the games lifetime.
Most new releases rely on Multiplayer, the publishers have to come up with creative ways to monetize it.. so they introduce cosmetics, stores, etc in order to fund the ongoing development and cost.
This causes a backlash and eventually the game gets dropped because people don't want to pay a subscription.
It's ok, the engine will adjust it if big studios can't use it otherwise. It's just people having to talk to each other.
> Code and APIs would be needed to be documented.
Why? Nobody is talking about forced opensourcing.
Just like the law don't just require that you can return you toxic ham within 2 years of purchase.
It could also work as a deterrent on making dedicated servers only architecture. If you can disable dedicated servers instantly(instead of 2 years) but enable private servers that might be more cost efficient.
No problem. Per "Stop Killing Games" initiative, you will only have to provide means for the users to still be able to play those games after you decide to pull the plug on it.
You can, for example, release the server code so that players can keep playing the game somehow, if they so desire. No need to keep supporting your online rent-seeking scheme ad-eternum after it outlived its usefulness.
We need to be frank about what those developers really want though. They want to be able to take away games they previously sold so that players move on to their shiny new online rent-seeking scheme. Allowing people to actually own the games they bought is bad for business.
Fuck this noise and fuck those developers.
That way the developers can continue offering both games and subscriptions where each type makes most sense. And everybody knows what they are signing up for. People who buy a game get a game which they can play indefinitely. People who buy a subscription know the earliest possible end date and everything beyond that is just bonus.
Publishers would just advertise their games as coming with a 2-year subscription, or whatever. People would have the same expectations as now: the game will be supported for a couple of years, and it will be supported much longer if there's an obvious way that is profitable to the developer.
No publisher would unilaterally want to start advertising games as subscriptions, but if everyone was forced to do it, nothing changes. Perhaps an extra layer of clicking through for the user, like when we mandated all websites must have annoying cookie popups.
People don't generally lie for no reason. Companies are interested in obscuring their licensing practices because they believe it might hurt them to be more transparent.
That might not be true. It might turn out that the user base doesn't see the difference between "Rent" and "Buy". But it's the user base's decision to make, not the companies.
So, even if this kind of law has no other effect other than "we use more accurate and truthful language", then it's still a net positive.
I know that some years back, getting your mobile phone financed on two-year contracts was a normal thing. But it was a debt trap for consumers. Some EU countries noticed, and now carriers have to declare such contracts a consumer credit, and need to afford the same consumer protection to their customers as banks have for loans (in Netherlands for example registering with the BKR).
So carriers can still do that but they cannot pretend it's not a loan.
If that premise was true, why would misleading advertisement be the norm right now? Why bother?
Changing it to a subscription WOULD change perception. Most people don't understand the current status quo. When they do know, it would create a market pressure for real game ownership.
In some ways I think even this statement by the trade association is already a win - the initiative forced them to explicitly address topics such as private servers, which they'd rather not talk about at all. Their statement also made it easy to ask counter questions regarding offline single-player or actual player compensation on shutdown. (I love the "we understand it can be disappointing, but we give players fair notice" statement, as if players didn't pay money for this)
I don't expect a lot of support from EU politicians for the initiative, as the current Parliament is even more conservative and corporate-friendly than usual. But well, hope dies last, and at least the will of the public seems to be there. (And also the appearance of being a tech regulator has become more popular in Brussels)
So we'll see.
The usual inter country struggles in the Eu might actually play out in favor of customers this time. Game development is stronger in smaller EU countries ( measured in percent of the gdp ) so big countries will not block any initiatives.
Probably true! There is likely some additional revenue that the publisher gets from running servers, even for single-player mode. The question then is what will change in these games if that revenue is no longer there to fund them? Will the quality be lower? Will the price be higher? Will the publishers release new games less frequently? Maybe they just don’t make single-player games anymore?
And I somehow doubt there’s revenue to make off these single player games being online dependent, because the most probable ways simply wouldn’t fly in Europe due to consumer protections.
Most likely it’s just “anti-piracy” or something like that.
I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
> I don't care how smart you are, how much self control you have, whatever, in the face of billions of dollars, voting with your wallet does not stand a chance. The house always wins.
Yes, you're totally right that HN users are far from the average consumer, but they weren't talking about the average consumer - they were making a categorical statement that all consumers have no self-agency and are mind-controlled by these companies, and I was pointing out how clearly insane that claim is.
Something I am noticing more and more is how stagnant the North American game industry is. Meanwhile Europe and Japan are still killing it
Larian with BG3 - Europe Cd Projekt with Witcher and Cyberpunk - Europe
Nintendo rocking on as normal Monster hunter wilds and the RE remakes? Capcom, Japan
Elden Ring and Nightreign. FromSoft, Japan
Helldivers 2. Arrowhead Studios, Sweden
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Warhorse Studios, Czech
I cannot remember the last time I bought a new game and had a blast with it from a North American studio. Certainly not a AAA studio anyways
Almost every time I have spent more than $35 on a game in the past year I have wound up regretting it. It seems as though the quality of games typically increases til that point (exceptions exist, Terraria) and then declines sharply (again, exceptions exist). It has turned out to be a useful signal to be way more careful about a purchase for me.
I have shit to do and not a lot of time to game, so I can be patient for games to go on sale.
I bought Minecraft from Mojang, years later I am forced to setup a Microsoft account to play the game, or risk downloading a cracked version. They did not offer a refund. Minecraft is a video game where you need to login even if you do not play online. (maybe things changed , I think this MS account thing was a few years back, it worked for my account but I read of people having big issues because some MS assholes ahd to force the Java edition players to use an MS account)
This behaviour should not be legal.
Someone at Microsoft should go to jail for this.
Some singleplayer titles from just a few years ago are no longer playable. (Hello, Ubisoft). Meanwhile there are MMOs like guild wars 1, released 20 years ago, still playable today.
Just keeping the games playable is a singular issue and in the noise. It's a good issue to single out for regulation.
> But it's true.
It's not - you're talking about something else entirely. When @umvi says "vote with your wallet" they mean buy things whose values you support. You, and GP @thrance, are not describing that - you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values - the exact opposite. So, no, we haven't had decades of "unsuccessful voting with your wallet" because consumers have been mentally checked out for decades.
> So "voting with wallet" doesn't really work, because you will be outvoted by majority of people who don't know what they're getting into
That's literally how normal democracy works - if the majority of the populace is uninformed, then they'll vote in an uninformed way, and the solution is for them to get informed and start doing research and making conscious decisions. That's what @umvi means when they say "vote with your wallet." - active participation instead of passive existence.
You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
>You're confusing the lack of active participation with the presence of it.
Probably.
>you're describing people buying things on autopilot without respect to values
That is probably where I am confused - I'm not sure that people "do not respect the values". It's either that they have values, but those values are imposed, or it's what you describe, that people just don't think deeply about it. And from my personal experience I really can't tell. But when I read the web, everyone apparently figured it out, and do indeed consciously decide.
If that's truly what you mean by "vote with your wallet", then yeah, we're on the same page. I almost only play solo games, most of them indie.
I suspect that the majority of those who play games would rather these mechanics not exist, but don't feel strongly enough about it to boycott those games. I don't have evidence for this beyond my interactions with personal friends and their "mild apathetic unhappiness" for lack of a better term.
There's also definitely a number of people that are willing to accept some compromise to either play a very well-made game, or one that their friends are playing. I hate Epic Games and its practices, for instance, but I'm willing to play Fortnite with friends if they ask me, and I justify that by telling myself that I'm never going to buy anything with their premium currency.
Factually incorrect. There are numerous instances of consumers complaining, leaving bad reviews on Steam, refunding games, or stopping buying games because of their values, and the studios/producers actually changed the thing. Helldivers 2's mandatory PSN account is one of the most recent instances of that happening.
Factually, consumers will band together to take collective action, and when they do, there are positive effects. The problem is apathy, not lack of power.
> We need regulations, isolated individuals have no power against a system built to extract the most out of them
This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Make up your mind - does voting work, or does it not?
How. You only gave anecdotal evidence of some instances where enough complaining got consumers a little concession. Meanwhile, DLCs, microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years. Do you deny that at each step of this process, many people called to "vote with your wallet"? Do you deny that it failed miserably and that the game industry keeps getting away with more and more, in spite of it?
> This is literally self-contradictory. If individuals can't "vote with their wallets" to achieve change (which, as I described above, empirically does happen), then individuals in a democracy also can't vote to enact their will on the system - and those regulators are appointed by those elected representatives.
Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated". To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions. Without a union, they're out of luck. On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
You're using "anecdotal" incorrectly. Your statement was ""voting with your wallet" will never work." and I provided a counterexample, meaning that your statement is factually incorrect, so you're just wrong. It's also incorrect to call it a "concession" - the players got everything they asked for - there was no compromise. There are also far more counterexamples if you cared to search the internet for a few minutes - the Skyrim paid mods incident, the League of Legends free lootbox removal, and The Crew 2 and Motorfest not having offline modes as just three more.
> Meanwhile, DLCs
Been around for decades, not just "a few years"...
> microtransactions and lootboxes went from "totally inacceptable" to "absolutely bog standard" in a few years
Yes, and? Not enough people cared to actually do anything about it. The fact is, that when people care enough, and actually put their money where their mouth is, companies either listen (as above) or go out of business (as a number of studios are today).
It's quite simple to see that when people don't buy a studio's games, the studio either changes things or goes out of business. The reason that companies get away with these practices is because people either (1) morally compromise enough to buy games with mechanisms that they don't approve of, (2) they literally just don't care, or (3) aren't even aware of the issues. The call to "vote with your wallet" is meant to encourage the compromisers to stop compromising and the apathetic to realize that they have to take action for change to happen.
If your claim is that when people make values-based purchases it doesn't affect the market or fix issues - that's just factually wrong. If your complaint is that people don't care enough to make values-based purchases - that's exactly what the call to action of "vote with your wallet" is meant to help.
> Literally straw-manning my point. I should have emphasized "isolated".
I assumed you weren't talking about isolated individuals because that's completely irrelevant to this discussion. The poster's call to action of "vote with your wallet" on a site with tens/hundreds of thousands of visitors is literally a call to collective action, so any references to isolated action is just not relevant or logically coherent.
And, because you got that part wrong, this isn't really relevant, but...
> To me calls to "vote with your wallet" are akin to a single worker demanding a raise or better working conditions
This is also completely incorrect. If an individual worker demands something from their employers, they can just get fired. The power is in the hands of the employer. In the case of games, the power imbalance is heavily skewed towards the purchasers - if you decide not to purchase a game, the studio loses on revenue, and you lose some tiny increment of entertainment. Comparing someone having to play a different game, with someone getting fired, is crazy. Those situations are categorically different.
> On the other hand, a collective effort to change the law like "Stop Killing Games", now we're talking.
Telling people to "vote with their wallets" is a collective effort, and it works. That doesn't mean you can't complement it with regulation, but anyone familiar with the legislative system knows how incredibly difficult it is to wield regulation and how much you should try to solve problems through other methods first.
The ratio of me hearing this vs. seeing it actually affect change is maybe 10000:1 at this point.
Why not just vote with your vote instead.
Tell them to fuck off.
Nice way to make publishers stop making multiplayer services available to the EU in the first place because deactivating it is illegal when costs outweigh profits.
they won't leave the biggest global market with almost 500 million potential buyers because they can't rug pull anymore, even if they somehow suddenly don't like money anymore others will gladly take there place.
the same "argument" has been thrown at GDPR which now every single corporation follows.
People do not appreciate quite what a narrow path has to be walked by games from an IP standpoint. Code libraries, licensed property, per platform (and platform category) restrictions, general IP restrictions (not showing vehicles being damaged, or UI overlays on certain parts of licensed objects) and so on. This is why in the recent ROG Ally announcement Microsoft could not say all XBox games will run on it, because if it's a PC it's not a console, so various games will not be allowed to be sold on it as those contributing IP rights will have been split up separately.
Simply pretending these very real concerns don't exist is nonsense land. You want games with real vehicles or licensed music? This is what you have to deal with. At least these days they have learned to license music for longer than used to be the case.
If music labels refuse to license out their songs like that, then if this law passes, they're going to have to suck it up and play nice again, else lose customers/publishers.
The choice for licensors was to have the music in the game and available on the cd or not.
For a modern release, DRM music tracks that only play in the game is an option.
We've also learned that the licenses are (or were) often time limited... The publisher can't make new copies after some time, without getting a new license for the audio. Sometimes that's also related to a different format.
Which is just to say, if there's money to be made then businesses will do so within the regulatory framework.
If your code library, licensed property etc. does not allow companies to comply with the law, then its value is zero and you won't be able to sell it. So suddenly, all providers of such libraries etc. have to make this possible.
One of the major concerns raised has been middle are: components that developers purchase and use in their server implementation. This is often the largest hurdle to many pro-consumer outcomes: the developers can't share anything related because they don't own it.
The most likely outcome after sensible laws are passed is that the industry evolves just as it did with GDPR. Developers will look to other middlewares that are SKG compliant.
Failing that, gamers have routinely shown that they are capable of clean room implementations of server software (WoW and Genshin Impact) - all that needs be done is the client being released with all server auth disabled and some way to specify the server to use. Developers might even be required to provide basic protocol specifications. Essentially, repair it yourself instructions.
This strawman argument you have provided is exactly the same one used by Pirate Software. It relies on a highly specific interpretation of the initiative. The initiative calls for "reasonably playable state," which can have a vast number of outcomes that are different to the single one that you have chosen.
And if the cars do prohibit a game from addressing server concerns and remaining in a reasonably playable state, remove them. The game will continue to be reasonably playable following that.
Now, this is not necessarily the case for existing games. Revisiting existing licensing deals can be needlessly difficult. But I'm assuming the proposed regulations will only apply to new games rather than trying to force changes retroactively.
But even then, can't they just opensource what they're allowed to? Even if it doesn't build, it wouldn't take the community long to rip out FMOD or whatever and replace it with working alternatives. Or submit a final patch which removed the part where games phone home before launching in singleplayer mode. Why would that interfere with the licence for 3rd party IP?
IMO if I'm "buying" the game, you can't also remotely disable the thing I bought. (And "buy" is the word they all use!). If you want to remotely disable the game at some point in the future, I'm fine with that so long as they list it very explicitly and loudly on the box. "THIS GAME ONLY PLAYABLE UNTIL 2030". Games publishers need to start being honest and upfront about what we're paying for. Its not an unreasonable ask.
Not really if it means that I wouldn't be able to play the game in 10 or 20 years.
gaming over the last few years feels the same way. like they all taste almost the same.
> Simply pretending these very real concerns don’t exist is nonsense land.
i don’t believe this to be true at all.
if all of the things you listed are limiting game development so much, than this isn’t “progress” in the games space. if it’s really that bad, maybe we should regress, start from the basics and let some of the incredible indie studios or midsize studios take the lead who will A) bring us actual originality, not more IP rehashed for the thousandth time, B) not bleed gamers wallets dry and C) lets us actually own the thing we buy.
sooo many amazing games were made in the past that were able to do this and do it well, the difference is they didn’t cry if they “only” made $40 million in profit.
cod3 made like $400 million in the first 24 hours.
the difference now is the AAA studios are sucking all of the air out of the room and not leaving nearly as much room for midsize studios.
[0] sysco, us foods, and pfg supply an absolute massive number of restaurants in the US. sysco alone distributes to something like 700,000 restaurants.
> You want games with real vehicles or licensed music?
The answer is actually no.
I'm blown away that series like AC, FarCry are still big sellers. These games are vapid and designed to be a time sink.
They are like junk food. Everyone has the junk food that they enjoy. FarCry is certainly the McDonald's of games. I enjoy some junk food once in a while, problems arise if I make it my staple diet.
I have Ubisoft, EA, and Sony marked as such, personally.
I think that approaching the problem from the perspective of a physical product, like a smart lightbulb that doesn't work anymore because the manufacturer shut down its servers, would be easier for non-technical people to understand and would likely have a better chance of success.
They don't want games that last forever, they want to pressure you into constantly buying the next big thing.
Shall we require Netflix to release server builds so that you can access their content indefinitely because you paid for a subscription at some point? "That's not what this is about. Ok, where are we heading then?
We currently exist in a two tier global economy where some countries are required to follow a strict set of laws, and others basically make their own. To be clear, I am saying that Russia and China do not care at all about piracy and IP theft and so on.
As you increase the rules that Western companies must follow, you run the risk that some day your only options will be non-Western companies, and that may or may not be a good thing. This is what has happened with manufacturing, and it was good for a while until it wasn't. It still is quite good in some pockets though, like batteries and solar.
Ross from Accursed Farms said this in a video FAQ on youtube:
" Would this initiative affect subscription games? Well, that's another question that depends on what the EU says. Personally, I think it's very unlikely because that doesn't fit well with other existing consumer laws. I think the only way you could even make that argument would be that this is necessary for preservation and most governments don't seem to care about that at all. However, I don't think this is a huge loss, since only a handful of games operate that way today. So if we can give up those but then save 99% of other games, I'm willing to make that bargain. "
so it seems like they actually are suggesting that they'd like for (a law that came out of) SKG to apply to subscription games but there's an understanding that it probably won't.
Content subscriptions like Netflix are different because you are not paying face value for one title. The better analogy here would be the game streaming services like XBox online. It’s clear you are not doing anything like “buying a game”, it’s the whole point of the business model. As you say, it would be a lot harder to make these laws apply there (but I bet that wouldn’t stop the EU from trying).
I think any legislation on this subject would have to reckon with the second-order effects; on the margin you’d be adding pressure for publishers to move to pure subscription services, if these laws don’t apply in those cases.
What we should be doing is applying the laws that already exist: when I purchase a physical book I own a copy of it and can sell it, lend it, modify it.
Amazon and the publishers have zero say in the matter.
Buying a digital copy should be no different. I more of this stupid “you bought a license to access a copy” crap.
All Xbox games around 2004 were physical CDs. Many had online services attached to them. Eventually, those servers were turned off. You can still play LAN and singleplayer. You still have your access to the physical bytes on the disk (though there is copy protection).
What should companies be required to do regarding the servers?
They’re called libraries.
You don’t own the books when you check them out, and you wouldn’t own a digital copy when you check it out from audible.
As for market pressure, you don’t have to ban them. Require that if they want to rent digital copies out they must also allow for purchasing of them at a price that the average person would find resonable.
Also, Netflix is a weird comparison here. That seems like it should be an online-only service, they're not selling the actual movies to you. It's one of the situations where the model actually makes sense, unlike single-player video games.
Actually not Netflix as they just offer a monthly subscription and not individual sales, but _YES_ by all means if I "purchase" (not rent!) a book or movie on Amazon (or anyone else), I'd like that, thank you.
No. However, you should be able to make a copy using your own computer (onto the computer or onto an external media such as a DVD) and then you can play the movies that you have copied on your own computer (not necessarily the one used for Netflix) or DVD player. This should be possible without needing to use their software, and it does not mean that their software or their service should need to offer it as an option; it is done on your side. (They can refuse to serve the movie to you faster than the actual duration of the movie if they want to do, though, therefore making it take as much time to copy as it does to watch it normally.)
(However, I am generally opposed to copyright anyways.)
Don't threaten me with a good time
I agree that single player games and the day zero patch shenanigans must go in order to preserve them. But otherwise, I'm glad that after long years most of these games cannot be injected into your bloodstream anymore.
All you will end up with, in the best case scenario that isn't even guaranteed to happen, is extremely mediocre games for which you will have the server executable along with the client.
Whether you like it or not, thanks to piracy and competition (and yes I've heard Gabe Newell's quote on piracy), server authoritative video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy, and not even just for games. And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.
If you like video games so much but don't like the terms of serivce and price, have you tried making your own? It has never been easier to do so, and there are freely usable code and art assets on hundreds of different platforms for you to attempt.
This is such and odd thing to suggest. People want to play the games they paid for, _obviously_ they aren't going to make their own game.
All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
What I do fear however, is that they will go a step further, requiring companies to release server builds, client and server sourde code, and then of course the ultimate dream, "well no you actually can't turn it off, we require you to maintain it forever even if it loses you money because gaming is a right".
you did not read the initiative. they do not mention any of that and explicitly state that this won't be required (even if they wanted because of copyright laws).
Do not be surprised when they go from something harmless to something punitive that forces small companies out of business.
untested legal ground in the EU
>All you will achieve with this initiative is that that will be clearly labeled now, instead of implied.
maybe or maybe not. creator of the infinitive has already acknowledged that its possible but still preferable to a surprise rug pull grey area.
Will we also require the same of the smart fridge companies? Will we also require the same of companies that don't sell live services, such as toilets?
And no, there's no expectation of source code. That's been covered many times.
That's a strange stance. Even if that was your position SKG has a good opportunity to act as a stepping stone towards something grander.
Put yourself in the shoes of an employee or owner of some business. Would you enjoy being forced to follow certain rules of actual consequence, while others are allowed to do whatever they want?
It is a legitimate business strategy... for now.
It will essentially be the similar thing as the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes or the Parental Guidance logo on an album. The are US things, not sure if EU has similar.
No need to go that far, there's plenty of games sold with better terms of service than the ones your company offers.
Forcing companies to be upfront about this aspect will help concerned consumers choose these instead of yours.
Both games available offline and DRM-free.
So your point is that you need to fuck your paying customers in order to mildly annoy people who don't buy your games?
Besides, the proposal doesn't even require you not to have anti-piracy servers; it only requires you to avoid bricking the game once you turn of the servers.
> simply let consumers reward such companies with their money?
For that you would need to be upfront about it.
If you wanna do a subscription or a rental, you have to call it that.
I don't see why forcing companies to stop lying is a bad idea.
It's better to have a mediocre game that one can play, than an exceptional game that one can't.
You're free to make games now, and yet it's most often hard to justify money for a game that isn't a skin on a version of solitaire (on sale).
That's how bad your industry is. So, please, with your warning. As if you have work product to bargain with.
You act as if your industry is busy. Outside of a couple of exceptional studios, and infinite sequels on literally only a few popular formulas (whether or not these formulas are good is another discussion), your industry is largely non-productive. If we are utilizing your metric of good vs mediocre.
Is any other industry different? Are Instagram and Tiktok literally not brainwashing hundreds of millions of people? Do defense companies care that innocents are murdered with their weapons? Do airplane companies face any enforceable moral judgment that they encourage relatively rich people to engage in idle leisure in other countries rather than being productive with their time for society, to which they owe some level of production in exchange for the society that raised them?
The argument knows no bounds. It is a matter of taste.
Given that you work for the video game industry, perhaps your comment is in a sense perfect.
opposed to absolutely nothing? yeah i think we can do with "mediocre"
>video games that are eventually turned off is a legitimate business strategy
if they aren't misleading customers about it sure. make the game a subscription and you can shut it down whenever you want :)
>And no, "just release your source code then" is not a valid rule to enforce either.
nobody said that. the petition explicitly leaves out the "how" because it could possibly run against existing copyright laws.
>have you tried making your own?
ad hominem and irrelevant to the topic. i don't need to have every build a roof to be against building it with asbestos.
Re mediocre, ok that's fine.
Re the "how", then we arent really talking about anything here. Until there is a how, there is nothing to firmly agree or disagree with, so we have to talk in hypotheticals, which we are, and which is semi valuable.
Re making your own, when a company sells you a toilet and it breaks, you fix it yourself or buy a new one. When your 1999 game doesnt run on Windows 11, you fix it yourself or you buy a new one. If you require companies to fix it for you, the small ones will go bankrupt and the big ones will find a loophole.
you mean the loop hole that was industry standard before 2000 and a handful of dudes in basements solved?
Game Devs only have to make a plan for when the game gets shut down to still allow the users to be able to play the game. How that is archived can be decided by the developers. Of course the law could be different in the future.
But most people do agree that it is bad to intentionally break games that people payed money for. All they are basically are asking for, is that games are built in a way that they can be enjoyed as long as possible (maybe supported by the community). Is that not also in the intention of the game developers?
My opinion is that you, as a consumer, should reward the companies who treat you best with your money. You should not require the government to do it for you, because if you do, the thing you end up with might not be the thing you receive, sadly.
And yes, this logic holds for most industries, but not all. I for one think there should be stringent rules for food processing, since that can actually kill you, and yet still putrid beef and tainted baby formula are sold on a relatively frequent basis.
The only people you're effecting are legitimate players. Pirates crack the games and have an easier time for it. Unless you're talking about multiplayer games, which wasn't the target of the proposal (though even there I'd argue it's definitely doable).
> I work for a game company
You work for a shit game company.
If so, are you comfortable telling artists what types of art they can create? I know not everyone is going to agree with me here but it feels like a slippery slope.
Is this entirely the fault of the customer, or is it that the studios have largely forced this model upon customers, leaving them with little choice?
It's much more like "I paid for something, there should be a law so no one can take what I've paid for"
There isn't a scenario where, at scale, someone can offer a product that respects consumer rights and is successful, because it's too profitable to not respect consumer rights just like it wasn't in many other cases.
Yes, which is precisely why they shouldn't be treated like a commodity. Nobody is telling artists what art they can make, what the initiative is about making sure public continues to have access to works of art.
Which is normal for everything that's considered to be of cultural relevance. Film studios and novelists don't get to burn libraries down the moment someone stops paying them. It's exactly because games are art that preservation and access need to be priorities. Can you imagine if Amazon started to delete books from your Kindle? (I'm pretty sure they tried that once actually, with 1984 no less)
The destruction of art is, in most civilizations, seen as completely obscene. The reason why game companies got away with it was precisely because games had a lower status.
Games designed for limited play, however, are designed that way for the sake of profit churn.
This isn't so much about art, more about what you deserve when you pay money for something. People are still free to make whatever they want.
Yes, absolutely. For instance, I think it's fine to prohibit artists to kill animals for the sake of making art. Or humans, but it's already outlawed.
> This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union [...] to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.
The concern that I have is that I have no idea what the actual text of the law is going to be.
You can look at laws like the DMCA, that had a reasonable purpose (made adjustments to the copyright system for the age of the internet) and a royally screwed up implementation that basically everyone can find a problem with.
It's easy to imagine that the laws that pass could be (1) completely neutered by corruption in the EU leading to regulatory capture (2) far too strong and written in a way that imposes unfair burdens on developers (which include indie devs too) or (3) bad just because of technical incompetence of the authors.
I know that there's not much I can do about those things, but that may explain the emotional reactions of some people like e.g. PirateSoftware - nobody actually knows what the resulting law will be like, and everyone familiar with the legislative system knows how bad the outputs can be.
No, it's absolutely not. You're reading your own thoughts into it. Nowhere is the implication that we should do nothing.
> All these concerns apply to every piece of legislation that gets concocted. What makes this topic especially effected by one’s distrust in the government’s ability?
Because the authors are asking for public support for an initiative, and it now has a lot of public attention, with some specific people (mostly PirateSoftware) that are also publicly opposing it, and likely many more lurkers that don't want to sign it because of their concerns.
It's also the case that the more technical the topic, the more that legislators tend to screw it up, likely because of technical incompetence.
I'm elaborating the concerns so that they can get addressed. If you want more signatures, then you'd want to know what peoples' hangups are so that you can fix them.
The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
Yes, that's one of the ways to address this. Active consumer participation is still necessary, though, as the consumer protection group can still lose its way.
> The hang ups can’t simply be nihilistic complaints about the government’s abilities without any solutions proposed. That’s an argument for doing nothing
No, it's factually not. If I order soup from a restaurant, and it arrives and is terrible and I complain, I do not have to specify what the chef did wrong, or how they should fix it, for my complaint to be valid - and the fact that I'm not providing the solution does not mean that I think nothing should be done. Similarly, I don't have to point out what the solution has to be for my complaint to be valid, and that does not mean that I think nothing should be done. That's just insane.
Yeah, I like the general goal, but I worry about the corner cases; is an MMO “functional/playable” if you just release a localhost server? Are we forcing indie shops to pay for servers indefinitely now? Great way to ensure no more indie MMOs get built if that ends up being the text interpretation.
And, as you say, the question you should always be asking about EU legislation - how does this affect the small/medium shops’ competitiveness? Counterintuitively, compliance can hit the small guys relatively harder and entrench the big guys.
Not to say that we shouldn’t try to fix the problem. But agree that skepticism about EU regulations has some historical merit.
This is almost always the case, actually. Regulation and compliance are taxes on the productivity of an organization. And the "shape" of the tax is mostly flat - the burden is sublinear in the size of the organization, so the relative effects on smaller companies are bigger. And smaller companies already have significantly less available resources, and especially less legal resources (no lawyers on retainer), to handle it.
Obviously that doesn't mean that regulation shouldn't be passed, just that you have to write it very, very carefully - think embedded systems rather than web frontend - minimizing complexity and aggressively red-teaming it for loopholes and edge-cases.
Again, I'm not saying that it isn't worth regulating, just that you need to design the regulation as carefully as possible. You'd probably agree that the best regulation is that that minimizes burden on companies while maximizing positive effects for consumers, no?
The man behind Stop Killing Games has made it perfectly clear that they do not want to force game developers to continue operating servers. Rather, as you suggest, releasing server binaries would be acceptable. Although a mere "localhost" server would likely not be sufficient, because (if I interpret your suggestion correctly) it takes away the multiplayer funtionality of the game. I think it would be reasonable to require developers to release online multiplayer capable server binaries.
Not a game dev but would there be concerns about forcing devs to ship binaries for a codebase that was previously purely SaaS and proprietary, and likely containing logic that is a reusable for future games? The edge cases here seem a little gnarly. (Maybe it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, how much competitive advantage comes from the MMO server code? I gather it can be tricky to do some things well like AoC pushing high player counts.)
They might not even need to release server binaries, even. I would think releasing documentation on how the network commication runs, and adding a box to enter a server IP into the client at EOL would be sufficient. The community, if enough people care, would then be empowered to write their own server implementation without needing the reverse engineering step.
Also, bringing up the DMCA is sort of rich, since it was always just a vehicle for the biggest content companies in publishing, film, television, music and software to protect their property online.
Now we have something that was brought into being by consumers and may finally do something to curb anti-consumer behaviour by companies like this, and you're against it because you have no idea what it'll look like. I just can't, man. What's even the point of legislation if we have to be afraid it'll all be corrupted? Why even have political institutions at all at that point?
Then the industry is honest, and I can spend my money on an indie developer that doesn't do that.
Companies that do that will likely be completely outcompeted by studios that give a shit.
Any such law should include a carve-out so that indie devs and small startups aren't impacted because just the need maintain compliance paperwork can be a burden. Carve out thresholds can be based on a combination of product revenue and units sold. Similar carve outs should generally be part of a lot of government regulations because startup entrepreneurship is so key to job growth, innovation and ensuring more choice for consumers. The best way to keep huge companies honest is making them keep earning their success by enabling smaller, hungrier new competitors laser focused on better serving customer needs.
That said, I do generally agree with your broader point that how regulations are written and enforced matters a lot. Too many start with good intentions but end up being sidestepped, subverted or triggering unintended consequences. If a "Stop Killing Games" regulation is drafted I think it should be narrowly targeted and conceived with the understanding that both the tech and business models will continue rapidly evolving and the market will quickly adapt to sidestep or subvert whatever new rules are put in place. That will likely mean that, realistically, an effective regulation probably shouldn't be as expansive or all-encompassing as we might be imagining from our armchairs.
I'd be happy if the focus was simply on getting large game companies to clearly commit up front what their commitments are over time by listing how long will each aspect of the game will continue to work by type (ie single-player offline, multiplayer self-hosted, multiplayer cloud, feature updates, security updates). Then company management and investors will know to set aside funds to cover server fees for that time period after the final sale. This isn't new or burdensome. Large companies already have accounting practices to accrue future liabilities on their books. When they sell future enterprise services to other companies there's a contract with financial reserves and revenue recognition. Selling a game to consumers with the expectation of future online delivered services should have a similarly spelled out commitment and appropriate financial reserves.
In reality, this may mean some companies choose minimum commitments that we'd all feel are far too short but as long as the consumers know up front what the commitment actually is, the free market can determine over time what costs consumers are willing to pay for which commitments. I expect some companies will try to minimize their financial commitment by making games which could obviously have offline single-player aspects always require online for everything or be subscription-only and only commit to offer the subscription for 1 month after purchase. Let them try and see how the market reacts. Government regulation isn't some magic wand we can wave to just force companies to "do the right thing" or, more specifically, make the products we want and sell them to us on the terms we'd prefer. Companies will either pass the increased costs on to consumers or not go into that business at all. Realistic regulation should focus first on two things: 1) Ensuring a level-playing field for fierce competition and, 2) clear up front disclosure of what the deal is.
I find it really frustrating how they phrase things because there is so much BS in almost one sentence. The entire point of having a private server is so that they are no longer in control of these things.
Moreover if I am running a private server:
- It isn't their responsibility to secure players data.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove illegal content.
- it isn't their responsibility to remove "unsafe" (whatever that means) community content.
So how could they be liable?
> In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
This is pretty much disingenuous argument that "PirateSoftware" was pushing. They are pretending that a single player mode would need to be created. This isn't what is being requested.
Not a solution. Other people will buy them and outvote you with their wallets. This has already happened. People did buy The Crew, and I doubt that most of them realized that it will be closed 10 years later.
plenty of companies making single player games now would be fine.
Today, I have no idea when the game I just purchased is going to be disabled.
The biggest competitor to the video game industry is movies (Netflix, Disney plus, etc) and past games.
Think about it - what does the gaming industry look like 100 years from today? If players can play thousands of high quality games for free, why bother paying for a new game?
I suppose the book industry has the same problem, maybe there are some parallels to study from that.
This is something we can answer pretty easily by looking at the book industry. People do enjoy novelty. The pulp sci-fi/fantasy from the 60s-80s is long forgotten save for a few masterpieces, and there is a flow of recent books that people buy and read.
But they aren’t good for consumers.
There will always be people like myself who enjoy older (even outdated) books, but even we still buy new books because they are part of the zeitgeist and carry new ideas/developments. It'd be the same for new video games, some people would enjoy older games, but they'd likely still pick up a similar new game that developed something novel.
I guess the real problem here is that video game companies don't want to create anything novel, not least because it's a risk.
You would think the very idea of years of your work being rendered unplayable in an instant would be enough incentive to signal boost any effort against this industry practice.
Instead, developer discourse has revolved around just how hard it would be to do what this is petition is asking for. You are an engineer for crying out loud. If you solved a problem but a new constraint arrives in the form of a law, you figure out how to solve the problem under the new constraint. Just because something is hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
It's almost like flexing your skills and signalling your elite knowledge is more important to people than simply defending what's right.
The idea that a publisher can sell a live service game and shut it down in 1 month with no legal repercussions is ridiculous to me.
There is SO MUCH choice in games nowadays, including decades of classic games, that people should simply stop supporting player-hostile companies.
But as probably many other comments say, if you buy something from Ubisoft you deserve it.
As someone who hadn't played video games since his youth back in the late 80s, 90s, I was astonished when I tried to get back into it a few years ago.
Kernel-level DRM, online checks, €80+ price tags, incomplete games that require DLC, and all this for rushed unfinished broken games. You keep paying though, so the game companies keep pushing ("if they'll put up with this, what else can we get away with?").
Hear, hear.
Stop Killing Games is just way too broad. Remove online DRM checks from my single player game? Sure, I have been on board with that for a very long time. Make sure my MMO stays playable forever? You're asking for a miracle. You as a consumer need to be informed about what you're paying for. It's your job.
"Just release the server's source / binary" is a pipe-dream and I figured more people here would understand this. Modern software is super complex, distributed, entangled with external services and dependencies. Often it's not just isolated, should you be forced to release the backend serving all of your (still active) games? Has anyone considered the security implications? Should you be forced to use only libraries that you can distribute? Can you see how this may stifle creativity?
"Just state when the game will go offline" is impossible. The game will go offline when it can't be responsibly funded it anymore. Whether that's 2 or 10 years from now. If a company has to declare when your game service will expire, expect most online games to transition to a subscription model going forward. If the consumer won't have that, expect less of them to exist. It's going to backfire spectacularly. A better idea would be to mandate a minimum support window, and refunds within that window.
What constitutes a "playable state"? Is the anti-cheat in an online FPS integral to playability? Many would argue so, I'll let you think about that one. This movement is riddled with such ambiguities.
I don’t have a good solution but this is not it, very open to the idea that this is a clear/tactical solution and I just haven’t thought enough about it though.
anothernewdude•7mo ago
This is the weakest argument I've ever heard. Compare:
"Stop burning coal? That curtails factory owner choice!" etc. etc.
I'm sure the people behind the movement would love to point out that, yes, that is the entire point.
eska•7mo ago
slau•7mo ago
Apparently in 2025 corporate lawyers have forgotten how to write a disclaimer. It’s all BS to protect their short term games.
I would spend way more money on games if they didn’t have a ~5 year life span.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos•7mo ago
Those are two arguments which will win over europeans and euro politicians.